How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #1
"Then I will clean one ear and one nostril," rejoined the barber promptly. "On which side of the face do you wish it done?" He grimaced at the next barber as he spoke and the other burst into a guffaw. Wang Lung perceived that he had fallen into the hands of a joker, and feeling inferior in some unaccountable way, as he always did, to these town dwellers, even though they were only barbers and the lowest of persons, he said quickly, “As you will—as you will—" (1.55)
From the very first chapter, we learn that Wang Lung has an inferiority complex that will last throughout the whole novel. How would things be different in Wang Lung didn't have such a chip on his shoulder? Why is it there to begin with?
Quote #2
Here were these men from the town, having eaten and drunk, standing beside him whose children were starving and eating the very earth of the fields; here they were, come to squeeze his land from him in his extremity. (9.55)
Even though Wang Lung experiences exploitation at the hands of rich city folk, he doesn't understand later when men in the South say that rich people are stabbing him in the back. Are the men in the South correct? Is Wang Lung capable of understanding them without an education?
Quote #3
When he returned to the spot where he had left the others, they stood there waiting, although when he came the boys cried out at him in relief, and he saw that they had been filled with terror in this strange place. Only the old man watched everything with pleasure and astonishment and he murmured at Wang Lung, “You see how fat they all are, these Southerners, and how pale and oily are their skins. They eat pork every day, doubtless." (11.14)
The South is both scary and astonishing; it also seems strangely unnatural. Wang Lung's father is intrigued by how fat the Southerners are, how they have such pale and oily skin. He seems to envious—do you think he's right to be? This seems to be how people look who are cut off from the land. Is that something to aim for, or something to avoid?