Morphed Ambitions
by Christie H.

The fields needed rain for fruitation.

He put his hoe upon his shoulder and he walked to his plots of land and he cultivated the rows of grain, and he yoked the ox to the plow and he ploughed the western field for garlic and onions.

Much of this was to be sold, but Wang Lung was frugal and he did not, like many of the villagers spend his money freely at gambling.

From the produce, Wang Lung in this year had a handful of silver over and above what they needed.

He cried, “I will buy the land from the great House of Hwang!” Well, but the land was his! Land is one’s flesh and blood. In his heart he never left the land. For he was no longer a poor man, but a man who could hire to have his labor
done.

And he built a new house behind his old one.

Into these rooms he and his family moved.

He bade his two sons sharply each morning to come into the fields with him. But he was greatly hampered by his lack of book knowledge. Wang Lung said, “Come out of the fields form this day on, for I need a scholar in the family to read the contracts and to write my name so that I shall not be ashamed in the town.”

Then the younger boy when he heard of it came in crying and complaining, Well, and I shall not work in the fields, either, and it is not fair.” And he said hastily, “Well and well, go the both of you.” “But one lad must be on the land,” said Wang Lung. But the eldest son said, “’There is a man who makes his son work into a hind while he lives like a prince,’ so people will say.”

The young man spoke cleverly for he know that his father cared mightily what people said of him.

Wang Lung said, “Engage a tutor for the third one if the wills it.” Wang Lung looked at his son and he looked at himself, One would have said he was his son’s servant rather that his father. Although one side of his heart triumphed in his son’s fineness, the other was roust and scornful of him.

Now this second son of his seemed more strange to Wang than any of his sons, for he was careful of money.

There was continual unrest, the eldest son lest not enough be spent and they be belittled in the eyes of men,

And the second son lest there was waste and money gone,
And the youngest son striving to make repair the years he had lost as a farmer’s son.

Thus spring wore on again and again and in and vaguely and more vaguely as these years passed he felt it coming.

And he had his coffin brought into his room and he looked at it everyday. His eldest son had been made an officer in the town among the rich men, and he had a new wife.

And his second son was setting up a great grain market for himself. One day, Wang Lung followed them silently and heard the words, “sell the land.”

It is the end of a family-when they begin to sell the land,” he said brokenly.

And they soothed him and they said over and over, “Rest assured, our father, rest assured. The land is not to be sold.”

But over the old man’s head they looked at each other and smiled.