Wang Luck In The Good Earth

In Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth, a Chinese farmer named Wang Lung faces a variety of obstacles during his lifetime that teaches him valuable lessons. Wang Lung is transformed from a poor, uninformed person into a rich, sophisticated, and knowledgeable, yet ambitious man due to his surroundings. His character develops as he faces downfalls and success. His wife, O-Lan, changes her perspective as she’s transformed from a slave at the House of Hwang into the wife of a wealthy farmer. The three most significant settings of Wang Lung’s journey were the time in which he married O-Lan, the different crises that took place, and the period of Wang Lung’s success. The setting of Wang Lung’s rural life in China during the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s caused him to develop into the character he became later in the novel. Wang Lung believes

The whole community faces a great time of difficulty and distress, the famine causes the entire village to make sacrifices, and it takes a toll on essentially everyone during that time. The struggle they face develops them into appreciative people and teaches them how to survive with less. These times of hardship teach the characters to be non-materialistic people and cherish what they have. The misfortunes they face cause them to take extreme measures, O-Lan had to make a difficult choice between saving her newborn daughter or sacrificing her for the benefit of her family, “The round head dropped this way and that and upon the neck he saw two dark, bruised spots, of but he finished what he had to do” (Buck 87), and this gave O-Lan a decision-making characteristic which she carried on to the future. After the hard times passed, Wang Lung and his family were finally able to thrive with their land and to gain a financially stable