The+Good+Earth+by+Pearl+S.+Buck

by Pearl S. Buck
 * [[image:http://www.limerickiwo.com/images/The%20Good%20Earth2.jpg width="344" height="503" align="center" caption="Published in 1931 by Simon & Schuster, Inc"]] || The Good Earth

//Wang Lung sat smoking, thinking of the silver as it had lain upon the table. It had come out of the earth, this silver, out of his earth that he had ploughed and turned and spent himself upon.He took his life from this earth; drop by drop by his sweat he wrung food from it and from the food, silver.//

Wang Lung and his father are peasant farmers eagerly awaiting the new arrival of a woman in the house.O-Lan is not beautiful or smart but serves Wang Lung and his father faithfully. Cooking, cleaning, bearing children and helping tend house: these are a woman's role in this accurate portrait of earth nineteenth century China.

Soon, Wang Lung feels the pinch of poverty and what effects the crop cycle has on him and his family. They pack up and move to a nearby city, where the demise of a wealthy family signals his rise to success. At this point, he begins to understand the desires of rich men and wishes to be seen as high class by the members of his villa

Taking a concubine and greedy family members into his house, he soon finds himself living the dream yet craving the old days where his toes could wriggle in the soil and his sons were still small. ||
 * [[image:http://img.listal.com/image/356146/180full-pearl-s.-buck.jpg]] || About the Author

Pearl Sydensticker Buck, known also by her Chinese name, Sai Zhenzhu ( [|賽][|珍][|珠] ), was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia on June 26, 1892. A woman of two worlds, her parents took her infant self with them as they continued their missionary work in China. Through her Chinese tutors she became learned in Chinese classical literature, culture and folk lore and through her mother she learned the English counterpart. Despite an edict against foreigners at the turn of the century, Pearl and her parents moved to Shanghai where she attended Miss Jewell's School and began volunteering at Door of Hope (a shelter home for girls who had been sold into prostitution and servitude).

She went back to the United States for college but stood out as "the freak who could speak Chinese". She soon returned to China to care for her mother, who had fallen ill.

She married twice, the first marriage ending in divorce and the other in death. She had one mentally challenged biological daughter and seven adopted children.

Her writing was highly regarded and praised, winning the Pulitzer Prize for The Good Earth and later winning the Dean Howells Medal for Distinguished Fiction (1935) as well as the Nobel Prize for Literature (1938).

She died in Vermont in 1973. She was eighty years old. ||

Teacher Recommendations //Wang Lung and his wife, O-Lan, pull themselves out of poverty, bring children into the world, survive famines and floods, and toil relentlessly to build a fortune without ever losing faith in the restorative power of the land. But their work is not the novel's only story. Marriages and conniving family members, natural disasters and wars, births and adolescent rebellions, concubines and opium addiction make The Good Earth a rich and dramatic tapestry of life in earth-twentieth-century China.//

This book describes the rise and fall of wealth as well as lifestyles and attitudes in China during this time period. It is a great teaching tool because of its broad diversity. The novel does not take stay in one place but instead allows the characters to travel and have an upward social ability, thus accurately describing many stations and standards of living. Farmers, upper class, city workers and warriors are all described in accurate detail as well as what was expected of them at the time. It was extremely difficult for the Chinese at this time to gain upward mobility and even Wang Lung, with his strong work ethic and frugality happens upon wealth by chance.

It also describes the social and economic attitudes towards women at this time. O-Lan, with her unbound feet and ruddy face, is treated like a slave whose only purpose in life is to take care of the house and bear children. She, in turn, takes great pride in this and sees the culmination of her life's work in her sons. The alternative, Lotus Flower, is beautiful with her bound feet and constant need to drape herself in finery. She is spoiled, sly and cruel-hearted, bearing ill will towards the wife of the house. The other women, Cuckoo and Wang Lung's aunt (as well as the wives of his sons) are petty, jealous and are only out to provide gains for them and theirs. All of these attitudes stem from what they have been allotted in life and what is expected of them. They play these roles faithfully.

Yet another layer of this book is the use of opium, which was exceedingly popular in China at this time. Traded from the west for silk, tea and porcelain, its addictive quality and bodily harm ruined many lives and is accurately portrayed in The Good Earth. Wang Lung even uses it as a weapon to slip family members he does not want to deal with into a stupor that will consume their personalities.

Through farming and city life, peace and war, wives and concubines, stupors and soberness, students will be sucked into a world they have only seen in the movies. In this sense, I would not recommend the movie (made in 1937) except in clips, as the movie was drastically shortened and the main point of the movie dropped and romanticized (not to mention nearly every single actor/ess was white with eyeliner in a failed attempt to make their eyes look slanted).

Multimedia media type="youtube" key="X1dt_DYPFJg" height="390" width="640" media type="youtube" key="XnmOqpoDFEw" height="390" width="480" media type="youtube" key="4jYRMPBS5PU" height="390" width="480" media type="youtube" key="vIJYEaBH1Yk" height="390" width="480" media type="youtube" key="AgqbInNM-8k" height="390" width="480" Other references [|Pearl S. Buck International] [|The History Channel: China] [|Wikipedia: Pearl S. Buck] [|Amazon: Buy The Good Earth movie] [|IMDB: The Good Earth]