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novel written by Pearl Buck that was published in 1931 telling the story of Wang Lung and his
family
When her second novel, The Good Earth, was published in 1931, Pearl S. Buck (1892-1993) became famous throughout the world for her moving
story of the joys and tragedies of the Chinese peasant farmer Wang Lung and his family. The novel was a best seller in the United States, and it
was soon translated into more than thirty foreign languages; it has appeared in Chinese alone in at least seven different translations. The Good
Earth was made into a Broadway play and a motion picture. For this book, Pearl Buck received the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and the William Dean
Howells Medal for Distinguished Fiction in 1935. Her international reputation was established when she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1938, primarily in recognition of her masterpiece novel, The Good Earth, and two biographies of her parents, The Exile and Fighting Angel, both
published in 1936.
Though it may seem problematic to choose a book written by an American, rather than a work of authentic Chinese literature, to introduce
American students to Chinese customs, there are several reasons for using The Good Earth. First, it is popular and many students read it anyway,
so a critical discussion of it is important. Second, Chinese writers in the twentieth century have been primarily concerned with China's political fate
and their works are often more didactic than realistic. Pearl Buck, on the other hand, was mainly committed to describing the Chinese people she
knew and to presenting her American audience with the details of Chinese life, customs and attitudes. Pearl Buck's standpoint is finally that of an
outsider who is particularly sensitive to aspects of Chinese life that are different from what Westerners are accustomed to. Therefore, she takes
pains to record many details that a Chinese writer might take for granted. The Good Earth gives an accurate and well-informed depiction of
The daughter of Absalom and Caroline Sydenstricker, Pearl Buck was born on June 26, 1892, in Hillsboro, West Virginia, while her parents were
on leave from their missionary duties in China. But when she was only a few months old, her parents returned to China with Buck, and she lived in
China until she was seventeen years old. Buck felt that she belonged to both cultures, American and Chinese. She always preferred Chinese food,
and her first language was Chinese. However, the first language she learned to write was English, and in the mornings her mother tutored her in
American subjects while her father read to her from the Bible at night and on Sundays. Yet in the afternoons Buck had a traditional Chinese tutor
who taught her Chinese reading, writing, and Confucian principles. She also learned from her Chinese nurse, who told her Buddhist and Daoist
stories and took Buck to worship in a local temple. Buck played with Chinese children and visited their homes.
When she was seventeen, Pearl Buck returned to the United States to attend Randolph-Macon Women's College (1910-1914). Soon after her
return to China, she married John Lossing Buck, an American agricultural specialist employed by the Presbyterian Mission Board to teach
American farming methods to the Chinese. While living with her husband in North China for several years, Pearl got to know the farm families
there and carefully observed their lives. She spent the next ten years (1921-1931) living in Nanjing, a stay interrupted only for a year of study for
the M.A. degree in English at Cornell while her daughter, who suffered from developmental disabilities due to a genetic disorder, received
American medical treatment. The Chinese in Nanjing were much more influenced by Western ideas than the Northern farmers, and Pearl Buck
began to write both essays and fiction about the young people's conflicts between old and new ways. Her first book, East Wind: West Wind,
published in 1930, describes two marriages: a traditional girl named Kwei-lan is unhappy in her arranged marriage to a man who believes in
modern Western practices; and Kwei-lan's brother defiantly marries an American girl in spite of his parents' objections. The Good Earth was
published in 1931, and in 1935 republished as a one-volume trilogy entitled House of Earth, with its sequels Sons (1933), and A House
Divided(1935).
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The story begins on the day of Wang Lung's wedding. Wang Lung is a poor young peasant who lives in an earthen brick house with his father,
who has arranged for him to marry a slave girl named O-lan from the great family of the House of Hwang. After Wang Lung brings his quiet but
diligent new wife home, she works side by side with him in the fields until their first child is born. They are delighted with their son, and at the New
Year O-lan dresses him up and proudly takes him to the House of Hwang to show him off. She discovers that due to ostentatious waste and
decadence, the Hwang household has squandered their fortune and is now poor enough to be willing to sell off their land. Since Wang Lung, with
the help of O-lan who continues to join him in the fields, has had a relatively good year, he determines to extend his prosperity and better his
position by buying some land from the House of Hwang. Although they must work harder with more land, Wang Lung and O-lan continue to
produce good harvests; they also produce a second son and a daughter.
But soon Wang Lung encounters difficulties. His selfish and unprincipled uncle is jealous, and demands a portion of Wang Lung's new wealth,
while Wang Lung, obsessed with his desire to acquire more land, spends all the family savings; a drought causes a poor harvest and the family
suffers from lack of food and from their envious, starving neighbors' looting of the little dried beans and corn they have left. O-lan has to strangle
their fourth child as soon as she is born because otherwise she would die of starvation. Desperately poor and hungry, Wang Lung sells his
furniture for a bit of silver to take his family south, though he refuses to sell his land. They ride a firewagon to a southern city, where they live in a
makeshift hut on the street. They survive by O-lan, the grandfather, and the children begging for food and Wang Lung pulling a jinrickshaw (or
rickshaw) for the rich, or pulling wagonloads of cargo at night.
In the southern city, Wang Lung perceives the extraordinary wealth of westerners and Chinese aristocrats and capitalists, and he is interested in
the revolutionaries' protests of the oppression of the poor. He watches soldiers seize innocent men and force them to carry equipment for their
armies. Yet Wang Lung's overriding concern is to get back to his beloved land. He gets his chance when the enemy invades the city and the rich
people flee; Wang Lung and O-lan join the throng of poor people who loot the nearby rich man's house and get enough gold and jewels to enable
them to return north. They repair their house and plough the fields, having bought seeds, an ox, new furniture and farm tools, and finally more land
from the bankrupt House of Hwang.
There follow seven years of prosperity, during which the sons grow and begin school; a third son is born with a twin sister, and the harvest is so
plentiful that Wang Lung hires laborers and his loyal neighbor, Ching, as a steward. When a flood causes a general famine in the seventh year,
Wang Lung is rich enough not to worry about survival yet, while his lands are under water, he becomes restless in his idleness. Bored with his
plain and coarse wife, he ventures into a tea shop in town operated by a man from the south where the rich and idle spend their time drinking,
gambling, and visiting prostitutes. There he begins an affair with Lotus, a delicately beautiful but manipulatively demanding courtesan whom he
desires obsessively. Wang Lung is cruel to his wife and children and spends his fortune on Lotus, finally using up much of his savings to purchase
her and build an adjacent courtyard for her to live in as his second wife. Here Lotus indolently lies around in silks, eating expensive delicacies, and
gossiping with the deceitful and opportunistic wife of Wang Lung's uncle.
But discord arises immediately. O-lan is deeply hurt and angry, which makes Wang Lung defensively guilty and cold with her; there are conflicts
between O-lan and Lotus' maid Cuckoo who had mistreated O-lan when she was a concubine of the old master in the House of Hwang. Wang
Lung's old father protests the decadence of catering to a "harlot" in the house. Finally, Lotus is intolerant of Wang Lung's children, especially his
favorite daughter who had become mentally disabled due to malnutrition during the famine. As a result, Wang Lung's passion for Lotus eventually
cools, and when the flood recedes and he returns to his farming work, he is no longer obsessed with love.
In the last third of the book, Wang Lung experiences a succession of joys and sorrows in his family relationships and in his farming. Seasons of
good harvests are punctuated by occasional bad years, due to a heavy flood, a severe winter freeze, and a scourge of locusts. Yet on the whole
Wang Lung continues to prosper. His wealth, however, also brings a series of discontents. His first son is idle and interested only in women; Wang
Lung is furious when he finds the son has visited first a local prostitute and then his own Lotus, so he arranges a marriage for him. Moreover,
Wang Lung's good-for-nothing uncle, with his wife and son, force themselves on the family with their demands for money and their morally
corrupting influence; Wang Lung must be kind to them because the uncle is a leader of a band of robbers, from which Wang Lung's prosperous
household is protected for as long as he provides for the uncle. He eventually renders the uncle and his wife harmless by making them addicted to
opium.
Family affairs continue to have ups and downs. O-lan's sickness finally overpowers her, and Wang Lung's tender solicitousness to her on her
deathbed cannot fully compensate for the insults she received when Lotus moved into the house. She is content to die only after her first son's
marriage is consummated, so she can expect a grandson. Wang Lung's father dies immediately after O-lan, and the faithful steward Ching is
buried next. But these losses are accompanied by new joys: the first son produces grandsons and granddaughters, and the second son — a
successful grain merchant — and the second daughter are also married and have children.
As Wang Lung ages, he rents out his farm land to tenants. His eldest son persuades him to buy the old estate of the House of Hwang in town,
both as a means of moving out from the place where the disgraceful uncle and his wife live, and as a symbol of Wang Lung's elevated social
position. Wang Lung is gratified that now he can take the place of the Old Master of Hwang who once intimidated him so much. But although
Wang Lung is head of a three generation extended family who live in luxury with numerous servants, he cannot find peace. The two older brothers
and their wives quarrel; the youngest son refuses to become a farmer as Wang Lung had intended and instead joins the army. The uncle's
malicious son causes more trouble when he brings his military regiment to camp for six weeks in Wang Lung's elegant house. And Wang Lung,
long tired of the aging Lotus, finds some comfort in taking the young slave Pear Blossom as his concubine.
Finally, Wang Lung returns to the earthen house of his land to die. Material prosperity has brought him superficial social satisfaction, but only his
land can provide peace and security. Even his final days are troubled, when he overhears his two older sons planning to sell the land as soon as
he dies.
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Discussion Questions
1. Which characters represent decadence in the novel? What makes them decadent? Can they be reformed? How?
2. Who are the good characters in the novel? What is the source of their virtue? Can they be corrupted? How?
3. What does Wang Lung most believe in, and in what order would he rank these values: money, the gods, the land, the family, social
status, the government, etc. How would you rank these values in your own life?
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Here's some information about the book from Oprah.com in case you want to know more about it.
In this one book, Pearl S. Buck tackled the entire cycle of life: it's terrors, passions, failures,
ambitions, rewards and dreams. The tale of a seemingly humble farmer and his growing family, the
story unfolds like a flower and takes root in your heart. Published in 1931 on the heels of the
American Great Depression and Chinese civil war, The Good Earth was a first glimpse, for many of
its readers, of an entirely new world—the poignant inner life of China and its people.
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It’s a pity that I finally didn’t finish the novel- The Good Earth- by Pearl S. Buck. Today is
the due date for me to return the book, I have kept the book for already two month, but I only
read less than half of the novel.
I’m always lazy to challenge hard things, such as reading English novels. Till now, I tried to
read so many novels written in English, but I only finished one- Gone With the Wind. Actually,
Gone With the Wind is the one which is the longest and most difficult to read. Since the novel
was written in the early 1920s and the story Margaret Mitchell, the author, wrote happened in the
deep South by the Civil War time, there were so much South slang and the language of the slaves
was very hard to catch the meaning. Maybe it’s hard to be understand that I finished the most
difficult one, the reason is I have read the Chinese translation of Gone With the Wind for more
than ten times, all the plots and the dialog of the main characters I remembered firmly. So even I
couldn’t catch the meaning of every single word, I still could go on without any difficulty. But
for other novels, I didn’t have the patient to go through them with dictionary, for me, that wasn’t
joy and relax.
I read the Chinese translation of The Good Earth and saw the movie transcribed by the novel
when I was at college. Pearl S. Buck was very famous in China, not only for her great success in
literature (own the Nobel Prize for literature in 1937), but also for she introducing China to the
world without distortion. In my opinion, Pearl S. Buck, for most Chinese people to respect her,
wasn’t for her novels, such as The Good Earth, which had described the Chinese farmers’ life. In
fact, a lot of Chinese authors had written even better novels. People respected her mostly for her
integrity, for she didn’t contortChina to cater for the westerners’ curiosity. I have heard of her
since I was a little child, although I haven’t read any of her novels until I went to university.
I saw the movie- The Good Earth before I read the novel. To tell the truth, the first time I saw
the movie, I felt funny more than touched. I think that is because I grow up in China, which
tragic stories I have heard a lot of times before I saw The Good Earth, so which attracted me
most was not the tragic story but the foreign actors and actress mimic the Chinese life style, for
example, the main character- Wang Lung with a long tail which is the sign of men in Qing
dynasty. After I saw the movie I found the Chinese translation book of The Good Earth, maybe
because I had read more tragic ones, the novel didn’t impress me that much. However, Pearl’s
familiar with the farmers’ life in the countryside of North China impressed me, in my
knowledge, she should live in the big cities such as Peking, Shanghai, how could she know all
the details about the farmers’ life?
The language of The Good Earth is not hard for foreigners to read, I feel shamed that I have kept the book
for two month but not finish it. I don’t know how to explain, maybe because I was a little bit tired of this kind
of tragic story.
Synopsis
Pearl S. Buck was born on June 26, 1892, in Hillsboro, West Virginia. In 1930, she published her
first novel, East Wind, West Wind. Her next novel,The Good Earth, earned her a Pulitzer Prize in
1932. In 1938, Buck became the first American female Nobel laureate. Concurrent with her
writing career, she started the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, a humanitarian organization. She died
on March 6, 1973, in Danby, Vermont.
Early Life
Pearl S. Buck was born Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker on June 26, 1892, in Hillsboro, West
Virginia. At the time of her birth, her parents, both Presbyterian missionaries, were taking a
leave from their work in China after some of Buck's older siblings had died of tropical disease.
Buck's parents were so committed to their missionary work that they decided to go back to the
Chinese village of Chinkiang with 5-month-old Pearl in tow.
Beginning at the age of 6, Buck was homeschooled by her mother for the early part of the day,
and taught by a Chinese tutor during the afternoon. When she was 9 years old, the Boxer
Rebellion forced Buck and her family to flee to Shanghai. Although her family returned to
Chinkiang when the rebellion ended in 1901, Buck decided to attend boarding school in
Shanghai in 1907. She completed her course load in 1909, and moved back to the United States
in 1910 to study philosophy at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia. After
earning her bachelor's degree, Buck was offered a position as a psychology professor at her alma
mater. A semester later, Buck returned to China to take care of her mother, who had fallen ill.
Personal Life
Back in China, Buck fell in love with an agricultural missionary named John Lossing Buck. The
two were married in 1917. They spent most of their early marriage living in Nanking, where
John taught agricultural theory. Buck too returned for a while to teach at universities; this time,
English was her subject of expertise. But Buck spent the majority of her time in Nanking caring
for her mentally disabled daughter, Carol, who was born in 1920. In 1925, Buck returned to
America to pursue her master's degree in English at Cornell University. In 1929, she enrolled
Carol at the Vineland Training School in New Jersey.
Pearl and John would eventually divorce in 1935, when she left him to marry Richard Walsh, her
publishing agent. Though she let go of John Buck, she would keep his last name for the rest of
her life.
In 1930, Buck published her first novel, East Wind, West Wind, focusing on China's difficult
transition from old traditions to a new way of life. Her next and perhaps best-known novel, The
Good Earth, earned her a Pulitzer Prize in 1932. The Good Earth highlights the life of Chinese
peasants, a life that Buck had been privy to growing up in Chinkiang. After receiving the
Pulitzer, Buck moved back to the United States permanently. In 1933, she went back to graduate
school—this time at Yale University—and earned an additional master's degree. In 1938, she
achieved the illustrious distinction of becoming the first American woman and fourth woman
overall to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature.
Buck continued to write prolifically thereafter, choosing China as the setting for the majority of
her work. Her genres ranged from such popular novels-turned-movies as China Sky (1941)
and The Dragon Seed (1942), to children's books like The Water-Buffalo Children (1943)
and The Christmas Ghost (1960). Buck's body of work also includes non-fiction. Her final works
include the non-fiction book China as I See It and a cookbook about Asian cuisine, Pearl S.
Buck's Oriental Cookbook (1972).
Also in support of these causes, in 1949, Buck started the adoption agency Welcome House,
which specialized in the adoption of Asian-American children. In 1964, she established the Pearl
S. Buck Foundation to further "address the issues of poverty and discrimination faced by
children in Asian countries." In 1973, she bequeathed her personal estate as the future
headquarters of Pearl S. Buck International.
Pearl S. Buck died of lung cancer on March 6, 1973, in Danby, Vermont. Today, she continues
to be regarded as a legendary American writer and humanitarian.