t a million acres-.”The owners of the farms in California were the root of the evil. In the romance archetype, the romantic hero must be in touch with the earth. The people who drift from the close connection between themselves and the earth become evil and corrupt. An example of this theory would be that of the human race and the main character, Wang Lung, in Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth. According to the archetype, the human race was happiest during the Romantic Age. This would be the time of Adam and Eve. After Adam picked the forbidden fruit, and man started to use nature and not respect it, man started being corrupt. In the modern world, people who are close to the earth are labeled as ‘hippies’ and are dismissed. In The Good Earth, Wang Lung starts out as a poor farmer, and slowly accumulates a large amount of wealth. When he was a farmer, he could forecast the weather for the day just by sticking his head out the window. But when he had a large house, servants, a prostitute, and never had to work in the fields, he turned evil and bad things happened to him. When he parted completely from the land, he was doomed. This same theory goes into effect with the farm owners and the Joads. All the events that happen to the Joads after they leave their farm are bad. Casy said about Grampa, “He was foolin’, all the time. I think he knowed it. An’ Grampa didn’ die tonight. He died the minute you took ‘im off the place [the farm]... Oh, he was breathin’, but he was dead. He was that place, an’ he knowed it.” Steinbeck goes into detail when describing these evil kings of the land. “Once California belonged to Mexico and its land to the Mexicans; and a horde of tattered feverish Americans poured in. And such was their hunger for land that they took the land-stole Sutter’s land, Guerrero’s land, took the grants and broke them up and g...
