Reflection

The Good Earth is a book of 357 pages.
Out of these pages, two paragraphs were captivated in my memory;

"When the rich are too rich there are ways, and when the poor are too poor there are ways. Last winter we sold two girls and endured, and this winter, if this one my woman bears is a girl, we will sell again. One slave I have kept-the first. The others it is better to sell than to kill, although there are those who prefer to kill them before they draw breath. This is one of the ways when the poor are too poor. When the rich are too rich there is a way, and if I am not mistaken, that way will come soon."

Later on in the book, the poor get too poor, and they attack the House of Hwang and steal all its contents, for its rich residents have become too rich.

The other sentence justifies itself for being engraved in my memory;

"It is the end of a family - when you begin to sell the land," he said brokenly."Out of the land we came and into it we must go - and if you will hold your land you can live - no one can rob you of land-"
And the old man let his scanty tears dry upon his cheeks and they made salty stains there. And he stooped and took up a handful of the soil and hel held it and he muttered,
"If you sell the land, it is the end."

This book was such a lively experience, each chapter in it makes you relate to a personality you knew or heard about, or a story you encountered or heard about.