This book is just what you think it is--it's about one man, Wang Lung, and his family living in pre-Revolutionary China (I'm guessing the late 1800s). He starts out at the beginning as a poor young farmer, and the beginning of the book starts with his wedding day, emphasizing again and again how humble and poor he is, as he goes to the richest family in town (the House of Hwang) to take the slave that he was betrothed to as his wife. The book follows him over the course of his life, as he increases his stature and his earnings and the land that he owns until he becomes the wealthiest man in town. There are some very poor times, especially one year of famine where his family all nearly starves to death and they move south to beg for their living, but they eventually make it back to their land and eventually own hundreds and hundreds of acres of land. When Wang Lung dies, he is the "old master" of the richest home in town and has tons of money--having succeeded in every way, as it seems.
It was a little sad to read this book--as I am sure is intended by Buck. Wang Lung begins so humbly and has so many good qualities: very, very industrious, meticulously honest, frugal, unconcerned about what other people thought or said. All of these good qualities pay off, and he begins to earn his way up in the world and to make more money. They even survive the horrible famine that sweeps through their area and come out better than before, and he begins to buy out land and truly becomes rich. However, it's amazing to see how quickly prosperity begins to wear away at his good qualities and make him make mistakes that anyone can see will eventually be his downfall, and how he doesn't notice the irony or the changes he has made from his prior character and beliefs. He becomes idle and stops working on his land as much once he can hire servants; he takes another woman as a second wife to satisfy his lust for her; he doesn't try to teach his sons to work or to value the same things that brought him his prosperity to begin with. You can see him following the footsteps of the House of Hwang and their mistakes that led to their downfall: they spent all their money on opium and fine silks, their sons didn't learn the land and were spoiled and spent all their money, the men just wanted to sleep with every slave they could. There are so many overt comparisons to the House of Hwang--Wang Lung and his family even move into their old house eventually, and people are always saying, "He is just like the old master!"--that you would think Wang would sometime notice that he is doing a lot of the same things that they did, the things that he knew were wrong back when he was a young farmer coming to buy his wife from them. He seemed like he was much happier and in a much more peaceful place in his life when he was poor and young with a young family, but working hard and living on the land, than he did later in life with his spoiled rich children pestering him for money, and his concubines always asking for more. This totally reminded me of the Book of Mormon pride cycle and how when people make good choices and are hardworking and righteous they are blessed, but then they become prosperous and become wicked and are punished. So totally obvious in this book.
Wealth brought a detachment from the land that Wang loved so much. There are so many references to how much he loved the land--the land he owned and worked and sweat over--and descriptions of the soil itself and the feeling Wang got from working on it and sleeping in it, throughout the whole book. But as he got older he got too rich to go work and moved into town and rarely saw his land, the place that he loved so much and that gave him so much connection. When he was about to die, he wanted to move back to the land and into his country farm house that he began with, and tried to reconnect with his land. The book ends with his sons talking about selling the land, and the father trying in his old age to teach them why the land is so important, but they "smile over his head" and ignore him.
The last thing that really stood out to me about this book was the treatment of women. Girl babies were just referred to as "slaves"--they were only useful as servants in the family before they were married off and then sold out of the family in arranged marriages. The wife of the household was responsible for running everything and was never thanked. O-lan, Wang Lung's wife, is crazy amazing at how hard she works when they are first married. She has baby after baby and works constantly through the whole thing. She literally walked back to the fields to finish working hours after giving birth to their second child. And yet O-lan is detested and despised throughout the whole novel because she is ugly and because her feet are unbound--which ironically is what helped her to be such a help to him in the first place, because if her feet had been bound she would have never been able to help him in the fields. She ends up basically working herself to death, after watching Wang Lung bring a second wife (a prostitute) to the house and being placed above her. Babies that are boys are celebrated and worshipped, and girl babies are completely despised. Wang sees the birth of his first daughter as a bad omen for what is coming next (the famine that they all almost starve through). This is not unexpected or all that surprising, but it was stark and sad.
The book ends right before Wang Lung dies. There are actually two more books that come after this in a trilogy--but I don't really want to read them because it's pretty clear which direction the family is heading.
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