Customer Reviews

The Good Earth

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I first read this book when I was about 14 years old, loved it, and went on in high school to read every Pearl Buck novel I could get my hands on. However, I want to warn potential young readers that too many Pearl Buck novels read at an impressionable age can lead one to major in an "impractical" subject in college, like Chinese Literature, rather than a more lucrative field like computer programming or engineering! :) This advice comes from someone with a 1987 B.A. in East Asian Studies--a wonderful, fascinating discipline, but not the one I have stayed in to earn a living. Still, my life is richer for having encountered the works of Lu Xun (short stories, which I read in the originals) and Dai Hou Ying (Stones of the Wall, which I read in the translation by F. Wood), etc., works which I would recommend to readers who enjoy Pearl Buck novels.

This 1932 Pulitzer Prize winning novel is still a standout today. Deceptive in its simplicity, it is a story built around a flawed human being and a teetering socio-economic system, as well as one that is layered with profound themes. The cadence of the author's writing is also of note, as it rhythmically lends itself to the telling of the story, giving it a very distinct voice. No doubt the author's writing style was influenced by her own immersion in Chinese culture, as she grew up and lived in China, the daughter of missionaries.

This is the story of the cyclical nature of life, of the passions and desires that motivate a human being, of good and evil, and of the desire to survive and thrive against great odds. It begins with the story of an illiterate, poor, peasant farmer, Wang Lung, who ventures from the rural countryside and goes to town to the great house of Hwang to obtain a bride from those among the rank of slave. There, he is given the slave O-lan as his bride.

Selfless, hardworking, and a bearer of sons, the plain-faced O-lan supports Wang Lung's veneration of the land and his desire to acquire more land. She stays with him through thick and thin, through famine and very lean times, working alongside him on the land, making great sacrifices, and raising his children. As a family, they weather the tumultuousness of pre-revolutionary China in the 1920s, only to find themselves the recipient of riches beyond their dreams. At the first opportunity, they buy land from the great house of Hwang, whose expenses appear to be exceeding their income.

With the passing of time, Wang Lung buys more and more land from the house of Hwang, until he owns it all, as his veneration of the land is always paramount. With O-lan at this side, his family continues to prosper. His life becomes more complicated, however, the richer he gets. Wang Lung then commits a life-changing act that pierces O-lan's heart in the most profoundly heartbreaking way.

As the years pass, his sons become educated and literate, and the family continues to prosper. With the great house of Hwang on the skids, an opportunity to buy their house, the very same house from where he had fetched O-lan many years ago, becomes available. Pressed upon to buy that house by his sons, who do not share Wang Lung's veneration for the land and rural life, he buys the house. The country mice now have become the city mice.

This is a potent story, brimming with irony, yet simply told against a framework of mounting social change. It is a story that stands as a parable in many ways and is one that certainly should be read. It illustrates the timeless dichotomy between the young and the old, the old and the new, and the rich and the poor. It is no wonder that this beautifully written book won a Pulitzer Prize and is considered a classic masterpiece. Bravo!

Upon its publication in the early 1930's, Pearl Buck's "The Good Earth" must have been a curiosity -- a novel written by an American woman, based on her experiences and observations, about a Chinese family in their homeland.

Wang Lung, the main character, is a diligent farmer who lives and works on a modest bit of land with his new bride, a former servant girl named O-lan, and his widowed father. As time goes by, one year brings drought and famine and Wang Lung moves his family to a distant city to find better opportunities. He gets a job pulling a rickshaw while O-lan and the children beg in the streets and even once resort to stealing meat from a butcher, which offends Wang Lung's sense of honesty. An interesting scene develops when he encounters a white Christian missionary who gives him, without explanation, a picture of the Crucifixion, an image that puzzles and horrifies him. During a peasant revolt against a wealthy house, he and O-lan acquire some money with which they are able to return to their own land and buy even more.

With agricultural conditions now more favorable, Wang Lung builds his farm into a profitable business with time and hard work, and he can afford now to send his two oldest sons to a school for the education that he had never had for himself. As his wealth increases, his house becomes a small dynasty of extended family, including his troublesome uncle and cousin, and numerous servants and concubines, including a prostitute named Lotus whom he "bought" when his newfound prosperity presented him with too much spare time in which he grew bored with O-lan. At the end of his life, Wang Lung realizes that, despite the vast riches he has amassed, he has never shed the soul of a farmer and an almost religious relationship with the soil, one which his materialistic sons do not share.

Implied in the novel's title, and illustrated in Wang Lung's dramatic reversal of fortune, is that the welfare of these farmers depends almost solely on the bounty of the earth and the mercy of nature. In fact, the story is a little too simplistic. It feels like a fable, containing simple lessons about hard work, kindness, pride, greed, and other basic human traits, written in stiff, mechanical prose that seems intended for young or naive readers. It contains the kind of sentimentality and melodrama that seems appropriate for a silent movie. Most curiously, it is not as thoroughly descriptive of Chinese culture, society, and geography as, say, Rudyard Kipling's writing about India or Paul Bowles's writing about northern Africa, but I suspect that Buck's other books about China provide more extensive detail. But despite my criticisms, "The Good Earth" is an informative, if not very effective, work.

This 1932 Pulitzer Prize winning novel is still a standout today. Deceptive in its simplicity, it is a story built around a flawed human being and a teetering socio-economic system, as well as one that is layered with profound themes. The cadence of the author's writing is also of note, as it rhythmically lends itself to the telling of the story, giving it a very distinct voice. No doubt the author's writing style was influenced by her own immersion in Chinese culture, as she grew up and lived in China, the daughter of missionaries.

This is the story of the cyclical nature of life, of the passions and desires that motivate a human being, of good and evil, and of the desire to survive and thrive against great odds. It begins with the story of an illiterate, poor, peasant farmer, Wang Lung, who ventures from the rural countryside and goes to town to the great house of Hwang to obtain a bride from those among the rank of slave. There, he is given the slave O-lan as his bride.

Selfless, hardworking, and a bearer of sons, the plain-faced O-lan supports Wang Lung's veneration of the land and his desire to acquire more land. She stays with him through thick and thin, through famine and very lean times, working alongside him on the land, making great sacrifices, and raising his children. As a family, they weather the tumultuousness of pre-revolutionary China in the 1920s, only to find themselves the recipient of riches beyond their dreams. At the first opportunity, they buy land from the great house of Hwang, whose expenses appear to be exceeding their income.

With the passing of time, Wang Lung buys more and more land from the house of Hwang, until he owns it all, as his veneration of the land is always paramount. With O-lan at this side, his family continues to prosper. His life becomes more complicated, however, the richer he gets. Wang Lung then commits a life-changing act that pierces O-lan's heart in the most profoundly heartbreaking way.

As the years pass, his sons become educated and literate, and the family continues to prosper. With the great house of Hwang on the skids, an opportunity to buy their house, the very same house from where he had fetched O-lan many years ago, becomes available. Pressed upon to buy that house by his sons, who do not share Wang Lung's veneration for the land and rural life, he buys the house. The country mice now have become city mice.

This is a potent story, brimming with irony, yet simply told against a framework of mounting social change. It is a story that stands as a parable in many ways and is one that certainly should be read. It illustrates the timeless dichotomy between the young and the old, the old and the new, and the rich and the poor. It is no wonder that this beautifully written book won a Pulitzer Prize and is considered a classic masterpiece. Bravo!

I was forced to read this book for school and I found it to be quite a bore. The book seemed to go on forever and never end. I was simply happy when I passed the picture section of my book. Over all I did not enjoy reading this book and wonder how it can be a classic and yet so unenjoyable for many students. It was more a painstaking process to read than anything else. I can not recommend this book to read unless you wish to be very bored.