In many cultures, land has been passed down from generation to generation, always staying within the bound of the family. Many families take pride in acres they own because it symbolizes their economic status. Many people also believe that owning land means you can provide and care for yourself, on a deeper level, it shows insight to your character and personality. The topic of owning and caring for land is one of the prominent themes in Pearl S. Bucks, “The Good Earth”. This topic can be connected to the idea of land owning in “Grapes of Wrath”. In grapes of wrath, Pa based his whole identity off of his land. But once he was stripped of it, he felt lost and like a failure. He spent his entire life caring and tending to this land just for it to be taken away when the economy was falling apart. This is a similar experience that Wang Lung is going through. The land that he has taken care of his whole life, land that has been passed down from generation to generation, is slowly starting to be taken from him and its reeking havoc on his ability to function. He is suppose to be the provider of the house, the man that takes care of everyone but he can barely fulfill that role. The concept that land defines a family is seem clearly in both these novels. The rise and fall of controlling and prospering off land is defined throughout both these novels. But to what extent does land truly define a person? Does someone having more land than others make them a better person?
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Great American Novels 
2 replies on “The Legacy in Owning Land”
In todays culture, how much property you own or how big your house is has an impact on your image. Although, these materialistic good do not truly define your personality, people are looked down upon for what they do not have. People are unconsciously attracted to those who have more, although it is only a matter of time before people see personalities through the riches.
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There are so many cultures that can depend on this idea of legacy and they live to protect it in any way they can. It comes from, yes, the source of pride. Men, like Pa, think of owning and maintaining their family’s land as their sole job as the “head of the house” (except in Grapes of Wrath we see a change in the traditional leadership) next to providing for their family. Within so many stories of families losing their homes in catastrophes, people tend to fall apart because to them the land is a part of them. Though in the end the land isn’t, and hopefully they realize it, does not define them because it is how you live your life and not your materialistic items that define you as a person.
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