Wang Lung And O-Lan Relationship
Taylor McClure
Period 3
September 1st, 2010 T.G.E. Paragraph Final Draft
The relationship between O-lan and Wang Lung is stabilized by O-lan’s hard work and resourcefulness, based largely upon a woman’s inferiority, and threatened by superficial tendencies. Their affiliation also ends romantically with the loss of love and is regretted, in the end, with sufficient sympathy. O-lan proves to be beneficial through means of outdoor labor. “In the afternoon she took a hoe and a basket and these upon her shoulder she went to the main road leading into the city where mules and donkeys and horses carried burdens to and fro, and there she picked the droppings from the animals …show more content…
He complains of her horrid hair and rough features. “He saw for the first time that her hair was rough and brown and unoiled and that her face was large and flat coarse-skinned, and her features too large altogether and without any sort of beauty or light” (Buck 179-180). These cruel comments are the first slap in the face of O-lan, as Wang Lung’s manly instincts begin to kick in and he discovers beauty abroad. Lotus enters the story when Wang Lung gives into the temptation of lust. He buys her, despite the fact that he is a married man. Threatening the relationship between O-lan and Wang Lung, Lotus slowly tears the couple apart even more than they were before. Earlier in the novel, during the raid of an aristocrat’s home, O-lan finds many valuable gems within the walls. Once money becomes a necessity, Wang Lung asks for the gems in order to grant them to the House of Hwang in return for additional land. O-lan is allowed to keep only two of her choosing and she quickly decides on two pearls: And he was moved by something he did not understand and he pulled the jewels from his bosom and unwrapped them and handed them to her in silence, and she searched among the glittering colors, her hard brown hand turning over the stones delicately and lingeringly until she found the two smooth white pearls, and these she took, and tying up the others again, she gave them back to him. (Buck
Period 3
September 1st, 2010 T.G.E. Paragraph Final Draft
The relationship between O-lan and Wang Lung is stabilized by O-lan’s hard work and resourcefulness, based largely upon a woman’s inferiority, and threatened by superficial tendencies. Their affiliation also ends romantically with the loss of love and is regretted, in the end, with sufficient sympathy. O-lan proves to be beneficial through means of outdoor labor. “In the afternoon she took a hoe and a basket and these upon her shoulder she went to the main road leading into the city where mules and donkeys and horses carried burdens to and fro, and there she picked the droppings from the animals …show more content…
He complains of her horrid hair and rough features. “He saw for the first time that her hair was rough and brown and unoiled and that her face was large and flat coarse-skinned, and her features too large altogether and without any sort of beauty or light” (Buck 179-180). These cruel comments are the first slap in the face of O-lan, as Wang Lung’s manly instincts begin to kick in and he discovers beauty abroad. Lotus enters the story when Wang Lung gives into the temptation of lust. He buys her, despite the fact that he is a married man. Threatening the relationship between O-lan and Wang Lung, Lotus slowly tears the couple apart even more than they were before. Earlier in the novel, during the raid of an aristocrat’s home, O-lan finds many valuable gems within the walls. Once money becomes a necessity, Wang Lung asks for the gems in order to grant them to the House of Hwang in return for additional land. O-lan is allowed to keep only two of her choosing and she quickly decides on two pearls: And he was moved by something he did not understand and he pulled the jewels from his bosom and unwrapped them and handed them to her in silence, and she searched among the glittering colors, her hard brown hand turning over the stones delicately and lingeringly until she found the two smooth white pearls, and these she took, and tying up the others again, she gave them back to him. (Buck