How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #7
He remembered also the idle young lords of the fallen great house as he worked on the land he had bought from the House of Hwang, and he bade his two sons sharply each morning to come into the fields with him and he set them at what labor their small hands could do, guiding the ox and the ass, and making them, if they could accomplish no great labor, at least to know the heat of the sun on their bodies and the weariness of walking back and forth along the furrows. (17.4)
Wang Lung remembers that the House of Hwang fell because it lost its connection to the land. He sees what's up, and he's determined (for now at least) to make sure he doesn't repeat their mistakes.
Quote #8
Then the good land did again its healing work and the sun shone on him and healed him and the warm winds of summer wrapped him about with peace. And as if to cure him of the root of his ceaseless thought of his own troubles, there came out of the South one day a small slight cloud. […] The men of the village watched it and talked of it and fear hung over them, for what they feared was this, that locusts had come out of the South to devour what was planted in the fields. […] Then Wang Lung forgot everything that troubled him. (23.111)
So this is a strange kind of medicine, but whatever it works. Think about it as forced meditation. We also see one big theme in the novel at work here: idleness, whether it comes from being away from the land or from being too rich to bother with the land, gets Wang Lung into trouble. Normally, locusts wouldn't be a great thing, but here, they at least get Wang Lung to stop being all emo about his problems and take some action.
Quote #9
At last one day when she said this he could not bear it and he burst forth, “This I cannot bear! I would sell all my land if it could heal you. “She smiled at this and said in gasps, whispering, “No, and I would not—let you. For I must die—sometime anyway. But the land is there after me." (26.10)
Come on, Wang Lung should have known that this would be O-lan's answer. She's told us that life is less important than land before, but now we know why. The land is always there, but people are constantly being born and dying. If you sell your daughter, you can always get another one. Your wife is going to die sometime, anyway. But the land? It's not going anywhere.