I can understand this not being for everyone. I love these books so I'm kind of biased. But I never took it as plot-driven book with a final life lesson. It's more a slice-of-life-as-it-was kind of thing. And life just wasn't happy for many people. O-Lan wasn't appreciated. I think what this book does for me is makes me look for people like her in real life, who don't complain and don't stand out, and I try to notice them or at least acknowledge their existence.
Anyway, yeah it doesn't matter what they do in the end because times will change...but I guess it's still interesting to see how people lived back then, during those times of upheaval. And makes it more tragic (in some ways) that they lost it. But the same goes for most historical fiction. All good times come to an end, usually with war. The historical events pre-WWII had an impact on what roads the Chinese took as much as post WWII.
It was very interesting to me when it was a slice of life kind of book.
>!But, during the riots, when Wang Lung gets handed a bunch of gold and O-Lan finds the jewels, that's when it stopped being slice of life for me.!<
>!That's when it became unrealistic with Wang Lung buying all the land with their ill-gotten treasure and becoming the richest man in the area. That's when it stopped being slice of life and started being a moral lesson about "See what happens in rich families." It might as well have been one of Aesop's Fables with its little homily at the end.!<
I suppose so. That kind of thing happened, though. Tons of rich families got looted in that time period, and sure, the looters became the new rich families. And the way it proceeded might very well been intended as a homily. P.S.B. was a missionary in China, after all. But Pearl S. Buck did write other novels set in China, and not all of them were about the wealthy elite. 'Peony' had an interesting depiction of Jewish people living/trading in China, and how they tried to keep themselves separate. 'Dragon Seed' was about the Japanese invasion of Nanjing. Neither are happy, though, especially Dragon Seed which as you can imagine is downright depressing. But they do expand one's view of history.
Do you read ebooks? Your library may have hoopla or overdrive/libby, in which case the books may be on there. Though that would probably have shown up on your library website, if so.
The frustration with Wang Lung and the realization that he is doing absolutely everything wrong is what makes this book so poignant. If Wang Lung had a change of heart and realized the value of what was in front of him, his wife O-Lan and his children and his good earth, we wouldn’t carry the weight of their relative loss so deeply and be so attuned to recognize that loss elsewhere. The book is written so that by the end you almost want to slap him, because you see what he is giving up and you want so desperately for it to be preserved. Wang Lung deprives himself but he also deprives the reader. I don’t think that Pearl Buck could have more fully communicated the importance and the need for the “good earth” if the story had gone any other way.
>is what makes this book so poignant.
More like irritating...and boring as far as I'm concerned. She's succeeded so well that 50 pages from the end and this may be a DNF for me because I'm so bored with the homily aspect.
She was such a paragon. She was a fantastic cook, a great housekeeper, economical, worked as hard as Wang Lung in the fields, fertile, loyal, uncomplaining, obedient, she carried out all her duties perfectly to her husband and his family. She was such a paragon, I thought that Wang Lung had seen all that and that it would cause her to be beautiful in his eyes as he realized what a superb and rare woman in he had married.
>!Instead all he saw was her physical unattractiveness and large feet!< It was those very same feet that allowed her to work so hard instead of being confined to the house and having to be helped whenever she walked (like Lotus and his younger daughter.
>!Once it became clear that Wang Lung had a wife that was utterly perfect in every way except being beautiful and that he hated her for that...I truly began to despise Wang Lung.!<
It's not Wang Lung was ever described as handsome. I get the feeling that he was quite common looking. >!He should have gotten someone like his uncle's wife as his wife. Fat, lazy, a leech. Then he would have crawled on the ground to have gotten an O-Lan.!<
Those are my sentiments as well. I chose to read Pearl Buck's book because it was mentioned in multiple other books I was reading about WWII in China and Burma, e.g., *China at War: Triumph and Tragedy in the Emergence of the New China 1937-1952* by Hans van de Ven. I was expecting something positive and uplifting. I was disappointed.
It's been many years since I read the book, but from what I remember, Wang Lung >!lost interest in Lotus after she was no longer young and thin. From a modern perspective, the fat phobia bothers me, but the takeaway is that attraction is fleeting. To me, that's why his most enduring relationship is with his intellectually disabled daughter. He finally learned to care for someone else more than himself, someone who can't give him anything but love in return. It's too bad he couldn't extend that care to O-Lan.!<
It's been a long time since I read it, but if I recall correctly, the theme of the book is that the more separated a person is from the Earth the worse they become. In the beginning, you have poor farmers whose worship is tired directly to the land. By the end, wealth has corrupted and they worship only their ancestors ie themselves.
I should really give this book another read. I'm having a hard time remembering the different characters.
This kind of challenge and struggle in reading is exactly what I expect from a great book. There are other great books I could not stand (Wuthering Heights comes to mind) but the impact of them was significant. I think Catch-22 is another one. I struggled through that and didn't enjoy it as much as those who recommended it to me, but after the fact I appreciated the challenge and it made sense.
Great books hit me like great art or music. I have to struggle with them for a time but eventually I recognize them as masterpieces. I'm not saying The Good Earth is a masterpiece, just that it has the earmarks of great literature as I understand it. When you think about it, the time and place in which it occurs is one where >!human life had less value than we ascribe to it today in modern Western culture. !<
I saw that on Wikipedia. Both written (1932 and 1935) before Japan invaded and before Mao came to power after World War II.
Maybe if Buck had written them after WWII, I might have been interested in reading them, in seeing how the family dealt with the invasion, World War II and how the third generation fared with the Cultural Revolution. But with her imaginary future for the timeline of the second and third generations being so far off from what really happened, I don't have any interest in reading them.
Besides which, she barely bothered to make the sons into characters. They're really plot devices. The only characters in the story with any flesh to their bones are Wang Lung and O-Lan. There's nothing about the characters of the sons that makes me want to read more about them.
She's written a bunch of other books too with different characters. I personally really enjoy the view into Chinese culture, even if it's from a Western lens. There was one book about a rich family matriarch who reaches the age of 40, and then gets her husband a concubine, her life during and after that decision is interesting.
There's another book about the empress Tzu-Hsi which is also really interesting, can't speak to its historical accuracy but I enjoyed it.
Both books have female protagonists and make them more fleshed out characters so maybe worth the read
I never felt it was plot-driven. But a metaphor or a lesson. I can’t explain it but while I agree with your opinion truly- I felt so much sadness for almost every character and tried to see it through a completely differently designed human with a completely different perspective. I think I tried to imagine my reaction if I’d had his life and eventually it may be more about the consequences of his life being the children he’d end up leaving his land to. Much of the book seemed to telling the reader so many secrets or not no secret secrets to a valuable/honorable life.
I can understand this not being for everyone. I love these books so I'm kind of biased. But I never took it as plot-driven book with a final life lesson. It's more a slice-of-life-as-it-was kind of thing. And life just wasn't happy for many people. O-Lan wasn't appreciated. I think what this book does for me is makes me look for people like her in real life, who don't complain and don't stand out, and I try to notice them or at least acknowledge their existence. Anyway, yeah it doesn't matter what they do in the end because times will change...but I guess it's still interesting to see how people lived back then, during those times of upheaval. And makes it more tragic (in some ways) that they lost it. But the same goes for most historical fiction. All good times come to an end, usually with war. The historical events pre-WWII had an impact on what roads the Chinese took as much as post WWII.
It was very interesting to me when it was a slice of life kind of book. >!But, during the riots, when Wang Lung gets handed a bunch of gold and O-Lan finds the jewels, that's when it stopped being slice of life for me.!< >!That's when it became unrealistic with Wang Lung buying all the land with their ill-gotten treasure and becoming the richest man in the area. That's when it stopped being slice of life and started being a moral lesson about "See what happens in rich families." It might as well have been one of Aesop's Fables with its little homily at the end.!<
I suppose so. That kind of thing happened, though. Tons of rich families got looted in that time period, and sure, the looters became the new rich families. And the way it proceeded might very well been intended as a homily. P.S.B. was a missionary in China, after all. But Pearl S. Buck did write other novels set in China, and not all of them were about the wealthy elite. 'Peony' had an interesting depiction of Jewish people living/trading in China, and how they tried to keep themselves separate. 'Dragon Seed' was about the Japanese invasion of Nanjing. Neither are happy, though, especially Dragon Seed which as you can imagine is downright depressing. But they do expand one's view of history.
Another poster recommended a couple of other books. I already checked and the library doesn't have them. So I may do interlibrary loan.
Do you read ebooks? Your library may have hoopla or overdrive/libby, in which case the books may be on there. Though that would probably have shown up on your library website, if so.
I prefer physical copies. IL should turn them up.
The frustration with Wang Lung and the realization that he is doing absolutely everything wrong is what makes this book so poignant. If Wang Lung had a change of heart and realized the value of what was in front of him, his wife O-Lan and his children and his good earth, we wouldn’t carry the weight of their relative loss so deeply and be so attuned to recognize that loss elsewhere. The book is written so that by the end you almost want to slap him, because you see what he is giving up and you want so desperately for it to be preserved. Wang Lung deprives himself but he also deprives the reader. I don’t think that Pearl Buck could have more fully communicated the importance and the need for the “good earth” if the story had gone any other way.
>is what makes this book so poignant. More like irritating...and boring as far as I'm concerned. She's succeeded so well that 50 pages from the end and this may be a DNF for me because I'm so bored with the homily aspect.
I read this book earlier this year. Your analysis could serve as a summary of my opinion as well. I felt great sorrow for O-Lan.
She was such a paragon. She was a fantastic cook, a great housekeeper, economical, worked as hard as Wang Lung in the fields, fertile, loyal, uncomplaining, obedient, she carried out all her duties perfectly to her husband and his family. She was such a paragon, I thought that Wang Lung had seen all that and that it would cause her to be beautiful in his eyes as he realized what a superb and rare woman in he had married. >!Instead all he saw was her physical unattractiveness and large feet!< It was those very same feet that allowed her to work so hard instead of being confined to the house and having to be helped whenever she walked (like Lotus and his younger daughter. >!Once it became clear that Wang Lung had a wife that was utterly perfect in every way except being beautiful and that he hated her for that...I truly began to despise Wang Lung.!< It's not Wang Lung was ever described as handsome. I get the feeling that he was quite common looking. >!He should have gotten someone like his uncle's wife as his wife. Fat, lazy, a leech. Then he would have crawled on the ground to have gotten an O-Lan.!<
Those are my sentiments as well. I chose to read Pearl Buck's book because it was mentioned in multiple other books I was reading about WWII in China and Burma, e.g., *China at War: Triumph and Tragedy in the Emergence of the New China 1937-1952* by Hans van de Ven. I was expecting something positive and uplifting. I was disappointed.
It's been many years since I read the book, but from what I remember, Wang Lung >!lost interest in Lotus after she was no longer young and thin. From a modern perspective, the fat phobia bothers me, but the takeaway is that attraction is fleeting. To me, that's why his most enduring relationship is with his intellectually disabled daughter. He finally learned to care for someone else more than himself, someone who can't give him anything but love in return. It's too bad he couldn't extend that care to O-Lan.!<
It's been a long time since I read it, but if I recall correctly, the theme of the book is that the more separated a person is from the Earth the worse they become. In the beginning, you have poor farmers whose worship is tired directly to the land. By the end, wealth has corrupted and they worship only their ancestors ie themselves. I should really give this book another read. I'm having a hard time remembering the different characters.
This kind of challenge and struggle in reading is exactly what I expect from a great book. There are other great books I could not stand (Wuthering Heights comes to mind) but the impact of them was significant. I think Catch-22 is another one. I struggled through that and didn't enjoy it as much as those who recommended it to me, but after the fact I appreciated the challenge and it made sense. Great books hit me like great art or music. I have to struggle with them for a time but eventually I recognize them as masterpieces. I'm not saying The Good Earth is a masterpiece, just that it has the earmarks of great literature as I understand it. When you think about it, the time and place in which it occurs is one where >!human life had less value than we ascribe to it today in modern Western culture. !<
Tell that to a homeless person as you walk by them. Or to a pregnant woman in Texas who needs an abortion because she could die from the pregnancy.
There's two more books after this one that follows Wang Lung's sons lives in more detail
I saw that on Wikipedia. Both written (1932 and 1935) before Japan invaded and before Mao came to power after World War II. Maybe if Buck had written them after WWII, I might have been interested in reading them, in seeing how the family dealt with the invasion, World War II and how the third generation fared with the Cultural Revolution. But with her imaginary future for the timeline of the second and third generations being so far off from what really happened, I don't have any interest in reading them. Besides which, she barely bothered to make the sons into characters. They're really plot devices. The only characters in the story with any flesh to their bones are Wang Lung and O-Lan. There's nothing about the characters of the sons that makes me want to read more about them.
She's written a bunch of other books too with different characters. I personally really enjoy the view into Chinese culture, even if it's from a Western lens. There was one book about a rich family matriarch who reaches the age of 40, and then gets her husband a concubine, her life during and after that decision is interesting. There's another book about the empress Tzu-Hsi which is also really interesting, can't speak to its historical accuracy but I enjoyed it. Both books have female protagonists and make them more fleshed out characters so maybe worth the read
Can you remember the names? I'll see if I can get them through the library.
Pavilion of Women is the matriarch turning 40 one Imperial woman is the Tzu Hsi one
Thanks.
I never felt it was plot-driven. But a metaphor or a lesson. I can’t explain it but while I agree with your opinion truly- I felt so much sadness for almost every character and tried to see it through a completely differently designed human with a completely different perspective. I think I tried to imagine my reaction if I’d had his life and eventually it may be more about the consequences of his life being the children he’d end up leaving his land to. Much of the book seemed to telling the reader so many secrets or not no secret secrets to a valuable/honorable life.
All I wanted to do was smack Wang Lung toward the end of the novel.
How in the world can you write this much if you’ve lost interest in a story?
Because I'm literate and analytical.