In the book The Good Earth, the character O-lan—wife of Wang Lung—asked her husband for two pearls that she would like to keep. Wang Lung acquiesced, but he did not understand why she asked for them. Later, Wang snatched the pearls away from O-lan and gave them to his concubine, Lotus. The pearls held some meaning to all three of these characters, but it held the most importance to O-lan and affected her the most. First of all, Wang Lung, O-lan, and Lotus all regarded the pearls differently. Wang Lung only considered jewelry such as pearls for the purchasing of more land, as he says, “It must be sold and put into safety--into land, for nothing else is safe” (148). He feels that jewelry must be spent swiftly to avoid any sort of trouble.
