How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #4
Then she went into the town one day with Wang Lung and together they bought beds and a table and six benches and a great iron cauldron and then they bought for pleasure a red clay teapot with a black flower marked on it in ink and six bowls to match. (15.30)
Ah, "for pleasure." This is the first time in the novel that anyone thinks of buying something "for pleasure" instead of out of plain necessity. Is this an innocent pleasure, or is it the beginning of the end for Wang Lung and his family?
Quote #5
Nevertheless, when the house was itself again, and the pewter candlesticks gleaming and the candles burning in them shining red, and the teapot and the bowls upon the table and the beds in their places with a little bedding once more, and fresh paper pasted over the hole in the room where he slept and a new door hung upon its wooden hinges, Wang Lung was afraid of his happiness. (15.33)
Why do you think Wang Lung is afraid of his happiness? Does he think it must inevitably end? Does this remind you of the time when Wang Lung said he was afraid of too much good fortune? Do you think he gets too much good fortune?
Quote #6
But all this might have been nothing if Wang Lung were still a poor man or if the water was not spread over his fields. But he had money […] So that now, instead of it passing from him like life blood draining from a wound, it lay in his girdle burning his fingers when he felt of it, and eager to be spent on this or that, and he began to be careless of it and to think what he could do to enjoy the days of his manhood. (18.23)
Why does Wang Lung's money burn his fingers? Why does he want to get rid of it so much? How does the simple fact that he has money change Wang Lung's personality and outlook on life?