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The Good Earth (Enriched Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

by Pearl S. Buck (Author) "In The Good Earth (1931), Pearl Buck tells a timeless story about a farmer struggling to eke out a living from the earth..." (more)
Key Phrases: Wang Lung, Old Lord, House of Hwang (more...)

4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (382 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

Review
Boston Transcript One need never have lived in China or know anything about the Chinese to understand it or respond to its appeal. -- Review --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
ENDURING LITERATURE ILLUMINATED

BY PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIP

A poignant tale about the life and labors of a Chinese farmer during the sweeping reign of the country¹s last emperor.

EACH ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES:

• A concise introduction that gives readers important background information

• A chronology of the author's life and work

• A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context

• An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations

• Detailed explanatory notes

• Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work

• Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction

• A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience

Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential.

SERIES EDITED BY CYNTHIA BRANTLEY JOHNSON

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Product Details

Mass Market Paperback: 448 pages
Publisher: Pocket Books (March 29, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1416500189
ISBN-13: 978-1416500186
Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (382 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #976 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
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#51 in Books > Literature & Fiction > General > Classics
#59 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
In The Good Earth (1931), Pearl Buck tells a timeless story about a farmer struggling to eke out a living from the earth. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Wang Lung, Old Lord, House of Hwang, New Year, Pear Blossom, Old Mistress, Pearl Buck, Lotus Flower, United States, Four Books, Richard Walsh, Greenwood Press, Randolph-Macon Woman's College, New York, John Lossing Buck, Good Earth

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

Citations (learn more)

This book cites 25 books:

Good Earth by Pearl Buck on 22 pages
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Bantam Classics) by Mark Twain on page 8, and Back Matter
A House Divided (Good Earth Trilogy, Vol 3) by Pearl S. Buck on page 5, and page 12
The New Year by Pearl S. Buck on page 397, and page 408
Chinese Novel by Pearl S. Buck on page 9, and page 410

See all 25 books this book cites

100 books cite this book:

Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism by Mari Yoshihara on 18 pages
Ten Most Wanted: The New Western Literature by Bl Allmendinger on 15 pages
A Year of Reading by Elisabeth Ellington on 7 pages
Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend by Graham Russell Gao Hodges on 5 pages
The World Almanac for Booklovers by Edward A. Thomas on 5 pages

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	1% buy The Great Gatsby 4.1 out of 5 stars (1,147) $10.98
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Customer Reviews

382 Reviews

5 star:		(245)
4 star:		(89)
3 star:		(23)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(18)

Average Customer Review

4.4 out of 5 stars (382 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

120 of 128 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A PROFOUND STORY SIMPLY TOLD..., September 18, 2004

By	Lawyeraau (Balmoral Castle) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This review is from: The Good Earth (Oprah's Book Club) (Paperback)

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!

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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant Way to Understand China, May 26, 2002

By	W. Kaplan "calyndula" (Wynnewood, PA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Good Earth (Enriched Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

When great political upheaval occurs, do the "ordinary people" even know about it? How does it affect their lives? Is social change something palpable, or only something one can see in retrospect?

These questions are addressed in Pearl Buck's moving and exquisitely written Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel, "The Good Earth." It is the story of a simple Chinese peasant, Wang Lung. We first meet him as a young man on his way to pick up his bride, whom he has purchased from the estate of a wealthy landowner.

Wang Lung is a farmer, barely able to survive, but it is time for him to marry and produce a grandchild for his aged father, who lives in his simple farm hut and is shown great reverence, as was the way in China at the time.
The only way that Wang Lung could afford a wife at all, and a virgin, which was highly desired, was to purchase an ugly female slave from the great house. All of the pretty slave women were defiled by the master and his sons early on; O-lan was so ugly that she was spared. Harsh? Evil? Yes. But the story is told with such simplicity, from the viewpoint of Wang Lung, who knows no other life. Which is one of Buck's points: the simple Chinese peasant, struggling to survive, had no wherewithal to stand back and say, "I should not be buying an undefiled slave from a corrupt landowner who keeps me in virtual slavery as well." It just didn't happen that way.

O-Lan turns out to be the perfect farmer's wife, hardworking, efficient, and, it turns out, wonderfully fertile. The scene where the young woman painfully gives birth in the field during harvest time and then goes back to work without missing a beat is almost a cliche by now. But in the book, it gives great insight into the strength of character that the silent O-Lan possesses, a strength that will save her family time and again, during good years and famine times, when she is forced to murder a newborn daughter so that the rest of her children might survive.

Against the framework of tremendous social change, the simple story of this one family gives us a framework within which we can observe its effect on ordinary people. The tremendous difference between the innocent and humble Wang Lung of the beginning of the book, and the prosperous and slightly corrupt elderly man at the end, is simply astoundingly written.
This book is Pearl Buck's single greatest work. She went on to become a prolific writer, and many of her books were brilliant, but none ever touched the simple genius of "The Good Earth."

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24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pride is his undoing~, March 9, 2005

By	M. Stahl (Kent, Ohio) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Good Earth (Oprah's Book Club) (Paperback)

This is an easy book to read. The story is one that is totally universal; power corrupts and distorts us, on any level. The main character is a poor farmer who works hard but is just holding even with life. When he takes a bride, a slave girl who is plain quiet, his life turns around. As Wang Lung's fortunes change for the better - mostly due to the additional help of his new bride, his character shifts with his growing purse. Greed, pride and materialism take root in his soul. This isn't about a man who goes mad as he becomes a king; this is about the slow slide down as a man goes from being a poor farmer to a landowner. Not grandly wealthy by "city" standards, but wealthy from his own perspective. He is unable and unwilling to grasp how it's his wife's work that has brought him to this wealth. It's a story about how having nothing, and then getting a little something can make us want more and more. Pride and greed rob Wang Yung of his daily joys.

This story has staying power. I read it a few months ago and it continues to wind its way through my mind. I have re-examined my own desires and my own definition of wealth. It's worth the read, easy to digest and a very pleasurable tale.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars This Will Touch Your Heart, Make You Stop and Think
This is an excellent read. Pearl S. Buck is a highly intelligent writer with character and insight as she tells the story of China. Read more

Published 5 days ago by weser

4.0 out of 5 stars A literary classic.
"The good Earth" is a generational epic in the great tradition of rags to riches. I read the whole thing in two days and could not put it down. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Leonard J. Reibstein

5.0 out of 5 stars The Earth is Good, Greed for the things of earth is bad
The title sums up the message of the book as I see it. Wang Lung is a farmer in China in the first quarter of the 20th century. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Marc Axelrod

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful
A Nobel prize winning book that again takes us into an excellent description of Old china but the books insight into the human heart over-rides the prefectly crafted insight into... Read more

Published 2 months ago by njedeh

5.0 out of 5 stars Good earth... good book!
This book got a Pulitzer for a very good reason. The storytelling uses the right words - not too many, not too few, not too fancy, not too blunt. Read more

Published 2 months ago by M

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Earth - Puliter prizer winner for a reason
This book offers so many things to wonder at. Yes, it's well written, but what's truly amazing is how you never doubt Buck's perspective as a male Chinese farmer. Read more

Published 3 months ago by Trista Morrison

5.0 out of 5 stars The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
I've been reading Pearl S. Buck since I was in high school. This was required reading and I've read all I can find by her. Read more

Published 4 months ago by Jan Ackerman

4.0 out of 5 stars Simply epic in scope, and breadth.
A trip back in time to China, centering around a peasant named Wang Lung who has the presence to appreciate The Good Earth. Read more

Published 5 months ago by Chicago Dreamer

5.0 out of 5 stars A true gem
I recently picked this book up The Island Shop at Nassau in the Bahamas. What a wonderful book. I have not enjoyed reading a book this much in some time. Read more

Published 5 months ago by Brad VanAuken

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazon and its sellers are great.
I have been a while buying things from you, guys, and you are really serious doing business, I haven't regreted not even one item. I am really pleased.

Published 5 months ago by L. Gomez

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