The Good Earth the first of the House of Earth Trilogy was an amazing and beautiful book by Pearl S. Buck and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1932. This was followed by the next two books in the trilogy, Sons and A House Divided. The daughter of American Christian missionaries in China, Buck was able to beautifully translate to the written word her observations of the vast cultural differences of peasants in China at the turn of the century through the events of the end of World War I. But yet, the overarching theme was the importance and reverence for the land. Wang Lung is the product of generations of peasant farmers tirelessly working the soil yielding bountiful harvests. And now with his excess harvests, he is able to purchase a slave from the great house to be his wife. O-lan quickly proves herself invaluable with her strong disposition and numerous skill sets gained from her service as a slave, including her ability to sew fine clothing for the family as well as the preparation of the fancy meals she once served to the local lord and lady. O-lan works tirelessly alongside her husband Wang only stopping to bear their children and returning to the fields with the babies. When possible, Wang Lung purchases more land from the great house slowly increasing their wealth. But when famine drives them south to the big city where they live as beggars to survive, O-Lan manages to multiply their fortune when tensions spill over into a riot. This is a time not only of great political and social turmoil in China, but a novel about the hard-working farmer class and their fierce connection to the land. And this is a multigenerational novel. Although an antiquated and, for the most part, an agrarian society depicting a world where women are slaves, Pearl Buck beautifully conveys a rich moral complexity and universal concerns. It is easy to see why this book remains one of the great modern classics.

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”Moving together in perfect rhythm, without word, hour after hour, he fell into a union with her which took the pain from his labor. He had no articulate thought of anything; there was only this perfect sympathy of movement, of turning this earth of theirs over and over to the sun, this earth which formed their home and fed their bodies and made their gods.”

“Then the good land did again its healing work and the sun shone on him and healed him and the warm winds of summer wrapped him about with peace.”

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‎دوستانِ گرانقدر، نویسندهٔ این کتاب <پرل بک>، دورانِ کودکی خویش را در چین گذراند و در همانجا نیز درس خواند.. او عاشقِ سرزمینِ چین است و چین را قلب و روحِ خود میداند... وی توانست فرهنگ و زندگیِ مردمانِ چین را به آمریکاییان و اروپائیان شناسانده و با داستانهایش فرهنگهای این مردمان را به یکدیگر پیوند بزند و در این راه جایزهٔ نوبل را نیز کسب نمود
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‎در این داستان، <وانگ لونگ> دهقانی است که خود را از زمین میداند و تمامِ زندگی خویش را فدایِ زمین کرده است و عشق دیوانه واری نسبت به زمین دارد ... او حاضر است آب را از فرزندانش دریغ کند، ولی همان آب را به زمین بدهد
‎همسرِ او <اُو-لان> نام دارد و از آنجایی که پیش از ازدواج با وانگ لونگ کنیز و بردهٔ خانوادهٔ بزرگ و زمیندار <هوانگ> بوده است، بنابراین به زندگی در هر شرایطی با وانگ لونگ، شاد و خرسند است
‎هوانگِ پیر، رئیس خاندانِ بزرگِ هوانگ، زندگی و دارایی اش به خطر می افتد، چراکه فساد و اعتیاد به تریاک، این خاندان را به بیچارگی میکشاند
‎وانگ لونگ از این فرصت استفاده کرده و بخشی از زمین هایِ خاندانِ هوانگ را خریداری میکند تا در راهِ پیشرفت، گام بزرگی بردارد... ولی از شانسِ بدِ او، جنگ و انقلاب و شورش و خشکسالی، به یکباره خسارت هایِ زیادی به او و خانواده اش وارد میکند.... آنها پس از تحملِ بدبختی هایِ فراوان، سرانجام در راهِ زمینداری و کشاورزی، به خوشبختی دست پیدا میکنند
‎پس از گذشتِ زمان، وانگ لونگ پیر میشود و زمینهایش را برای فرزندانش به ارث میگذارد... ولی فرزندانش همچون پدرشان نسبت به زمین عشق و تعصب نداشته و تصمیم میگیرند تا زمینها را به فروش برسانند
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‎شمارهٔ بعدیِ این رمان، با عنوانِ "پسران خاندانِ وانگ" از آنجایی آغاز میشود که پسرانِ این خانواده: وانگِ بزرگ، وانگ دوم و وانگ سوم یا همان ببر، زمینها را بین یکدیگر تقسیم کرده و داستان به زندگی آنها و نواده هایِ وانگ لونگ، میپردازد
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‎امیدوارم این ریویو در جهتِ شناختِ این کتاب، کافی و مفید بوده باشه
‎<پیروز باشید و ایرانی>

کلا ادبیات آسیای شرق چون از نظر فرهنگ به ما نزدیکن کاملا گویا و دلنشین هست
البته این کتاب نوشته یه خانم امریکایی اما بزرگ شده چینه / به هرحال خیلی خوب تونسته خواننده رو با زندگی ونگ لانگ آشنا کنه
ونگ لانگ یه پسر فقیر دهاتی چینی که با پدرش زندگی می کنه و با کنیز یه خانواده ثروتمند ازدواج می کنه
رفته رفته با کمک همسرش می تونه به پول برسه و زمین بخره از بخت بدش به خشکسالی می خوره و جنگ و نمی تونه از ثروت اندوخته خودش لذت ببره باز هم سختی های فراوون می کشه
تا اینکه مشکلات تموم می شه و دوباره به مال و منال می رسه

پ.ن :
من چون اغلب تو مسیرم بیشتر کتاب صوتی گوش میدم اما متاسفانه خیلی بخش های کتاب و سانسور می کنن و این اصلا خوشایند نیست
98/01/31

Drawing on her years of living in China as the daughter of Christian missionaries, Buck tells an epic story of the life of farmer Wang Lung and his family. For Wang Lung, his identity comes from the land that he farms. Through cycles of plentiful harvests and poor or nonexistent harvests caused by droughts and floods, he never loses his faith in the land as the ultimate source of sustenance and meaning for himself and his family.

At one point, to avoid starvation, Wang Lung leaves the land with his family to travel to the south to find menial work in the city while his wife O-lan and their children beg for coins to buy food. Even at his most destitute, he thinks constantly of returning to his land, and by a stroke of good fortune, along with some dishonesty, he acquires enough money not only to return to his land but also to buy more land from the rich “Old Lord” whose fortune has ebbed away.

Wang Lung gradually builds more and more wealth until he no longer has to work the land himself. His neighbors admire him, and some of his relatives envy him and take advantage of the generosity that tradition requires of him. Meanwhile, Wang Lung’s wealth and leisure give him opportunities to indulge in some of the pleasures of the town.

All the while, his family is growing. O-lan bears three sons and three daughters. Wang Lung wants at least one son to take over the land after he is gone, but his sons do not share his love for the land, and they have other ideas about what to do with their lives. For Wang Lung, though, the land—the good earth—remains the lodestar of his life.

This classic book was never assigned to me in school, and for some reason, it never appealed to me enough to read it on my own. I think I assumed it would be dull. But reading it now, I found it anything but dull. Wang Lung is a man who lives in a particular time and place, not really an Everyman, and someone whose experience is vastly different than my own. Nonetheless, or maybe because of that, I found his life to be fascinating, and I never lost interest in his life’s journey. I think it’s probably good that I waited until I was pretty old myself to read about how his life unfolded over so many decades.

I know that some readers don’t like the book because of its depiction of the treatment of women. The social mores of rural China in the early 20th century (assuming they are accurately portrayed here) certainly do not align with the more enlightened values that most contemporary readers presumably share. But I think it’s a mistake to reject this or any book because it fails the “21st-century lens” test. I think that part of the book’s value for contemporary readers lies in making us think about issues like the treatment of women throughout history and across cultures. I think too that Buck recognized this, at least in part. Among other things, she made a point of describing Wang Lu’s belated recognition of O’lan’s goodness after she died.

As I was reading The Good Earth, I periodically thought that it sounded like some of the stories in the Old Testament—both thematically and linguistically. Just to cite a couple of examples, I was reminded of the story of rival brothers Jacob and Esau as well as the story of Noah’s sons covering up their father’s drunkenness out of respect for him. Like the Old Testament characters, Wang Lung was living in a rural patriarchal society. It’s not our world, thankfully, but there are still lessons to be learned from reading about it.

"They cannot take the land from me. The labor of my body and the fruits of the fields I have put into that which cannot be taken away. If I had the silver, they would have taken it. If I had bought with the silver to store it, they would have taken it all. I have the land still, and it is mine."

"The Good Earth" tells of the importance of the land to Wang Lung, a Chinese peasant farmer with a small farm. The book opens on his wedding day to O-Lan, a humble and resourceful woman who had been a slave. O-Lan works side by side with her husband on the land, and they have five living children. Wang Lung puts his profits into buying more land, but they almost starve without any savings during a famine.

Eventually Wang Lung becomes a wealthy man, but his sons do not have his traditional values. Wang Lung no longer appreciates the plain, hardworking O-Lan, and he becomes obsessed with another's beauty. While his wealth had given him security and social position, a more decadent lifestyle has not brought happiness to his family.

As Wang Lung grows older, he still retains his love of the land and the early simple home that was made of the earth. He feels like he is part of the cycle of nature where the land nourishes man, and man eventually returns to the earth.

Published in 1931, "The Good Earth" portrays the culture of a traditional Chinese family in the early 1900s before the Revolution. The role of women is an important aspect of the book. "The Good Earth" is a well-written book that still retains its power over ninety years later.

The first time I read this book I was thirteen years old. All I remembered about it was that it was about a Chinese farmer and I liked it. This second time through I could see how so much went past me when I read it as a youth with no life experience. Now, as a grown-up, I was able to appreciate the depth of the characters' feelings and the storytelling gifts of Pearl Buck. The book was first published in 1931, but it's written in what could almost be termed a classical style. The great beauty of the tale as a whole is in Wang Lung's unwavering connection with his land---the "good earth." I love the meaning of the name Lung, which signifies "one whose wealth is from the earth." It's so much more lyrical and representative than "farmer."

Aunque me ha gustado mucho 'La buena tierra', he sufrido más que disfrutado con su lectura. Los personajes que aparecen en este libro son (practicamente todos) odiosos, mezquinos, crueles y egoístas, por lo que pasé casi toda la lectura enfadada.
A pesar de todo, es un libro que se ha quedado conmigo, esta autora tiene una manera muy sencilla de narrar pero que consigue que te lleguen sus palabras... Será difícil olvidar esa descripción de la pobreza más extrema, de la ingnoracia, la situación de la mujer como esclavas y la penosa vida de los campesinos...

Written by Pearl S. Buck, an American citizen who spent most of her childhood and much of her adult life in China, in 1931. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. I've heard much about it, mostly about a moment in the story when a woman gives birth and then goes back to work in the fields the same day, and have wanted to read it for quite some time.

I think it's always intimidating to read a classic. They are usually reserved for English classes or intellectuals and I worry that my understanding won't be up to snuff. Here goes:

The story begins on Wang Lung's wedding day. He is a peasant farmer, in China, who goes to the house of a wealthy farmer to pick up the bride his father has arranged for him to have: a plain, unattractive slave whose feet have never been bound and appear hideous to him. Large feet notwithstanding, he quickly learns to admire his hard-working and frugal wife. With their hard work and savings, Wang climbs up the economic ladder by being able to buy additional land to farm on. It's ALL about the land, in Wang's opinion. Land is forever. Land cannot be taken away.

Sure enough, what I heard about birthing and returning to work in the fields the same day was true. O-Lan, Wang's wife, is this incredibly docile, unassuming woman. She's the kind of woman that made me feel like a slacker for sitting around reading a book. Or taking a few weeks off of going to church after having a baby. I longed for more O-Lan, but that wasn't what this book was about. There were moments when I saw her pain, when I understood that in this culture, no one really loved O-Lan, despite her humility and service. Not her parents, who probably considered having a girl a burden and sold her as a slave when she was very young, not her owners, not her husband, and eventually, not even her own children. Wang appreciated her but all his appreciation did was allow him to feel ashamed when he brought a concubine to the home.

The beauty of the book, to me, was the irony that Buck skillfully weaves throughout the story. The rise and fall of the House of Hwang, where O-Lan was a slave, parallels Wang Lung's own story. It's the whole Nephite Pride Cycle! In fact, Buck's style of writing felt a bit like reading the scriptures. It was written dispassionately, even when writing about the character's passion. I also appreciated the Epic nature of the story. There is something to be learned from the successes and the tragedies.

As much as I liked it, and I liked it very much, I wasn't completely smitten. I read some of the original reviews which led to the Pulitzer Award, and most of them focus on the groundbreaking honest look into China. Apparently, up until that time, China, or the Orient, was poorly understood and most of the stories about it were romanticized and mystifying. Buck wrote about the China she saw, the day to day work and customs, the glory of sons to their families and the disregard to their daughters. While many parts of the story transcends time, parts of it felt obsolete and simple. Kind of like the first of anything. An original...yes. Groundbreaking...definitely. But then other books follow suit and readers have a choice of style and characters. I've read several books before that tell the chilling tale of peasant life in China. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan each detail the beauty, simplicity, horror and hardship of pre and post revolutionary China. Perhaps that exposure kept me from truly loving this story. Or maybe my expectations were too high.

No doubt, some of you who did read this in a class and had the opportunity to dissect it with an instructor, see what I am missing. If so...please share.

Until being convinced otherwise, my opinion is that this is a great book. Definitely a classic. But not one of my favorites.

What a strange a beautiful little book this is. From the day Wang Lung goes to claim a servant girl as his wife, to help him toil away in his small parcel of land, all the way to his death as a prosperous land-owner, we follow him in the tradition of the greatest classics that make the ordinary life sound extraordinary.

The tone of the prose, while beautiful, is also a strong clue that Buck’s parents worked as missionaries, because it reads almost like the Bible. Characters are hardly ever referred to by name, their function and place in Wang’s life are more important than their identity, so there are the wife, the eldest son, and so on. It’s fine for a while, but it can get a little irritating, and there’s something very ominous about it, which always hints of the next disaster Wang and his family will have to face. Reading a few reviews, I see that I am not the only one who was strongly reminded of Steinbeck while reading “The Good Earth”, especially “The Grapes of Wrath” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), as a lot of themes and events overlap: drought, starvation, forced migration, the necessity of family bonds to survive. Unlike in Steinbeck's famous book, Wang’s luck eventually turns, but not necessarily for the right reasons, and it does not bring him the peace he so desires.

While I did not like Wang’s character much, I appreciated that he is far from unidimensional: he is a human full of contradictions, pulled between his traditional values and feelings that do not always follow those traditions. Of course his sexism is egregious, and the fact that he turns precisely into the kind of rich old man he despised on the first page is a cruel irony of fate – but it is also completely believable.

I would be curious to read more of Buck’s work; she was a very talented writer with a keen eye for human nature, and an ability to capture the simple fact that people are essentially the same, no matter how far you go.

I probably would never have picked this book up had it not been chosen by a friend for a group read. Honestly, I don't go for Chinese lit very much, but I agreed to read this one, even though I was prepared to be bored at least. But I downloaded the audio version, read by Anthony Heald, and listened to the book while doing some much needed organizational stuff, and it was surprisingly good. I enjoyed the reading so much that I would sometimes stop doing stuff to just listen.

I think that had I read this on my own though, I don't think I'd have enjoyed it as much. There are times when a reader can add a whole lot to the story, and this was one of them. I actually do have an e-copy of the book, and I read along at some parts, and I think that listening to it was a fuller experience for me. Heald just seemed to GET these characters in a way I probably wouldn't have. He almost seemed to channel them so that his reading was borderline dramatization. It wasn't over the top - it was just perfect.

I don't know how much of this accurately represents Chinese culture. I don't know much about it myself, and so I took it all with a grain of salt. I don't particularly care for the attitudes towards women that are generally depicted in Chinese lit, so I don't read very much of it. But even if none of the cultural references are accurate, this was still an engaging and interesting story full of very human characters. At times, I didn't know whether to root for or against the main character, Wang Lung. I initially loved his character, and then as he progressed through life and different situational hardships and prosperity, I found myself mentally crossing my fingers while watching him with a wary eye. I wanted to like him, but sometimes the things he chose to do made that very, very hard. At one point, I was so disappointed in him, that I was shaking with anger at the sheer gall the man had, especially after everything, everything that had happened. That man had some cojones on him, I'll give him that.

I think that my favorite character in the story was O-lan. My heart broke for her. We never really get to know her fully, seeing things through Wang Lung's eyes, and he's not particularly perceptive when it comes to O-lan, or kind when he is, but I loved her. She never gave an inch of her dignity, no matter what her hardship, and she had so many. I was in awe of her, all while my heart hurt for the lack of gratitude she received for everything she gave. She deserved much better.

I found this to be an interesting story about a man's life and the things that he was able to achieve with that life, at the cost of so much, and the fleetingness of it all. I think that's what saddens me the most thinking about this book: we can't take any of it with us. I did enjoy this one, and I think the story will stay with me for a while, if nothing else.

Probably a 3.5 stars for me but I rounded it down because I thought the plot was predictable and this is one of the few books I believe that could have used a bit more detail. It is a good book, and one that was probably ground-breaking when written, about the life of Wang Lung and his wife O-Lan who were poor peasant farmers who made a living on their land, and who eventually through hard work and luck, were able to purchase greater amounts to land. In the story we are introduced to Wang's elderly father as well as his uncles family. Children are born, droughts and floods occur, there is starvation and begging and we see a lot of people leeching off of Wang Lung. He is a proud man who has a good sized ego and when he lets his ego and desires get in the way of his love of the land and farming the issues crop up. There are not a lot of decent characters in the book, and Wang's family is consumed with status and also despise each other. Glad I read the book, and it should produce a lively discussion at book club.

‘[T]urning this earth of theirs over and over to the sun, this earth which formed their home and fed their bodies and made their gods.’

Humans owe everything to the Earth. It has given us shelter, food, water, informed the creation of our societies and even today our lives are affected by the cycles of the planet. The Good Earth, the Pulitzer Prize winning book from Nobel Prize winning author Pearl S. Buck is an epic family saga that explores the power of the land and humankinds connection to it. Following Wang Lung from his youth on towards his twilight years, we see how ‘It was true that all their lives depended upon the earth.’ As the land provides—or takes away—family fortunes are made and lost as Buck explores class conflict through a fictionalized time of turmoil and revolt in an agrarian China of the early 1900s. A deeply symbolic and lovely work, The Good Earth reminds us of the frailties of life in an ever-changing world and Buck’s fusion of family (and her look at love and sacrifice) and farmland makes for a wonderful critique of society and reverence for the natural world.

Published to great acclaim in 1931, The Good Earth was adapted into a stage play in 1932 and then again as a film in 1937, Buck was then awarded the Nobel Prize in 1938 securing the story in the canon of “classic” literature. The novel feels familial with works like Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil—another multi-generational story of tending the land amidst a society rapidly changing and progressing—or the Dust Bowl drama’s of John Steinbeck for the commentaries on class struggles of the poor and working class and the way his novel share Buck’s statement that ‘ the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.’ While born in West Virginia, Pearl S. Buck moved to China at four month old, growing up and working as a missionary there until 1935. There is always an interesting discourse over this novel as a look at China due to this, though I always feel a work of fiction such as this is more about the emotional and universal insights on humanity than necessarily a historical learning lesson. Juhea Kim, author of Beasts of as Little Land, discusses this rather effectively in an article for Lit Hub, discussion how historical fiction about people of color (especially those written by women of color, though Buck is white) have mistaken expectations from readers who think they should ‘ come away from a historical novel feeling as though they’ve learned something.’ She disagrees, adding ‘the focus is on how their message relates to our lives today or the timeless human experience, not whether they can be instructive about history,’ which I feel is a good idea to keep in mind when reading this book (scroll to Celeste Ng’s review of this book for more commentary on this and her dislike of the book).

‘They must all starve if the plants starve.’

As the novel follows the cycle of seasons and crops, it too follows the cycle of Wang Lung’s life. The Good Earth begins with Wang Lung as a poor farmer working the land, a land that he will later own and grow rich from renting the land to farmers now beneath him. He has children and the story occasionally follows their lives and follies, yet Wang Lung remains the patriarchal center of both the family and novel. And through it all the land is ever present, binding the lives of the rich and poor, controlling their lives like a god.

‘The earth lay rich and dark, and fell apart lightly under the points of their hoes.... Some time, in some age, bodies of men and women had been buried there, houses had stood there, had fallen, and gone back into the earth. So would also their house, some time, return into the earth, their bodies also. Each had his turn at this earth. They worked on, moving together—together—producing the fruit of this earth—speechless in their movement together.’

The House of Hwang is symbolic of the struggle for wealth and the struggle to hold on to it without falling into destruction or despair. ‘To those at the great house it means nothing, this handful of earth,’ he says in his youth, ‘but to me it means how much!’ Throughout the novel, his connection to the land remains a constant and an indicator into his consciousness as well. When the land yields fruitful crops, he is pleased and thanks the gods. When it does not, or is stricken with drought or flood, he is irritable and ignores the gods (such as when moving south he ignores the statues). In between we see him constantly petitioning the gods with prayer, gods that might as well be the land itself.

‘The rich are always afraid.’

I quite enjoyed the moments of the people rising up and storming the rich house, and we witness how fortunes can fail as Wang Lung begins to buy up the land from the House of Hwang. The people he had to approach to buy a wife and felt fearful of suddenly owe him and this change of fortune swings the book into a new dynamic. Despite his class, we always see Wang Lung put great effort into playing a respectable role befitting his social class. Yet with wealth comes problems and we see him struggle, even morally such as ridding himself of his Uncle by getting him addicted to opium so they lay about stoned and out of his way. Which, damn dude. But family struggles also begin to fracture his life, and while he still enjoys working the land and retaining his connection to it, his sons do not. Thus they do not respect the land, and this detachment becomes felt as a sort of spiritual detachment. ‘It is the end of a family- when they begin to sell their land,’ we are told. Much as the Hwang family dynasty came to a close as they sold to Wang Lung, we learn his own sons plan to sell his land and feel little for it without having that connection to the soil. ‘Out of the land we came and into we must go - and if you will hold your land you can live- no one can rob you of land.’ As always, it is connection to the land that gives life, and the growing absence of his land parallels his aging and impending death.

Though it is important to speak about O-Lan, Wang Lung’s wife as she is equally critical to the novel even though she is thrown off from center focus. O-lan is always making sacrifices for the family, and often is the savior of the family. She makes hard decisions and works just as hard, returning to tend the land moments after giving birth or even killing a daughter she knows they cannot feed (interestingly both scenes seem familiar to similar ones in Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil, though that one spends much more time on consequences from the death of the child). Through O-lan we also see a very patriarchal society that is crushing towards women. While she is strong and resourceful, she is most noted for being ugly and has been purchased as a bride. She later sells her daughter into slavery so they can return to their land, which is pretty horrific. Her only prized possession are the small pearls she obtains during the revolt, juxtaposing the beauty of the pearls with Wang Lung’s perception of her as ugly, and his taking them and giving them to Lotus is symbolic of his thoughtlessness for his wife as well as the disintegration of their relationship. Throughout the novel women are viewed as either property or merely sexual satisfaction, and subjected to great hardships they are expected to bear in silence to uphold the family and the legacy of the men.

‘The kind earth waited without haste until he came to it.’

Understandably a classic, The Good Earth is a moving family saga that captures the struggles of family and our connection with the land. It also represents the passage of time and change, the world always moving forward like the seasons as generations grow and wither like the crops. The language isn't the most poetic but it will still certainly sweep you along and the fact that this book feels just as relevant and lovely today is a true testament to its lasting power.

3.5/5