One theme of the trilogy is certainly the universality of an individual's experience. The unknowable and alien Chinese peasant is transformed here into an unfeared and universal "everyman." Less consciously expressed is the theme of the salutary effect of hard work close to the earth, and the corrupting nature of sloth and luxury. But the most obvious theme is surely the continuity of life itself, the sweeping inevitable cyclical nature of life, where death is counterbalanced by birth, sadness by joy. This cycle is also evident when, after Wang the Tiger has abjured the ideals of his father for a military career, his son Yuan rejects his father to embrace again the land. As opposed to some of her later more propagandistic novels, the message of House of Earth is primarily.....
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