How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #1
"She is with child already." […] The old man blinked for a moment and then comprehended, and cackled with laughter. "Heh-heh-heh—" he called out to his daughter-in-law as she came, "so the harvest is in sight!" (2.28-31)
They're farmers, so you have to excuse the nature jokes. Just like you harvest corn or wheat, the metaphor is that you can harvest people, too. It's another way the book reminds us that we're all made of earth and live in constant interaction with the earth.
Quote #2
It had come out of the earth, this silver, out of his earth that he ploughed and turned and spent himself upon. He took his life from this earth; drop by drop by his sweat he wrung food from it and from the food, silver. (3.19)
The earth is Wang Lung's livelihood, and money is just the physical form of the blood sweat and tears that he has poured into his farm. Is it good for him to think of the work he has done in terms of an abstraction like money? Does this abstraction come between him and the earth?
Quote #3
The woman and the child were as brown as the soil and they sat there like figures made of earth. There was the dust of the fields upon the woman's hair and upon the child's soft black head. (4.8)
Holy metaphors and similes, Batman! O-lan and her son are literally made of earth, that's how important the land is to their lives.