The Good Earth

For other uses, see The Good Earth (disambiguation).
The Good Earth

First edition
Author Pearl S. Buck
Country United States
Language English
Genre Historical fiction
Publisher John Day
Publication date
March 2, 1931
Media type Print
Followed by Sons

The Good Earth is a novel by Pearl S. Buck published in 1931 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1932. The best-selling novel in the United States in both 1931 and 1932, it was an influential factor in Buck's winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. It is the first book in a trilogy that includes Sons (1932) and A House Divided (1935).

The novel, which dramatizes family life in a Chinese village before World War I, has been a steady favorite ever since. It was included in Life Magazine's list of the 100 outstanding books of 1924-1944.[1] In 2004, the book was returned to the bestseller list when chosen by the television host Oprah Winfrey for Oprah's Book Club.[2] The novel helped prepare Americans of the 1930s to consider Chinese as allies in the coming war with Japan.[3]

A Broadway stage adaptation was produced by the Theatre Guild in 1932, written by the father and son playwriting team of Owen and Donald Davis, but it was poorly received by the critics, and ran only 56 performances. However, the 1937 film, The Good Earth, which was based on the stage version, was more successful.

Plot

The story begins on Wang Lung's wedding day and follows the rise and fall of his fortunes. The House of Hwang, a family of wealthy landowners, lives in the nearby town, where Wang Lung's future wife, O-Lan, lives as a slave. As the House of Hwang slowly declines due to opium use, frequent spending, and uncontrolled borrowing, Wang Lung, through his own hard work and the skill of his wife, O-Lan, slowly earns enough money to buy land from the Hwang family. O-Lan delivers three sons and three daughters; the first daughter becomes mentally handicapped as a result of severe malnutrition brought on by famine. Her father greatly pities her and calls her "Poor Fool," a name by which she is addressed throughout her life. O-Lan kills her second daughter at birth to spare her the misery of growing up in such hard times, and to give the remaining family a better chance to survive. During the devastating famine and drought, the family must flee to a large city in the south to find work. Wang Lung's malevolent uncle offers to buy his possessions and land, but for significantly less than their value. The family sells everything except the land and the house. Wang Lung then faces the long journey south, contemplating how the family will survive walking, when he discovers that the "firewagon" (the Chinese word for the newly built train) takes people south for a fee.

In the city, O-Lan and the children beg while Wang Lung pulls a rickshaw. Wang Lung's father begs but does not earn any money, and sits looking at the city instead. They find themselves aliens among their more metropolitan countrymen who look different and speak in a fast accent. They no longer starve, due to the one-cent charitable meals of congee, but still live in abject poverty. Wang Lung longs to return to his land. When armies approach the city he can only work at night hauling merchandise out of fear of being conscripted. One time, his son brings home stolen meat. Furious, Wang Lung throws the meat on the ground, not wanting his sons to grow up as thieves. O-Lan, however, calmly picks up the meat and cooks it. When a food riot erupts, Wang Lung unwillingly joins a mob that is looting a rich man's house and corners the man himself, who fears for his life and gives Wang Lung all his money in order to buy his safety. Meanwhile, his wife finds jewels in a hiding place in another house, hiding them between her breasts.

Wang Lung uses his money to bring the family home, buy a new ox and farm tools, and hire servants to work the land for him. In time, the youngest children are born, a twin son and daughter. When he discovers the jewels O-Lan looted from the house in the southern city, Wang Lung buys the House of Hwang's remaining land. He is eventually able to send his first two sons to school (also apprenticing the second one as a merchant) and retains the third one on the land. As Wang Lung becomes more prosperous, he buys a concubine named Lotus. O-Lan endures the betrayal of her husband when he takes two pearls, the only jewels she had asked to keep for herself, to make them into earrings to present to Lotus. O-Lan's morale suffers and she eventually dies, but not before witnessing her first son's wedding. Wang Lung finally appreciates her place in his life, as he mourns her passing.

Lung and his family move into town and rent the old House of Hwang. Wang Lung, now an old man, wants peace, but there are always disputes, especially between his first and second sons, and particularly their wives. Wang Lung's third son runs away to become a soldier. At the end of the novel, Wang Lung overhears his sons planning to sell the land and tries to dissuade them. They say that they will do as he wishes, but smile knowingly at each other.

Characters

Chronology

The novel's chronology is unclear, as it provides no explicit dates from which to work. There are, however, references to events which take place in Chinese History which, if accurately placed by the author, provide an approximate time frame; among these are the use of railroads and the Xinhai Revolution. The time spent by the family in the South (probably Shanghai) following the famine in their home of Anhui provides the best opportunity to approximate the time span of the novel. Railroads in China were not constructed until the end of the 19th century, with virtually no widespread development until after 1904. The lines extending from Shanghai to the north were constructed only after 1908. The train used by Wang Lung and his family is implied to be relatively new, which would place their departure to the South around this time. Their return, which takes place shortly after the southern city descends into civil chaos, best matches the time of the 1911 Revolution. Accepting this as a starting point, earlier and later dates can be estimated according to the ages of characters and the seasonal crop cycles which are mentioned. If accurate, this would likely place the end of the novel after its date of publishing.

Political influence

Some scholars have seen The Good Earth as creating sympathy for China in the oncoming war with Japan. "If China had not captured the American imagination," said one, "it might just have been possible to work out a more satisfactory Far Eastern policy," but such works as The Good Earth, "infused with an understandable compassion for the suffering Chinese, did little to inform Americans about their limited options in Asia."[5] The diplomatic historian Walter LaFeber, however, although he agrees that Americans grew enamored of heroic Chinese portrayed by writers such as Buck, concluded that "these views of China did not shape U.S. policy after 1937. If they had, Americans would have been fighting in Asia long before 1941."[6]

The Columbia University political scientist Andrew J. Nathan praised Hilary Spurling's book Pearl Buck in China: Journey to The Good Earth, saying that it should move readers to rediscover Buck's work as a source of insight into both revolutionary China and the United States’ interactions with it. Spurling observes that Buck was the daughter of American missionaries and defends the book against charges that it is simply a collection of racist stereotypes. In her view, Buck delves deeply into the lives of the Chinese poor and opposed "religious fundamentalism, racial prejudice, gender oppression, sexual repression, and discrimination against the disabled."[7]

Peripatetic manuscript

Buck wrote the novel in Nanking, spending mornings in the attic of her university bungalow to complete the manuscript in one year (ca 1929).[8] In 1952, the typed manuscript and several other papers belonging to Buck were placed on display at the museum of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York. It disappeared after the exhibit, and in a memoir (1966), Buck is said to have written, "The devil has it. I simply cannot remember what I did with that manuscript."[9] After Buck died in 1973, her heirs reported it stolen. It finally turned up at Freeman's Auctioneers & Appraisers in Philadelphia around 2007 when it was brought in for consignment. The FBI were notified and it was handed over by the consignor.[10]

Notes

  1. Canby, Henry Seidel. "The 100 Outstanding Books of 1924 - 1944". Life Magazine, 14 August 1944. Chosen in collaboration with the magazine's editors.
  2. The Good Earth at Oprah's Book Club website
  3. Mike Meyer (March 5, 2006). "Pearl of the Orient". The New York Times. Retrieved 2011-10-10.
  4. Mandarin Transliteration Chart
  5. William L. O'Neill, A Democracy At War: America's Fight At Home and Abroad in World War II, (Harvard University Press, 1997), p 57.
  6. Walter Lafeber. The Clash: U.S.-Japanese Relations Throughout History. (New York; London: Norton, 1997), p. 206.
  7. "Pearl Buck in China: Journey to The Good Earth" Reviewed by Andrew J. Nathan Foreign Affairs November/December 2010
  8. Peter J. Conn. Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography. Cambridge England ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. P. 345.
  9. Lester, Patrick (June 28, 2007). "Missing Pearl S. Buck writings turn up four decades later". The Morning Call (Lehigh Valley). Retrieved 8 October 2013.
  10. "Good Earth Unearthed: Buck’s Missing Manuscript Recovered". FBI Stories. 27 June 2007. Retrieved 8 October 2013.

Further reading

External links

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