Modern Chinese History

¶ … Earth

Buck, P. (2005). The Good Earth New York: Pocket Books Classics.

The Good Earth, written by Pearl Buck, was published in 1931 and won the Pulitzer Price for the best novel in 1932. It was one of the reasons Buck won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938 and is the first book in a trilogy. Essentially, it is a novel about family life in a Chinese village prior to World War II. The interesting thing about this book, though, is that it has been adapted into a Broadway stage play, and a 1937 film, as well as innumerable printings for use in global classes in English, Asian Studies, Women's Studies, and Cultural Perspectives. In the 1930s, many scholars think that it aroused a great deal of sympathy for China and contributed to poor relations with Japan and the West (O'Neill, 1998, p. 57).

The world of Wang Lung and his wife O-Lan, as depicted in The Good Earth, is like nothing any modern American could ever imagine. Slavery still exists, rampant opium use by an entire clan, and such abject poverty that children are brain damaged due to malnutrition -- so much so that O-Lan kills her second daughter to spare her the pain of living in this world. That was perhaps one of the most moving scenes ever, the decision to kill a new baby because the prospects for life were so very poor. The dialog is excruciating, Wang Lung hears nothing after the first baby cry and then calls to his wife, "You are safe?" Then he finds her alone and wonders where the child is. "Dead!" he exclaimed, "Dead, she whispered." He then realizes that O-Lan is barely alive herself, and the agony of starvation has hit them all (Buck, pp. 81-3).

The precariousness of childbirth and death is just not something that is as much a part of modern life as it was, even in the United States, prior to World War II. And, with such major supermarkets as we have even in small U.S. towns, it is hard to imagine an era or time in which there was so little food, and absolutely no safety net, that people were dying of starvation on a daily basis, or that parents would kill their child just to keep it out of pain and suffering.

The other major theme that appears again and again in this novel is that of the common person being uprooted and pulled along based on grand, historical movements. Living in abject poverty, Wang Lung's family is nevertheless honorable to each other, but not a part of the culture of the city -- they neither speak with the same accent, nor have any friends or relatives to help them with emotional support. Just as it is almost unbelievable that a child would be killed, when Wang Lung unwillingly joins a food riot mob and gets the money from the rich man's house they are looting, he uses the money for a moral pursuit -- to return to the home, buy an ox, and farm tools. The sense of complete sacrifice is evident, and then the sadness when we realize that after all Wang Lung and O-Lan went through, the surviving children will likely sell the land as soon as he is dead.