Good Earth Book
Good Earth Book does anyone know about the book good earth by pearl buck? does anyone know about the book good earth by pearl buck? i need some help on these questions.......please anyone help me!!!!!...
Good Earth Book
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Peasant Life Depicted In Pearl S Buck's "The Good Earth"
Pearl Buck the prolific, Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, who was far ahead of her time. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for her rich and genuine epic description of Chinese peasant life and masterpieces of biography. Her work The Good Earth is marked for her excellent description of peasant life in epic style.
She is the writer who portrayed Chinese peasant life truthfully than any of the contemporary writers. She is the most widely translated author in the history of American literature.She is a brilliant observer and depicts the life of the Chinese people marvellously in her life.She is not a writer who worked hard to achieve this talent. For her everything comes naturally. She lived among the Chinese folk and they were more like her kith and kin. So it was easier for to paint the picture of Chinese people and their lifestyle beautifully. She has been among the Chinese during their prosperity and hardships.
In The Good Earth Buck gives us a clear picture of typical Chinese peasants their values and believes. She was admired by their traditional farming methods, which she believed, required no improvement. Buck performed her unique role as a brilliant writer to change the American image of the Chinese people in general.
Her apolitical description of Chinese peasant life improved the position of Chinese people in American minds.The Good Earth is a typical example of her talent in which she depicts the ups and downs of a poor rural peasant family. As an American Buck is a stranger to the lifestyle of the peasants. Though she had lived among them she had to study in depth the culture that varied completely from the her.
The Good Earth is a marvelous account of the peasant life that most of her contemporaries failed to capture in their works. The brilliant observation of the writer is explicit in each and every word in the work.
Her masterpiece highlights the life of a poor farmer who possesses the same primitive soul as his forefathers. His fortune clings on a single string that is the earth. For him earth is the ruling power of his fortune. And also it gives him the full value of his labours. He worships his land and he seems to be made of the same stuff as the yellow brown earth.
In contrast to the wealthy Hwang family Wang Lung, the protagonist is portrayed as a simple and poor farmer who respects his land. He has an intimate relationship with earth. Like a child to the mother, never wants to separate himself from the other. He spends great deal of his time in the field. He worships earth deity and in the opening chapter itself we can see Wang Lung burning incense for the earth gods.
Buck’s peasants are hardworking and modest. He is the representing figure of Chinese farmers Buck admired. Wang Lung is a poor young farmer in rural China. During the time in which the novel takes place, Chinese society shows signs of modernization while remaining deeply connected to ancient traditions and customs.
The Good Earth is often praised as a Chinese peasant epic. It is full of the struggle and hardships of the peasants. Wang Lung the central character around whom the plot revolves is a representative of the Chinese peasants. His method of tilling and toiling in the land is very much admired by the readers. He is ignorant and knows only to cultivate the land. He is the son of mother earth with whom he shows an intimate relationship. Though he had hard times in his life and encountered death face to face he was never ready to separate himself from his land.
A peculiar characteristic that can be noted in Wang Lung is his attachment to the soil. Even though he was so much excited to get married he never forgets to take a look at his lovely fields. Buck has beautifully described through her compelling words the beauty of Wang Lung’s land and the ever remaining soul of the typical Chinese farmer in Wang Lung.
The farmer in Wang Lung was diverted for an instant and he stooped to examine the budding heads. They were empty as yet and waiting for the rain. He smelled the air and looked anxiously at the sky. Rain was there, dark in the clouds, heavy upon the wind. He would buy a stick of incense and place it in the little temple to the Earth God. On a day like this he would do it.(7)
Wang Lung is literally shocked to hear that Hwang family wishes to sell land. It is just because he feels that land is directly connected with life and thus he cannot imagine parting with it and is surprised to hear that the Hwangs would sell their land. As Wang Lung had an unending respect and love towards the land which he considers his soul, he never wanted to miss the opportunity to buy some if he could. When he first buys a piece of land from the Hwang family, Wang Lung is enormously happy.
During the famine, to Wang Lung, keeping the fields alive is just as important as keeping his own family alive; the destruction of the land means the fall of his own family.
At last the water in the pond dried into a cake of clay and the water even in the well sunk so low that O-lan said to him, "If the children must drink and the old man have his hot water the plants must go dry."
Wang Lung answered with anger that broke into a sob, "Well, and they must all starve if the plants starve." It was true that all their lives depended upon the earth. (68)
This clearly shows how he is attached to his land. When his uncle tries to get him to sell his land, Wang Lung cries out in protest that he will never sell the land that is man's birthplace as well as his burial place. While living in the southern city during the famine, Wang Lung continually yearns for the land. Although life in the city is hard and agonizing, the thought of his land assures peace for him. When Wang Lung learns that his second son has stolen a piece of meat from a woman, he is in despair because he feels that his sons are growing up as thieves only because of their stay in the city, and also he thinks that if they were in their land thy would have never done any bad deed. He tells himself that they must go back to the land because city life is corrupting and evil.
Wang Lung's father, like Wang Lung, also cherishes a deep faith in the land. And he understands his son more than anybody else. When Wang Lung and his family finally return to the land, Wang Lung cannot part from it nor can he stop thinking about it. Wanting to be alone with his land, Wang Lung spends many days planning and thinking about what to plant.
But when Lotus comes in to his mind things take a different turn. Wang Lung forgets the land for a while when he is sick in love with Lotus. When Lotus comes to his house he is plagued by various domestic problems. But he is immediately healed of his all his worries and sickness when the waters in the fields recede and Wang Lung start to work his land, his soil is a healing agent for Wang Lung.
Wang Lung is so attached to his land that despite the threat his bandit uncle poses to his family, he cannot move to town for fear of living without his land close by. When Wang Lung is burdened by troubles in his household, he turns to the land for comfort. After he has worked on the land, he immediately feels better. When the locusts threaten to destroy his crops, Wang Lung works on his land for seven consecutive days. It is exhausting, but healing at the same time.
O-lan is a true companion of Wang Lung. She also acknowledges and respects the earth. As she lies dying, O-lan tells Wang Lung that he must not sell the land in his futile attempts to cure her. She thought that death is inevitable for her, but the land will always be there even after her death. And it will be a constant companion to Wang Lung and the family.
Wang Lung is always reluctant to part with his land. When his eldest son puts forward the his plan that the family will go live in great House of Hwang, Wang Lung initially dismisses the suggestion, reminding his ungrateful son that if it had not been for the land, the family would have starved and the son himself would not have become a lord.
Even after having moved to the house in town, Wang Lung still returns to the land everyday to walk around it . Over the years, Wang Lung ages and changes, but one thing remains within him - his consideration and never fading love for the land. Although he leaves it for a while after having built his fortune, he always returns to the land every spring.
The last scene of the book is noteworthy as it shows the over attached soul of the old Chinese peasant who is not at all changed according to modern trends and is still chained to his mother earth. When Wang Lung overhears his sons talking about selling the land he hysterically yells at his two sons.
"Now, evil, idle sons--sell the land" …"It is the end of a family--when they begin to sell the land," he said brokenly. "Out of the land we came and into it we must go--and if you will hold your land you can live--no one can rob you of land..."
He is appalled, distressed and unable to control his tears at the mention of selling the land. He scolds his sons, telling them that it will be the end of the family if they begin to sell the land
… the old man let his scanty tears dry upon his cheeks and they made salty stains there. And he stooped and took up a handful of the soil and he held it and he muttered, "If you sell the land, it is the end."
And his two sons held him, one on either side, each holding his arm, and he held tight in his hand the warm loose earth. And they soothed him and they said over and over, the elder son and the second son, "Rest assured, our father, rest assured. The land is not to be sold."
But he never knew the plans of his evil sons. While consoling the old man they are determined of their plans. "But over the old man's head they looked at each other and smiled". (TGE 357) Through Wang Lung Buck is depicting a typical Chinese peasant with all values and flaws.
Buck compares and contrasts Wang Lung's knowledge of nature to the Hwang family's disrespect for their land. As a poor farmer, Wang Lung has an intimate relationship with the earth. It is his god and he trusts it more than anything else. He spends a great deal of time in the fields, alone with nature as he has no worker to give him a hand. His religion is based on worshipping the earth deity, for whom he burns incense before the wedding feast. This offering indicates Wang Lung's recognition that the land is more powerful than he is. Because of this recognition, Wang Lung is frugal, hardworking, and modest.
But the case with the Hwangs is different. As it is a rich family, its members do not personally involve themselves in the labour from which they derive their riches. Instead, they hire labourers and buy slaves to work for them. And in this way hiring others to do their work they become estranged from their land.
Because of their ignorance the Hwangs easily forget the fortune their land has given them. The life lived by them is that of joy and pride because of the abundant wealth forgetting completely that it is a gift from their land. For this reason, they have become careless with their money. They spend their time with idle pleasures, buying expensive items, such as rich foods, opium and drinks and also ruining the family morals by spending money for sensual pleasures.
Buck ascribes Wang Lung's success to his continuing devotion to the land, and the Hwangs' decline to their distance from it. But the famine that reduces Wang Lung to grinding poverty provides a glimpse of the hard life facing poor farmers in old China. The drought is also a reminder that the earth is the only constant force in the world. For all of his hard work, Wang Lung is subject to the whims of nature.
But when Wang Lung becomes rich he tends to bear a resemblance to the Hwangs .This transformation has been foreshadowed by Wang's obvious desire for material success and by his admiration of the frills of wealth. At last he achieves his goal of accumulating a great fortune: his wealth equals what the Hwangs' once had. But in becoming wealthy, he begins to fall prey to the same decadent practices that eventually destroyed the Hwangs.
His wealth creates as many problems, but Buck does not seem to imply that wealth alone causes these problems. Rather, it is the idleness and moral decay that often comes with wealth that is at the root of Wang Lung's difficulties. And thus Buck states the importance of morality for a typical Chinese peasant group or for a whole race as an unavoidable thing.
Through the character of O-lan, Buck brings a typical Chinese peasant woman who never gets exhausted in doing her duties or fulfilling the commands of the male superpower in the house. O-lan seems to gain sympathy from the readers for her submissive nature. She is a plain looking, enduring and inarticulate woman who does her duty without any fail even in their hardships. She can be compared to the earth itself as she is resourceful also.
O-lan is a hard working woman. She does all her house hold works and also works with Wang Lung in the field. She keeps on doing her work from morning till night without any complaint. She is not beautiful as Lotus. She is, as Wang Lung’s father said is the perfect one to work in the field and to produce children.
To learn more about the mastery in Buck’s depiction it is necessary to go back to the traditional Chinese family in Buck’s time and the position of Chinese peasants at that time. China is one of the world’s greatest powers. It is the vast country with the largest amount of people and huge amount of natural resources.
In The Good Earth(1931) Buck portrays China with its traditional values and believes. The families follow the customs and practices that have prevailed for over hundreds of years. The people themselves are divided into the peasantry and the gentry. The family structure demonstrated by Buck is not restricted to the Wang Lung family, but was a part of every rural Chinese home in the early 1900s. Every member’s experiences within the family structure are determined by the role and expectations placed on them by the society, and Buck was careful to include these experiences in Wang Lung’s family.
This was perhaps one of the reasons why Buck raised Wang Lung from a peasant to a great landlord, so that she could establish an extended family structure that was ideal to all Chinese families. When Wang Lung was just married he lived in a somewhat simple nuclear family, except for the presence of his father that would make it like an extended family. Moreover, the Chinese perception of a nuclear family included the father, but when members other than the children are introduced, the family would then be considered an extended one. Thus, Wang Lung’s nuclear family comprises of himself, O-lan, his wife, and his father. After he had his children, there were three generations under his roof. Wang Lung soon began to prosper, and had an extended family when his uncle and his family moved into Wang Lung’s house.
Buck draws parallels between the rise and fall of families and the cycles of the natural world—the harvest's beginning and end is compared to birth and death. She suggests that just as the seasons change, great families come and go, and fortunes rise and fall.
Wang Lung's family, which works hard and loves the land, is entering its springtime, while the Hwang family, which is materialistic and extravagant, is entering its autumn, and nothing is unchangeable but the earth itself.
The idea that all human life begins and ends in the unchanging earth is the bedrock of the novel, as well as the source of its title. The novel repeatedly insists that the land deserves respect and that those who do not accord it this respect will eventually fall on hard times .Buck's portrayal of Chinese culture remains objective and understated in tone throughout these chapters.
In traditional Chinese culture, the silence of women was highly valued, and O-lan, a conscientious woman, is almost always silent. But even though almost nothing is learnt about O-lan's character from her speech, a great deal is revealed through her actions. She shows her pleasure with Wang Lung by bringing him hot tea in the morning.
She shows her great pride in her home by taking care to make it look the best it can; she cleans and mends household items before joining Wang Lung in the fields. Her actions establish her as extraordinarily capable, hardworking, and resourceful person. Buck hints at dark episodes in O-lan's past, as evidenced by O-lan's unexplained refusal to allow anyone from the house of Hwang attend her during her labour.
Buck's characterization of O-lan demonstrates the importance that Chinese culture ascribed to women's labour. O-lan's labour is crucially important to Wang Lung, for with her help, he is able to produce a huge harvest and lay the foundations for future success. O-lan's skill at laboring makes Wang Lung's initial disappointment by her unbound feet seem foolish, since O-lan would not be able to work in the fields with the tiny, painful feet produced by foot-binding.
As Wang Lung's previously good fortunes take a turn for the worse, Buck underscores the differences between Western and Chinese cultural values, asking her Western readers to understand how moral values and desperate circumstances might drive the novel's characters to act as they do.
It is obvious that the work comes out of Buck’s careful analysis of the folk. The work glitters with outstanding presentation and style which even marked as the quality that an epic possesses. Through her work it is clear that the peasants were portrayed life like and now it will definitely excite the readers to find out the reason for its survival as an epic.
About the Author
K.R.Reshma,M.A, M.Phil
Lecturer in English
contact:reshmarules@gmail.com