The Good Earth (House of Earth, #1)

by Pearl S. Buck

Secretly he was pleased that his son had invited guests, but he felt it would not do to give out anything but complaints before his new daughter-in-law lest she be set from the first in ways of extravagance.

“When I return to that house it will be with my son in my arms. I shall have a red coat on him and red-flowered trousers and on his head a hat with a small gilded Buddha sewn on the front and on his feet tiger-faced shoes. And I will wear new shoes and a new coat of black sateen and I will go into the kitchen where I spent my days and I will go into the great hall where the Old One sits with her opium, and I will show myself and my son to all of them.”

“The Ancient Mistress wore the same coat this year as last. I have never seen this happen before. And the slaves had no new coats.” And then after a pause she said, “I saw not one slave with a new coat like mine.”

She made a slight movement of her hand upon the bed and he saw upon the floor the child’s body. “Dead!” he exclaimed. “Dead,” she whispered. He stooped and examined the handful of its body—a wisp of bone and skin—a girl.

First of the children to die. A newborn girl.

And later when they were fully men and married and the dismay of increasing numbers filled their hearts, the scattered anger of their youth became settled into a fierce despair and into a revolt too deep for mere words because all their lives they labored more severely than beasts, and for nothing except a handful of refuse to fill their bellies.

Then she went up to Wang Lung and took his hand and drew it to her face and she wooed him. But he, although he loved her again, loved her not so wholly as before, and never again so wholly as he had loved her.

The concubine Lotus oversteps by cursing Wang’s children.

Now these things, the red beard and the red length of cloth were sign and symbol of a band of robbers who lived and marauded toward the northwest,

Want is stuck with his uncle’s family because the man is a bandit and would retaliate if he is kicked out.

“It is a difficult case. If you do not wish guarantee of recovery, I will ask for fee ten pieces of silver and I will give you a prescription of herbs and a tiger’s heart dried in it and the tooth of a dog, and these boil together and let her drink the broth. But if you wish complete recovery guaranteed, then five hundred pieces of silver.” Now when O-lan heard the words, “five hundred pieces of silver” she came suddenly out of her languor and she said weakly, “No, and my life is not worth so much. A good piece of land can be bought for so much.”

Then as he looked she opened her eyes wide and it seemed there was some strange mist over them, for she stared at him full and stared again, wondering and fixing her eyes on him, as though she wondered who he was. Suddenly her head dropped off the round pillow where it lay, and she shuddered and was dead.

And out of his heaviness there stood out strangely but one clear thought and it was a pain to him, and it was this, that he wished he had not taken the two pearls from O-lan that day when she was washing his clothes at the pool, and he would never bear to see Lotus put them in her ears again.

“I hate these three worse than my life and if I could think of a way I would do it. But your uncle is lord of a horde of wild robbers, and if I feed him and coddle him we are safe, and no one can show anger toward them.”

And his two sons in the house and Lotus he would not allow to touch the opium, saying as his excuse that it was too dear, but he urged it upon his uncle and upon his uncle’s wife and son, and the courts were filled with the sweetish smell of the smoke, and the silver for this Wang Lung did not begrudge because it bought him peace.

So when the two wives hated each other, their hatred spread to the men also and the courts of the two were full of anger and Wang Lung groaned because there was no peace in his house.

But the girl dropped her hands from her face and she cried more passionately than he had ever heard her cry, “Young men are so cruel—I like old men best!” When the morning came of the next day Wang Lung’s youngest son was gone and where he was gone no one knew.

“This field we will sell and this one, and we will divide the money between us evenly. Your share I will borrow at good interest, for now with the railroad straight through I can ship rice to the sea and I

The sons sell the land for quick money.