A major theme of the book is wealth. At the beginning, Wang Lung was just a poor farmer that only had little land, an ox, and his old father to care for. He was only able a arranged marriage with a servant unlike today where you actually meet the one through God’s plan. However, because of his marriage to the servant O-lan, Wang Lung life began to get better and his wealth slowly increased later on. With this increase in wealth, his property expanded and his life became easier.
The significance to this theme of wealth is that although Wang Lung worked hard for his wealth, it wasn’t always a good thing. Because of his wealth, a lot of issues occurred. One of the major issues was the issue of lust. Because of his wealth, Wang Lung was able to buy more land from the family of Hwang. With all this land came more wealth and the ability to hire workers. Since he had workers to do everything, Wang Lung had nothing to do and pretty much was bored and went out to find pleasure. This pleasure came in the form of a woman. Wang Lung lusted after this woman and pretty much bought her to serve him as a sex slave. Because of this he was constantly spending money to please her desires. Also another issue was family. With all his wealth, his uncle took advantage of him and Wang Lung could do nothing to get rid of him since he was afraid of losing all his earthly wealth. Also his oldest son didn’t finance the money well and just spent it a lot of it on looking good.
Really this theme of wealth is teaching people that sometimes being wealthy isn’t always a good thing. It is great to have money and property, although it would probably take a lot of work to obtain, but how you use it greatly affects your life. We have to be aware of what we do and control ourselves to prevent any lust or foolish spending by yourself or by family. Also, from a Christian perspective, we shouldn’t desire earthly riches that rot away, but rather desire to have heavenly riches that are eternal.
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