How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #7
The common people had to move, then, and they moved complaining and cursing because a rich man could do as he would and they packed their tattered possessions and went away swelling with anger and muttering that one day they would come back even as the poor do come back when the rich are too rich. (30.101)
The last time we heard this phrase from the crowd, it was right before they broke down the gates and stole everything inside the great house. Since this quote happens after Wang Lung's first son kicks the commoners out from the outer courts, we get the sense that there may be trouble brewing soon for this family. How often do people in this novel learn from history, or from their own experiences?
Quote #8
And Wang Lung marvelled to think that once he had feared her [Wang Lung's aunt] for a great fat blowsy country woman, idle and loud, she who lay there now shriveled and yellow and silent, and as shriveled and yellow as the Old Mistress had been in the fallen House of Hwang. (30.186)
For once, Wang Lung associates the House of Hwang with the vices that caused their fall. Why has it taken him so long to come to these conclusions? Has he deliberately made himself blind to what's going on? Perhaps because he kind of knows that something is up, and things are as good as they seem for him?
Quote #9
Then he [Wang Lung's cousin] looked at Lotus attentively and he said, "Well, and Old Mistress indeed, and if I did not know my cousin Wang Lung were rich I should know by looking at you, such a mountain of flesh you have become, and well you have eaten and how richly! It is only rich men's wives who can look like you!” Now Lotus was mightily pleased that he called her Old Mistress, because it is a title that only the ladies of great families may have […] (31.47)
Even though many things repeat in this novel, this isn't one of them. The Old Mistress was skinny and addicted to opium. Lotus is fat and, well, not addicted to opium. The only similarity here is that they are both rich. Oh, wait, there's another similarity: they're pretty good at wrecking other people's lives.