Character Clues

Character Analysis

Personification

Hey, just because it's a giant rock teeming with life forms doesn't mean that the earth can't be a character, too. It's important, and it has feelings... and Buck wants you to know it.

Just like people, the different things on earth have different personalities. Crows are jerks: “They rose again slowly, circling and re-circling over his head, mocking him with their cries, and they flew at last into the darkening sky" (7.49). The land is chill: “And up from the quiescent, waiting land a faint mist rose, silver as moonlight, and clung about the tree trunks" (15.14). And floodwaters kind of sound like zombies: "[…] the waves of the yellow clay-laden water lapped about the dead hungrily" (27.17).

Personality aside, the important thing is that the earth is personified at all. It's as if Buck is saying that, sure, the earth my not be human, but humans sure are part of the earth, so the two have a lot in common.

Reverse Personification

Just as the earth is described as if it were a person, people are often described as if they were (parts of) the earth. For example, we know that we don't want to be on the Old Mistress's bad side, since we don't want to be scratched by her when she is "like an old tigress" (8.9). Similarly, we know that Cuckoo is sneak and will grab anything she can when Buck tells us this: "When there was a thing to be done, Cuckoo smelled the money in it as a rat smells tallow […]," We know that she's sneaky, and will grab anything that she can (23.18).

By using animals and plants to characterize the human characters, Buck never lets us forget the humans' connection to the earth.

Physical Appearances

Wang Lung's browned skin never allows him to escape his past as a farmer. Everyone can see that he's had to work in the fields, even if he now pays people to do that work for him. His children, on the other hand, don't have to worry about this, since they've grown up in luxury, and their skin remains pale and untanned. While Wang Lung's history as a farmer is written on his skin, his children and grandchildren's soft hands and pale skin are like membership cards for the upper class club.

It seems like the less work you do, the more you're respected in the world of this novel.