Oh China; a land steeped in ancient philosophy, religion and wisdom; where generations have lived off the land in servitude or gratitude; where nature governs the ebb and flow of life, where the every day events in a man’s life seem to have some unbroken harmony with the rhythms of nature and the vibrations of the seasons. This is the land where the rich are revered and the poor are scorned and made fun of. Patterns of institutionalized feudalism have been anchored into the mind, body and soul as well as the land. Here women are mere slaves and if a daughter is born to a poor man, she is destined to live along as a slave. The Gods are there over seeing the lands but no God is more powerful than the God of the rich house. But he too shall bow before the unswerving, immutable wrath of nature when it chooses to send either no rain at all or too much rain.
Into this Pre Revolutionary China, Pearl.S.Buck leads us, with her characters of Wang Lung and Olan. Olan being a simple, unattractive girl slave whom Wang Lung takes for a wife from the house of Hwang. Wang Lung’s firm belief in life is his devotion to his land. All his life, he strives to increase his possession of land. For him land is life, which breathes the air of existence into him. It blossoms, flowers, bears fruit, lives and sustains his life. There are several descriptions about planting, reaping and harvesting in the novel.
Olan is the stoic character. She bears children for the continuation of Wang Lung’s family. She helps him in his agriculture and is also the cause of their sudden rise to prosperity as she discovers a bag of jewels and gives them to Wang who sells them to the old Lord to buy land. When Wang in the intoxication of his new found riches and easy life finds no charm in her and feels she is ugly and plain, she takes it rather simply and sorrowfully. Wang leaves her bed and brings a concubine called Lotus from the tea houses to his house, building separate quarters for her. Olan goes through all this. All the novel’s other female characters, Wang’s aunt, Cuckoo, Lotus, his son’s wife are in contrast to the character of Olan who is the sufferer.
The novel’s ideas and language are biblical in places and passages describing the rhythms of nature abound in the novel. The social, political upheavals of the time resonate through the lives of the characters in the novel especially the protagonist Wang Lung. The opium addiction of the Chinese masses also finds a place on the novel. The ending is representative of the trampling of the old by the new, the replacement of the old values by the modern. As Wang Lung awaits his death his children plan to divide the land and sell it.