In The Good Earth, Why Does Olan Kill Her Fourth Infant?
By the time O-lan has her fourth child, the family is suffering the effects of the famine. The fourth child is a girl, which is not a good thing anyway, and they just don’t have the food to feed it. If it had been a boy, she probably wouldn’t have killed it, but she kills the baby because it would be unfair to the rest of the family to have another mouth to feed.
