Life In The Good Earth

The novel The Good Earth is set in China during the early twentieth century. Life in China is very rough and bleak, especially for poor farmers like Wang Lung. Revolutionary ideas are being spread around and local gangs are forming. Lung and his family live in a small house with Lung’s elderly father. They are poor, simple, farmers and are doing everything possible to survive. When Lung marries O-lan, who bears him children, there are both more hands to work in the fields as well as more people to feed. Lung and his family face many obstacles that hinder their work and even force them, for a short time, to leave their land. Lung and O-lan must work in their fields, both day and night to feed their family and stay alive. Being the honest, hardworking
people they are, they are able to not only survive, but thrive. In The Good Earth, hard work and virtue are rewarded while idleness and vice are not.

Throughout the novel, Both Lung and O-lan must be virtuous and hardworking people to survive. When they meet these requirements, they are rewarded with sons, money, and or land for a more prosperous life. But when Lung begins to step away from his morals of hard work and honesty, the lives of him and his family become more struggling. These two characters know that they have to be these kinds of people to keep their family alive. O-lan and Lung, both poor farmers of the early twentieth century, would most likely agree and connect personally with Pope Paul VI when he stated, “All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today.”