When it comes time for his eldest son's wife to give birth, Wang Lung again goes to the gods — promising nice things if it is to be a boy, but threatening to forsake them if it is a girl.
More important, however, is the contrast in this scene between the birth of Wang Lung's eldest son and the birth of this grandson. Wang Lung remembers how O-lan refused help from anyone, gave birth to the child alone, and then came back to the fields to help with the harvest. In contrast, this daughter-in-law "cried like a child with her pains," and she had "the slaves running in the house, and her husband there by her door." The contrast makes Wang Lung realize how old he is because the memories of O-lan are like vague dreams.
The birth of the grandson is paralleled by the death of Ching — a death which affects him more than did the death of his own father. Ching had been with Wang Lung so long, even at the meager wedding feast for O-lan, and had served Wang Lung so well that he wants to bury Ching in the family burial plot where his father and O-lan are buried. But the eldest son is horrified at such an indiscretion that Wang Lung relents and buries Ching farther down the hill. Now is the time to make a complete separation from the land: he rents his land out and takes his "fool" and youngest son to town. Now the family has completely dissolved its closeness with the "good earth."
But there is not yet peace, for Wang Lung longs only to lounge in the sun, and the eldest son harangues him about acquiring all the outer courts. He even holds his nose as he walks through the rabble which inhabits the outer courts. Wang Lung agrees, and the eldest son begins to refurbish and redecorate the outer courts befitting a family whom the townspeople now call "the great House of Wang." A conflict occurs, however, when the second son resents all the money being spent simply to impress people. When Wang Lung finds out that the wedding preparations will cost ten times the price of the bride, he orders the elder son to desist.
