The House of Wang Versus the House of Hwang in Pearl S. Buck's
The Good Earth
        In Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth two families revolve around each other throughout the novel.  These two households are Wang and Hwang.  The houses of Wang and Hwang intertwine and exchange place during the story.  The exchanging taking goes through a cycle of poverty to wealth to poverty again.  The qualities both families share are the location of the homes, the appearance of the homes, and the behaviors of the family members.  These qualities contribute to the ongoing cycle of poor and rich.
 
        The location of the homes of the two families is one of the aspects of difference that changes in the novel.  The Household of Hwang is located in the city, an area of prosperity and business.  There are shops all around and street vendors on the corners.  This is the place where the wealthy live.  In contrast to the location of the House of Hwang is the placement of the house of the poor farmer Wang Lung.  This household is in the impoverished Chinese countryside.  Surrounding his home are the fields where he spends his days to make money to survive.  The location of these families stays this way until famine, war, and poverty sweep the nation.

       When Wang Lung returns from the south, after having to leave his home in order for his family to survive, he is a richer man.  Wang hears the House of Hwang has suffered greatly during this time, and with the money he has made and the extended family he has, Wang Lung decides to buy the House of Hwang.  “Then some satisfaction he had longed for all his days without knowing it swelled up in his heart and he smote the table with his hand and he said suddenly, ‘This house I will have!’” (Buck 296).   With this action the location of the two households is reversed.  The House of Hwang, now poor, is out of the rich city, and the House of Wang, now well to do, is out of the impoverished countryside and into the prosperity of the town.

        Along with the difference in location of the two houses is the difference in appearance of the two homes.  Wang’s home is a country shack of humble means.  “The kitchen was made of earthen bricks as the house was, great squares of earth dug from their own fields, and thatched with straw from their own wheat” (Buck 2).  The House of Hwang is an estate and has all the accessories that go with one.  “He stood at the gate for a long time, looking at it.  It was closed fast, two great wooden gates, painted black and bound and studded with iron, closed upon each other.  Two lions made of stone stood on guard, one at either side” (Buck 12).  The inside of the home drastically differs from the home of Wang Lung.

Down a narrow veranda they went, the roofs supported by delicate carven posts, and into a hall the like of which Wang Lung had never seen.  A score of houses such as his whole house could have been put into it and have disappeared, so wide were the spaces, so high the roofs.  Lifting his head in wonder to see the great carven and painted beams above him he stumbled upon the high threshold . . . . (Buck 15)
 These households differ immensely in their construction and appearance.
 
        The final quality that the House of Hwang and the House of Wang exchange is the behavior of the family members. In the first part of The Good Earth, the mistress of the House of Hwang is arrogant and self-involved.  The princes of this household are obnoxious and spoiled, bickering with each other and fighting over people and possessions.  This deeply contrasts with the House of Wang at the beginning of the novel.  The Wang family is kind, caring, and dependent upon one another.  Though Wang Lung is in charge and is dominant, he is neither cruel nor self-indulgent and his sons get along with each other.  But like the exchanges of appearance and location between the two households, the behavior of the households also changes.  By the closing of the novel, Wang Lung has gone from being the governing figure of the Wang family to a figure with little control or say in family doings.  This is the same deterioration of power that the Great Master of the House of Hwang experienced.   Now, living in the estate of Hwang, Wang Lung’s sons have begun acting like the sons of the previous family in that house. The buying and selling of land, which brought about the wealth of the House of Wang, in turn brought about the downfall of the House of Hwang.  At the end of the novel, Wang Lung asks his sons not to sell the land because he knows it will bring about his family’s destruction.  The sons agree, while winking at each other over their father’s head.  This foreshadowing that indicates the cycle of rich to poor will continue.  The House of Wang was humbled by poverty, but now being rich they are condescending, while the House of Hwang was contemptuous when wealthy and is less contemptuous now that it is poor.
 
        Pearl S. Buck uses the exchange of the location of the homes, the appearance of the home, and the behavior of the family members in The Good Earth, to bring realism into the novel.  Buck takes the basic instincts of man when money is either given or taken away to show the true nature of human beings.  The exchange of the qualities of the House of Hwang and the House of Wang displays human nature because in real life when money is involved, there are changes in the structure of the family and the family’s location.  Pearl S. Buck also seems to suggest that this poverty to wealth to poverty cycle has always been and will continue.
 

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