How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #1
"She is with child already." […] The old man blinked for a moment and then comprehended, and cackled with laughter. "Heh-heh-heh—" he called out to his daughter-in-law as she came, "so the harvest is in sight!" (2.28-31)
They're farmers, so you have to excuse the nature jokes. Just like you harvest corn or wheat, the metaphor is that you can harvest people, too. It's another way the book reminds us that we're all made of earth and live in constant interaction with the earth.
Quote #2
It had come out of the earth, this silver, out of his earth that he ploughed and turned and spent himself upon. He took his life from this earth; drop by drop by his sweat he wrung food from it and from the food, silver. (3.19)
The earth is Wang Lung's livelihood, and money is just the physical form of the blood sweat and tears that he has poured into his farm. Is it good for him to think of the work he has done in terms of an abstraction like money? Does this abstraction come between him and the earth?
Quote #3
The woman and the child were as brown as the soil and they sat there like figures made of earth. There was the dust of the fields upon the woman's hair and upon the child's soft black head. (4.8)
Holy metaphors and similes, Batman! O-lan and her son are literally made of earth, that's how important the land is to their lives.
Quote #4
"They cannot take the land from me. The labor of my body and the fruit of the fields I have put into that which cannot be taken away. If I had the silver, they would have taken it. If I had bought with the silver to store it, they would have taken it all. I have the land still, and it is mine." (8.49)
You can trust the earth: it's not going anywhere, and no one can take it from you. But manmade things like silver can always be stolen, even from the toughest vaults.
Quote #5
"I was sold," she answered very slowly. "I was sold to a great house so that my parents could return to their home. “And would you sell the child, therefore?" "If it were only I, she would be killed before she was sold... the slave of slaves was I! But a dead girl brings nothing. I would sell this girl for you—to take you back to the land." (13.21)
Which is more important: human life, or the land? O-lan obviously decides that the land is more important than the happiness of one little girl. Her thinking is that by selling the girl, only one person suffers, whereas if the land is lost, many people will suffer. What do you think of this kind of reason?
Quote #6
Now that he was poor Wang Lung knew full well but he had heretofore blamed it on a heaven that would not rain in its season, or having rained, would continue to rain as though rain were an evil habit. When there was rain and sun in proportion so that the seed would sprout in the land and the stalk bear grain, he did not consider himself poor. Therefore he listened in interest to hear further what the rich men had to do with this thing, that heaven would not rain in its season. (14.30)
Wang Lung's life is so controlled by the seasons and the weather that he can't even begin to understand what rich people have to do with him being poor. He's only poor because it's a famine this year. What's money got to do with being poor?
Quote #7
He remembered also the idle young lords of the fallen great house as he worked on the land he had bought from the House of Hwang, and he bade his two sons sharply each morning to come into the fields with him and he set them at what labor their small hands could do, guiding the ox and the ass, and making them, if they could accomplish no great labor, at least to know the heat of the sun on their bodies and the weariness of walking back and forth along the furrows. (17.4)
Wang Lung remembers that the House of Hwang fell because it lost its connection to the land. He sees what's up, and he's determined (for now at least) to make sure he doesn't repeat their mistakes.
Quote #8
Then the good land did again its healing work and the sun shone on him and healed him and the warm winds of summer wrapped him about with peace. And as if to cure him of the root of his ceaseless thought of his own troubles, there came out of the South one day a small slight cloud. […] The men of the village watched it and talked of it and fear hung over them, for what they feared was this, that locusts had come out of the South to devour what was planted in the fields. […] Then Wang Lung forgot everything that troubled him. (23.111)
So this is a strange kind of medicine, but whatever it works. Think about it as forced meditation. We also see one big theme in the novel at work here: idleness, whether it comes from being away from the land or from being too rich to bother with the land, gets Wang Lung into trouble. Normally, locusts wouldn't be a great thing, but here, they at least get Wang Lung to stop being all emo about his problems and take some action.
Quote #9
At last one day when she said this he could not bear it and he burst forth, “This I cannot bear! I would sell all my land if it could heal you. “She smiled at this and said in gasps, whispering, “No, and I would not—let you. For I must die—sometime anyway. But the land is there after me." (26.10)
Come on, Wang Lung should have known that this would be O-lan's answer. She's told us that life is less important than land before, but now we know why. The land is always there, but people are constantly being born and dying. If you sell your daughter, you can always get another one. Your wife is going to die sometime, anyway. But the land? It's not going anywhere.
Quote #10
Now Wang Lung had chosen a good place in his fields under a date tree upon a hill to set the graves, and Ching had the graves dug and ready and a wall of earth made about the graves, and there was space within the walls for the body of Wang Lung and for each of his sons and their wives, and there was space for sons' sons, also. This land Wang Lung did not begrudge, even though it was high land and good for wheat, because it was a sign of the establishment of his family upon their own land. Dead and alive they would rest upon their own land. (26.82)
As the song goes, "To everything […] / There is a season […] / […] A time to be born, a time to die." The novel begins with a birth being compared to a harvest. Now it's the season for O-lan and Ching to die, but we don't know what kinds of births will follow these deaths. The novel reminds us that time can be cyclical, and that our lives have seasons, just as nature does. It's another way in which we're connected with nature on a deep level.