How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #1
"Oh, if I had an instant's strength in this hand of mine I would set fire to the gates and to those houses and courts within, even though I burned in the fire. A thousand curses to the parents that bore the children of Hwang!" (10.8)
That is some serious hate. It's this kind of hate that will eventually lead to rebellion in the South. Wang Lung doesn't notice, but the same rebellious ideas he hears years later were already getting tossed around in his hometown.
Quote #2
[The] young man said that China must have a revolution and must rise against the hated foreigners […] (12.6)
This guy was talking about what would become the Boxer Rebellion, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of foreigners and Chinese Christians. Buck herself was a foreigner living in China, and her father was a Christian missionary. How do you think she feels about these events? Can you tell from the way she writes about these issues? Or does she seem removed from these events?
Quote #3
They themselves had no idea of what manner of men they were. One of them once, seeing himself in a mirror that passed on a van of household goods, had cried out, "There is an ugly fellow!" And when others laughed at him loudly he smiled painfully, never knowing at what they laughed, and looking about hastily to see if he had offended someone. (13.4)
A guy called Marx (you might have heard of him) would say that these poor guys in the South had no political consciousness. That's fancy talk for: these dudes are poor and don't realize that the rich are oppressing them.
Quote #4
"Shall I never see it again! With all this labor and begging there is never enough to do more than feed us today.” Then out of the dusk there answered him a voice, a deep burly voice, “You are not the only one. There are a hundred hundred like you in this city." (13.29)
Okay, so first of all, that random voice is totally weird. But second of all, if Wang Lung actually got was the voice was telling him, he would be on his way to that Marx guy's political consciousness thing. Why do you think Wang Lung never gets there? We saw that sometimes people are just too poor to understand the way they're being exploited. They don't have time to think about it, and often they don't have the education, either. But, wait. Maybe the rich people are too rich to think about, too? Why would they bother thinking about it? Things are good for them, so what do they care who they're exploiting? Maybe Wang Lung never develops a political consciousness due to the fact that he's either too poor or too rich to figure it out.
Quote #5
"Now how ignorant you are, you who still wear your hair in a long tail! No one can make it rain when it will not, but what has this to do with us? If the rich would share with us what they have, rain or not would matter none, because we would all have money and food." (14.30)
Quote #6
"These soldiers are going to battle somewhere and they need carriers for their bedding and their guns and their ammunition and so they force laborers like you to do it. But what part are you from? It is no new sight in this city." (14.43)
Turn-of-the-century China was full of rebellions and wars with foreign countries, so this was probably pretty normal in a city with a port like this one. Since he lives all the way inland, and there's no 24-hours news channel (aside from the local gossips) for him to check, there's no reason for Wang Lung know about it.
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)
This sounds a lot like our first quote, doesn't it? The first brother should watch out: kicking these people out could very well upset the balance in town. There's very little to stop these people from coming back and dealing with him as he did with them.
Quote #8
And to him war was a thing like earth and sky and water and why it was no one knew but only that it was. Now and again he heard men say, "We will go to the wars." This they said when they were about to starve and would rather be soldiers than beggars; and sometimes men said it when they were restless at home as the son of his uncle had said it, but however this was, the war was always away and in a distant place. Then suddenly like a reasonless wind out of heaven the thing came near. (31.1)
So, why are people joining the army? Is it because they're interested in politics? Guess again. Some are hungry, some are bored, some are stupid, and some, like Wang Lung's cousin, are all three. What does this tell us about all these wars being waged? Who's in charge? Who benefits? What's the point of it all?
Quote #9
"There is to be a war such as we have not heard of—there is to be a revolution and fighting and war such as never was, and our land is to be free!" (32.40)
Wang Lung's third son was the first person in his family to care about politics. He's a dreamer. He's also grown up witnessing a lot of unrest—and he's got an education. Oh, and that thing about the land being free? It happened during the Communist Party's land reforms about 16 years after this novel was published. How was the land made free, you ask? By killing the landowners, naturally. That would be Wang Lung's family.
Quote #10
"Do you study the Four Books?” Then they laughed with clear young scorn at a man so old as this and they said, “No, grandfather, and no one studies the Four Books since the Revolution." (34.40)
Not studying the Four Books is a big deal. The Four Books were one of the basic foundations of Chinese society for hundreds of years. This quote shows us that Chinese society has completely changed—or is in the process of completely changing—and it's leaving Wang Lung behind.