The Good Earth: Success in Wang Lung's Life Wang Lung, the main character in the book The Good Earth, had a very successful life. As exclaimed by him near the end, the land was the rise of the family of Wang, and without the land, the family would fall. He led an excellent life, however, there were a few things that undermined the whole experience, and these are the things that went wrong. The first major thing to go wrong was not long after the birth of his third child. This event was the lack of rain and the famine that ensued from that. He was forced to move to the north unt