There is a change of direction in Wang Lung's life, and not necessarily a positive one. Before, Wang Lung had very good life ethics, but now all of those seemed to be flushed down the toilet. Everything that was once important to him, now has no meaning, this even includes his family and mostly his wife. O-lan was a very strong woman and was able to control her emotions easily; this all stopped when Wang Lung changed his life and his ethics.
"When tears dropped slowly and heavily from her eyes she did not put up her hand to wipe them away; only she beat the more steadily with her wooden stick upon the clothes spread over the stone."(pg. 188) Changes in his daily routine, changes in his life and changes in his family have caused Wang Lung to become evil. When O-lan cries, it symbolizes her slowly breaking down -- being killed little by little by her husband -- every day. Eventually, this will cause her to die, since she will not be able to control the pain her husband thrusts upon her every single day from this day forward.
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Nice interpretation! I also like the simile in the first paragraph with the toilet. You also picked up foreshadowing in the end of the second paragraph. A little more text evidence wouldn't hurt, but isn't necessary.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great piece! I like how you really showed how his change in ethics made O-lan weaker and weaker. Maybe next time you could give a few more examples of how Wang Lung became evil.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really good response. The quote you put in fits in well with the rest of the paragraph. I agree with Ryan that you could put in a little bit more text evidence, but right now it's not affecting your writing too much.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this entry, because as I read, enev though it is a shorter response, it includes a solid syntactic device, and that styling reall yimproves the level of the text. the novel is a serious one, and it calls for a serious style of composition.
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