Wealth as a Destroyer of Traditional Values

When we enter into a new life, such as one that may include money, our old life seems to die away with the coming of or new lives. This holds true to even to Wang Lung who was born a humble and poor farmer. He was a part of the land as it was a part of him. His father had been a farmer before him and his father’s father. Wang Lung works hard to support himself and his father. Even after taking a wife, he still works the farms himself and he still saves his money and brings incense to his gods. Wang Lung’s values are of the highest and purest in the village.
Wang Lungs annexation of the great house’s land was his first step toward prosperity and wealth. The great house of Wang had lost its Values not long after becoming a wealthy family. This lead to a trend of money spending that would eventually deplete the money in the house. Inevitably the Great house began to sell land to accommodate for their great fanatical loss. This is when Wang Lung bought some of the land and began to earn a surplus in money and food. He still lived and ate like before which enabled him to save money without having to worry about drought or famine. Wang Lung attributed his good fortune to his earth god who sat and watched over his land. Wang Lung held true to his values when he was on his way to becoming wealthy.
Then the famine hit and Wang Lung was forced to use up the last of his silver. After the money was gone he and his family were forced to leave in search of food. The stopped at a southern city and began a new life in the refugee camps that resembled slums. Wang Lung was forced to work as a cab puller to make a living for his wife and kids and father. His wife and kids also went to work, though their work was less physically demanding: begging. Even during this harsh poverty when one of his sons steals from a market place he took his son and beat him. Wang Lung would have no theft in his house.
When Wang Lung returns and rebuilds he buys all of the Great House’s land with the jewels that he salvaged from the ruins of a great manner in the city. When Lung then hires men to work his land and becomes rich. He builds a new house on the hill of his old house and works on his land. But when a flood came and drowned his crops and lands he had nothing to do. He began to curse his god of earth. When his source of wealth and occupation was drowned for a long period of time he soon became bored. He began to go out to the tea houses in the town and commit adultery, and for the first time he was unfaithful to his wife.
Wang Lung’s Traditional Values were maintained as long as he gained wealth, but when he began to get bored or experience loss, he loses his resolve and his values. He knows how to save and how to farm, but he does not know how to live his own life virtuously. Before Wang Lung began to prosper he held fast to his virtue, but when he began to taste wealth he felt that he had more power than the gods and that he need not worry about his own family if it got in the way of his land.