Humans have the tendency to be lost within themselves. The appeal of materialism causes unfound and compromised identity. Due to this, society has created a social standard that equates their worth in monetary value, and it also corrupts their intrinsic sense of finding meaning to themselves. In The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck, Wang Lung searches for his identity through social change and wealth, and inevitably loses his sense of self.
The novel celebrates the image of human beings working within nature and nature being transformed by human work. This relationship between man and earth is defined when Wang Lung, “had no articulate thought of anything; there was only this perfect sympathy of movement, of turning this earth of theirs over and over to the sun, this earth which formed their home and fed their bodies and made their gods,”(Buck 27). His passion for land was reflected into his hard work, and he reached a peak of harmony. However, as the novel …show more content…
His acquisition of wealth infuses his world with increasing signs of chinese culture such as silk garments, polygamy and concubinage, and a generally increasing hierarchization of gender relations. For example, Wang Lung's obsession with Lotus is described when the author states, “but over the fields and the water the moonlight hung, a net of silver mist, and in his body ran secret and hot and fast,”(Buck 152). His passion for Lotus conceived itself here, and it represents the epitome of his lost identity. Wang Lung's fantastic accumulation of wealth symbolizes the dissolution of fixed social classes, except that the Lung family's reenactment of the Hwangs earlier decline implies an internal cultural pattern. The references to social change presents the potential for Wang Lung to grasp himself as a member of social hierarchy, even though
The novel celebrates the image of human beings working within nature and nature being transformed by human work. This relationship between man and earth is defined when Wang Lung, “had no articulate thought of anything; there was only this perfect sympathy of movement, of turning this earth of theirs over and over to the sun, this earth which formed their home and fed their bodies and made their gods,”(Buck 27). His passion for land was reflected into his hard work, and he reached a peak of harmony. However, as the novel …show more content…
His acquisition of wealth infuses his world with increasing signs of chinese culture such as silk garments, polygamy and concubinage, and a generally increasing hierarchization of gender relations. For example, Wang Lung's obsession with Lotus is described when the author states, “but over the fields and the water the moonlight hung, a net of silver mist, and in his body ran secret and hot and fast,”(Buck 152). His passion for Lotus conceived itself here, and it represents the epitome of his lost identity. Wang Lung's fantastic accumulation of wealth symbolizes the dissolution of fixed social classes, except that the Lung family's reenactment of the Hwangs earlier decline implies an internal cultural pattern. The references to social change presents the potential for Wang Lung to grasp himself as a member of social hierarchy, even though