The Good Earth: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis

With the arrival of spring, the beggars go out to the countryside to forage for food, and O-lan and the boys go with them. Wang Lung continues to work. The warm weather makes everyone less satisfied with their meager lot in life, and the men begin to talk in the evenings. O-lan knows things about these men, but she remains silent.

Wang Lung feels separate from the other men because he owns land and plans to return to it, while the others think only of day-to-day satisfaction. Wang Lung feels he doesn’t belong here, but to the land, and he needs to get back to it. The men talk only of money and of how lazy and luxurious their lives would be if they were rich. Finally, he tells them that if he had money, he would buy land. They ridicule him for not knowing how to spend money, but he is unmoved.

Wang Lung can think only of his land, and so he hardly pays attention to the goings-on of the city. Twice, men give him papers with something written on them, but he can’t read. First a foreigner gives him a paper, and the man’s appearance frightens Wang Lung. The paper shows a picture of a white man hanging on a cross. He brings it home and shows it to his family, and his father suggests that the man on the cross must have been evil. Wang Lung thinks perhaps a relative of the foreigner was killed this way and the man wants revenge. Eventually O-lan sews the paper into the sole of a shoe.

Later a Chinese man gives another paper to Wang Lung. This one has a picture of a poor Chinese man being stabbed to death by a fat man. Wang Lung listens to the man telling a crowd that the dead man represents them, and the murderer represents rich capitalists. He blames their poverty on the wealthy. Wang Lung has only ever blamed his poverty on bad weather that ruined the crops. Eventually he asks whether the rich can make it rain, and the man calls him ignorant, saying that if the rich would share their wealth, no one would need it to rain. Wang Lung isn’t convinced, but he takes the papers that the man gives so that O-lan can use them for shoes.

The men who live in the huts welcome the man’s message, and they begin to think of knocking down the wall that separates them from the wealthy house. They feel discontented and unfairly treated. Wang Lung still only wants his land back.

One day, while pulling his ricksha down the street, Wang Lung sees a number of common men captured by a band of soldiers. He realizes that the men don’t know why they’re being captured, so he hides in the doorway of a shop. When the soldiers are gone, he asks the owner of the shop what just happened. The man says there must be a war somewhere, and the soldiers need servants to carry their supplies. They won’t pay the captives anything, and they don’t care about the men’s abandoned families. The shop owner is quite accustomed to this. He warns Wang Lung when the soldiers are coming back, and when they’ve passed Wang Lung runs home.

Wang Lung tells O-lan what has happened and feels terrified that he’ll be forced to die on a battlefield and his family will starve without him. He wonders if he should sell their daughter so that they can go home. O-lan tells him to wait, for she has heard people saying strange things.

Wang Lung only goes out at night now, and he pulls huge wagonloads of goods for very little money. The work is exhausting, but he sleeps during the day, hidden in the hut. As the spring goes on, the city becomes unsettled, and the wealthy people ship their possessions away. The boys come home with news of having seen rich men, and a man told them that one day the riches would belong to the poor. The elder son wants money so that he can try a cake, and Wang Lung thinks longingly of the cakes O-lan made when they were prospering. Suddenly he can no longer stand their life here, and he weeps for the land. O-lan tells him to be patient, for everyone is talking of something.

From the hut, Wang Lung hears soldiers marching constantly to battle. Everyone in the city is afraid, and no one talks to each other. The markets are empty and the shops closed. There are rumors that the enemy is approaching, but the poor people aren’t afraid, since they have nothing to lose. Finally Wang Lung loses his work, since no one is buying anything. Before long, the family runs out of money, and the public kitchens close.

Wang Lung holds his daughter and asks her if she’d like to go to a great house, and, not understanding, she smiles, which pains him. Wang Lung asks O-lan whether she was beaten as a slave, and she says she was beaten every day with a piece of leather. He asks whether the pretty slaves were beaten too, and she replies without emotion that they were either beaten or fought over by the men who would sleep with them. Wang Lung pities his daughter, but feels that he might have no choice but to sell her.

Suddenly there’s a deafening noise, and the family cowers to the ground. When it stops, O-lan says that the enemy has broken into the city. Then they hear the sound of a crowd. They’re terrified. Finally they hear a large door opening, and one of their neighbors comes to tell them that the gates of the wealthy house have opened. O-lan leaves immediately, and Wang Lung follows in a daze.

Wang Lung finds a mob forcing its way into the house. He gets caught up in the crowd, and it pushes him through the gates. Those who have lived there are nowhere to be seen, but there’s still food on the tables and fires in the kitchens. The mob goes into the inner courts where the rich people lived and begins ransacking the treasures there. Wang Lung doesn’t take anything. When he finally comes to his senses, he makes his way to the edge of the crowd and sees the back gate that is meant to allow the residents to escape.

Wang Lung comes upon a fat man who hasn’t escaped. He’s terrified of Wang Lung and begs him not to kill him, saying he’ll pay him well. Wang Lung finally realizes that this man’s money can let him get back to the land without selling his daughter. In an uncharacteristically cruel voice, Wang Lung tells the fat man to give him the money, and he takes handfuls of gold coins from him. The fat man weeps and Wang Lung despises him, telling him to leave or he’ll kill him, though Wang Lung couldn’t even kill an ox. The man runs away. Wang Lung carries the gold back to his hut, determined to return to the land the very next day.