How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #1
"Oh, if I had an instant's strength in this hand of mine I would set fire to the gates and to those houses and courts within, even though I burned in the fire. A thousand curses to the parents that bore the children of Hwang!" (10.8)
That is some serious hate. It's this kind of hate that will eventually lead to rebellion in the South. Wang Lung doesn't notice, but the same rebellious ideas he hears years later were already getting tossed around in his hometown.
Quote #2
[The] young man said that China must have a revolution and must rise against the hated foreigners […] (12.6)
This guy was talking about what would become the Boxer Rebellion, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of foreigners and Chinese Christians. Buck herself was a foreigner living in China, and her father was a Christian missionary. How do you think she feels about these events? Can you tell from the way she writes about these issues? Or does she seem removed from these events?
Quote #3
They themselves had no idea of what manner of men they were. One of them once, seeing himself in a mirror that passed on a van of household goods, had cried out, "There is an ugly fellow!" And when others laughed at him loudly he smiled painfully, never knowing at what they laughed, and looking about hastily to see if he had offended someone. (13.4)
A guy called Marx (you might have heard of him) would say that these poor guys in the South had no political consciousness. That's fancy talk for: these dudes are poor and don't realize that the rich are oppressing them.