4.5
Usually, before starting any book I make sure to read the blurb or at least a few reviews. But for ‘The Good Earth’ i didn’t even try to read either, which actually turned out to be a plus point for me because if I had read I wouldn’t have picked it up for sure. I picked it on a friend’s recommendation, I wanted to read a good book with good writing and she promised me it was one of those and she was absolutely right. Now I am glad for having read this.

This is a simple book on a simple man, but what makes it special is the way the story has been told, which instantly connects and binds the readers to the story and all the characters.
The story is about a poor farmer Wang Lung who marries a slave from the big house, O-lan. Wang’s love for his land was pure. All he ever wished was to work on it, earn money, buy more land and stay happy. But life was not as simple as he thought it would be. He had his share of difficulties which he overcame with the help of his wife. As time passed with his efforts he became rich his family grew, he had more mouths to feed including his father’s brother’s family.
But as he grew richer the problems in his life became bigger and more complicated. When he was poor he was satisfied with food and shelter but his richness bought him unnecessary wants in his life and different kinds of problems that only people with money could have.
Personally, I loved Wang’s character until he became rich, not that I hated him afterwards but I did not like the way he treated his obedient wife as nothing more than a servant in his life. Suddenly he started ignoring her, married someone much prettier than her, without even knowing how she felt. But finally, when he realised her value in his life it was too late.
Also, this book brings out the generation gap between Wang and his sons, wherein the good earth (his land) plays a prominent role. While he respected his land never even thought of selling it even when he was poor but whereas his sons never bother about it at all because they were well educated and their mind worked differently. They also thought about selling the land even though they had enough money, forgetting all the richness that they enjoyed throughout their life came from this good earth. Likewise, there are few situations in this book that makes one think about what money can do to a human being if it is in abundance and not spent meaningfully.

On the whole, I loved this book. The beauty of this book more than in the story or characters lies in the way it has been conveyed by author Pearl S Buck.

https://varshasbookshelf.blogspot.com/

شخص بلا أرض، شخص بلا جذور
من الروايات التى شعرت بكم هائل من المشاعر و انا أقرأها، بداية من التعاطف مع ذلك الفلاح البائس في صراعه مع حياة قاسية ،صراع مرير يبدو بلا نهاية مع ظروف أقوى من قدرته البسيطة على مقاومتها، مروراً برحلته الشاقة للحفاظ على أرضه بعد أن أبتسم له القدر أخيراً لينتقل من الفاقة إلى عالم الثراء دون أن يفقد جذوره كفلاح يعرف قيمة الأرض و يقدسها
وصف الكاتبة كان أكثر من رائع و بخاصة في الفصول الأولى من الكتاب و الذى ذكرني برائعة عبدالرحمن الشرقاوي"الأرض" و يبدو أن معاناة البشر مع الارض واحدة مهما أختلف المكان، النهاية أيضاً رغم قسوتها كانت مميزة و معبرة، البطل"وانغ" يتخلى عن زوجته"اولان" بعد أن طرق الثراء بابه متناسياً رحلتها الشاقة معه، ليتخلى أولاده عن الأرض التى طالما أفني حياته في خدمتها، ليطغى بريق المال على أى أنتماء للأرض في نهاية حزينة للعمل لكنها واقعية و مميزة
كتاب رائع و أستحقت عنه الكاتبة الفوز بجائزة نوبل عن جدارة

G9 LL
When "The Good Earth" comes to mind, people would think of how the novel won a Pulitzer Prize and how amazing the novel is. However, I disagree with the majority and how they all praise the oh so famous novel. One important aspect of this novel is that it portrays the society during the late Qing dynasty. Yet, some Western beliefs and Christian beliefs are included in the novel, considering that Buck is the daughter of Christian missionaries. If one did not have basic knowledge about Christianity, they would not understand the symbolism and some important scenes in the novel. I, for example, am not Christian and did not understand this novel to its full extent. Another drawback of this book is the sentence structure and diction Buck uses. What's a "firewagon"? A train. A direct translation of the word 火车, which means train in Chinese. I would recommend this book for more mature readers since there are some *intense scenes* such as when Wang Lung "seized" O-lan. However, after reading this book, I gained historical knowledge through the description of the social context but was not entertained during the reading process. This book is definitely NOT for everyone and will only suit a small range of readers.

Part of my Fall 2017 Best Of Chinese Literature project; more here, and a cool list of books here.

"In China," the story about Pearl Buck goes, "she is admired but not read; in America, she is read but not admired." And here we are wondering: should we read her? Should we admire her?

The Chinese part of the story goes like this: Pearl Buck, the daughter of missionaries, spent most of her first 40 years in China. She wrote this book about Chinese peasants during the last stages of pre-Communist China, the 1920s. Under Mao the story was seen as embarrassing and backward, and Buck died in exile. Now her reputation is changing: people like Nanjing University's Liu Haiping point out, "She was the first writer to choose rural China as her subject matter. None of the Chinese writers would have done so; intellectuals wrote about urban intellectuals." So the admiration, in China, is new but real.

The US part goes like this: If you wanted an English book about China, for most of the 20th century this was about as authentic as you could get. It won the Pulitzer in 1931; she won the Nobel a little later. Oprah read it with her book club. Buck's even given credit for warming the US up to China, just in time for World War II. But now the world is closer together and we have access to more books about China and Buck isn't our only source anymore. Fewer people are reading her. She's out of style, seen as sentimental and naive.

Which, I mean, it totally is. It's very hard to read about a starving infant and not feel manipulated. That's not exactly Buck's fault - it's the starving infant's fault, because they seriously did that in real life sometimes, starve, and you rather wish they wouldn't. In the meantime, it's not a subtle story. And Buck has this weird thing where she keeps saying old-timey stuff like "It is not meet" and "tarry" and "I would lief," like she's, I don't know, translating a Norse epic.

And also there isn't exactly a plot per se, unless you consider a person's life a plot, which of course it isn't or we wouldn't need books. It's about this ambitious peasant guy, Wang Lung; it starts on his wedding day (to a slave he's never met) and goes right through the rest of his life with her. (She is O-lan, your favorite character by a country mile.) There are vicissitudes. He's rich, he's poor. He makes some good decisions and some bad ones. They're all complicated and real-feeling. He does this super cold thing at one point: he's got this uncle who's a scrounger and a thief, and he's like how can I protect myself from this schmuck, so here's what he does: he gets his uncle and his aunt addicted to opium, just so they'll be out of his hair. It works and they spend literally the rest of their lives lying on their beds stoned. Holy shit, right? That is cold! You don't see a move like that coming, and it's really interesting.

So look, now that we have all these books in translation by native Chinese authors, Pearl Buck has some competition. This isn't my favorite of the novels I've read this fall. (The Vagrants is.) But it does cover a period that I hadn't read about in the other books, partly because of that Mao-era hush, and I blazed through it with pleasure. I would lief read the next two in the trilogy.

Man, that sounds awful, doesn't it? That word sucks.

Firstly, I'm really sorry Kathy!! I know you love this book but I have to be honest.

I hated this book.

I guess I'm just not a fan of reading books where all women are worthless fools and all men are ill tempered perverts. The only character I didn't want to throttle was O'lan who had a horrible life and was treated terribly. *sigh* This book epically bummed me out. I feel gross. I'm really angry with it. I want to throw it away instead of try to trade it on PBS just so I can get some closure on it.

For the birds!

I’m pleased I’ve read this book, mostly because it’s another Pulitzer Prize Classic I can boast I’ve read. I was reasonably happy with the story until about half way. Then, when the hero’s fortunes, Wang-Lung, improved, I lost interest. With wealth, his character changed and he started making oddly stupid decisions in his life. My sympathy for him vanished.

Like The Grapes of Wrath, this book piles ‘this-and-that’ misery on depressing misery. To make matters worse, The Good Earth is appallingly sexist, to the point I’m embarrassed to be part of the male species. The story unfolds during the first half of the 20th Century. I enjoy historical fiction, but I’m left wondering how accurate Ms Buck has depicted this slice of China’s history. It doesn’t bear much credence. And instead of ending properly, the story continues into two more books. No thank you, this first was more than enough for me.

Book borrowed from library.

This is a quietly told story of a Chinese farmer's life in the pre-revolution days. My feeling is that I liked it, but did not love it (the rating would be 3.4, rounded down).

It is a heartfelt account of life in the grassroots society of that era, with its own epoch-relevant values, superstitions, class distinction and sexist attitude, not any dissimilar to that depicted in other Chinese literary works relating to that era (Ba Jin's The Family, Autumn, Spring comes to mind). What sets this novel apart from those Chinese works is perhaps the absence of bitterness in the narrator's voice, which comes in a calm, surreal tone. Why could the author write in such a tone? It is because she was a foreign visitor living in China only for a temporary period of time. But as a story, it is superbly structured and told with credibly indigenous parlance.

الأرض الطيبة...تلك الرواية التى كانت سببا من الأسباب الرئيسية لحصول الكاتبة على جائزة نوبل واحتلت صدارة المبيعات فى أمريكا عام 1931 و1932
الكاتبة وصفت بدقة المجتمع الصينى كمجتمع مثل كل المجتمعات له عاداته وتقاليده التى نقلتها بيرل باك من قلب ريف الصين الفقير بداية بالفلاح (وانغ وانغ) الذى ترى ��لامحه فى أول مشاهد الرواية مع والده العجوز ورغبته فى الزواج من أحد خادمات البيت الكبير لتساعده فى أعمال المنزل والأرض ويبدأ بتكوين أسرة مع الطيبة ( أولان ) تلك الخادمة الفقيرة الجمال و قليلة الكلام والتي كانت اكثر شخصية تعاطفت معها وأحببتها في الرواية.وشعرت للحظات أنها هي نفسها الأرض الطيبة..
استفزني صمتها وتعجبت لقوة تحملها وصلابتها الشديدة لآخر لحظة في حياتها
حزنت لفقدها اللؤلؤتين!!
بل لفقدها لمكانتها عند زوجها والتي أدركها بعد فوات الأوان
تروى الكاتبة قصة كفاح البطل حيث بدايته من الفقر حتى وصوله إلى كونه أغنى رجل فى القرية حتى عانى من الكساد الاقتصادى الذي صاحب ظروف المناخ السيئة والثورة التى حدثت فى الصين والمجاعات
صراع الإنسان مع البيئة...الجوع...الموت!
نجحت الكاتبة فى توصيل صورة الفلاح الصينى البسيط المرتبط بالأرض حتى بعد أن أصبح قريبا من الموت ولدرجة أنه من الممكن ان يبيع ابنته لتعيش عبدة للأبد ليعود لأرضه..
و لكنه لازال يوصى أولاده بالأرض وهم يبتسمون سرا ويعلمون انهم سيبيعونها حينما يموت.
إنها الصين تلك البلاد البعيدة الموجودة فى أقصى شرق العالم المليئة بالحكايات والأساطير
رواية جميلة... جعلتني أشم رائحة الحقول وأشعر بالجفاف..واخشى الفيضان..وانتظر المطر

ی قصه ی کهن اما هنوز پر تکرار...
خاک خوب نه تنها روایت زحمت و زمینه، که قصه ی ریشه ها و پیشینه هاست.

این کتاب، داستان چند نسل و دیدگاهشون نسبت به زمین، زندگی، ازدواج و ثروت اندوزی رو در بر میگیره.

لانگ که در زندگی، جز کار سنگین، تنگدستی و سیاهی ندیده، به واسطه ی ازدواج با کنیزی روی زمین پا سفت میکنه و سرش رو به سمت آسمون میگیره... گرچه دنیا همیشه به یک اندازه خوشی و نعمت بهش روا نمیداره اما بعد ورود و همت این کنیز، راه موفقیت و اعتبار برای لانگ هموار میشه.
این ثروت، ایده آل های لانگ رو تغییر میده اما باز هم فقط بازگشت به زمین و لمسش، برای اون حس امنیت و تسلی خاطر رو به همراه میاره.
خاک خوب، روایت تراژیک دیگه ای از زندگی رو هم نشون میده، زنی که همیشه تحقیر شده، باورهاش از ارزشمند بودنش از همون ابتدا لگدمال شده، تاب اوردن و پوست کلفتی بهش تحمیل شده، و عادت کرده فراتر از جسم و روحش بار زندگی رو به دوش بکشه، حتی وقتی با رنج و تلاش، به ثبات مالی میرسه، آسایش و رفاه رو حق خودش نمی دونه، و تا پایان عمر، سهمش از زندگی سکوت، حسرت، نگاه و آرزوی خوشبختی خانواده ش میشه.
اما لانگ، با وجود شرمندگی در مقابل سازگاری و فداکاری های این زن، همیشه با نگاهی از بالا اون رو با زن های رنگ و لعاب دار قهوه خانه ها مقایسه میکنه و در نهایت بخشی از حاصل این تلاش بی چشمداشت رو با دست و دلبازی در مسیر هوس هاش و مخفی کردن اصل خودش هزینه میکنه...

نکته ای که ممکن بود با بهتر پرداختن، کمی سطح کتاب رو برای من تغییر بده رد پای جنگ بود، البته اشاره ای کوچک به اعلامیه هایی که علت فقر رو پولدارها میدونست، تکان کوچکی به داستان داد اما در حواشی زندگی لانگ‌ اهمیتشون گم شد:
"عجب جاهل و نفهمی هستی تو که هنوز موهای سرت را می بافی، و مثل دم آویزان می کنی! وقتی باران نیاید که کسی نمی‌تواند آن را بباراند. اما این به ما چه ربطی دارد؟ اگر پول دار ها آنچه دارند با ما قسمت کنند، باریدن یا نباریدن باران برای کسی تفاوت نمی کرد چون که همه پول و خوراک داشتند."

داستان بدی نداره، روایت ی زندگیه اما این کتاب نکته ای نداره که از بقیه ی کتاب های مشابه متمایزش کنه!

‘The Good Earth’ was published in 1931 and it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. The book was a bestseller as well, and its success led Pearl S. Buck, the author, to write two more books about the Chinese family she introduced in 'The Good Earth' creating a series now called The House of Earth Trilogy.

Frankly, I think Pearl Buck is actually more interesting than her famous book, deserving as it may be of the prize with which it was awarded. Buck had a complicated life, having been married twice, earning a Master's degree at Cornell in 1924 when women were barely allowed to set foot in any American college, moving between China and America until China exiled her after the Communist Revolution. Buck grew up in China from when she was a baby (born in Hillsboro, West Virginia in 1892), leaving China for the first time in 1914 to attend college as an undergraduate. Her parents, Presbyterian missionaries, served for decades living amongst the Chinese and had raised Pearl to be bilingual, so when China forbid her return in 1949, she was deeply grieved. She eventually waded into Presbyterian church politics in America over evolution, mixed-race children, and original-sin doctrinal fights, which got her booted as a missionary in 1933. Most of her life afterwards was in charity and foundation work. She was a HUGE supporter of women's rights.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funda...


Anyway. The book I am supposed to be reviewing, 'The Good Earth' is amazing. It is a basically a fictional biography of an illiterate Chinese peasant, Wang Lung. He never learns to read, as obviously you have, gentle reader, but the traditions and life of a Chinese farmer far from any city or school or technology or anything modern of any kind at the beginning of the 20th century did not require any knowledge of books or the world. All a man needed before World War I in China was his own land to farm, usually inherited, and people to help him farm, usually a slave or two, preferably a strong peasant woman to eventually give him boys and maybe a dependable neighbor who would work for food. It greatly helped to have no vices, only goals, as it does everywhere in the world, even now.

Life was incredibly primitive and hard in the early 20th century of China, but it was all people knew. Rural people underwent famines in the years of drought, and cannibalism was not unheard of in China when the crops failed.

The main character Wang Lung has a small farm in Anhwei, and with his aged father occasionally helping a little, he grows rice, corn and wheat. When he finally has a few coins of silver, he buys a slave from the one rich family in the area, the Hwangs who live in a nearby town. Wang makes the slave O-Lan his wife, and the two of them farm. When O-Lan gives birth, she leaves the fields only for a few hours, returning to help Wang in the fields as soon as she can. The years pass, interrupted by famines and births of children, but generally Wang prospers.

Wang is no saint, but he is not a monster either. Wang believes in the gods and in the moral values of his society. Within the cultural context and hardships of his community, he raises and supports a family, he tries to instill the values of hard work in his male children, and he has many hopes and dreams for the future. But it is clear to readers his ignorance of anything beyond a few miles of his home is profound. There is a mention of a new thing to him and his community - a railroad, which historically places the time of the story to be around 1900, as does the famine which almost destroys the Wang family.

It is never clear if O-Lan means any more to him than a valued servant, but she certainly helps him more than he ever acknowledges. As success makes Wang's life easier, especially the hard work of O-Lan in the fields and in the house, and especially as scrupulous as O-Lan is in saving money and in taking care of the needs of Wang's father and the children, he buys more land and hires neighbors to help him plant and harvest the crops on his expanding land holdings.

Eventually his eye falls on a beautiful prostitute he feels he must have as a second wife or concubine. What makes Lotus Flower even more enticing to him beyond the powerful lust and love she arouses in him, is the fact her purchase signals to the community he has arrived as a Big Man of wealth and power. Still, while he totally ignores his family's feelings - indeed, it never enters his mind to think about their lives except as ornaments and tools to be bent to his purpose - he tries to accommodate everyone with a room, food and work appropriate to their abilities. He is not unduly cruel, but he does satisfy his whims and desires at the expense of his family and servants under his roof. After all, it is his Gods-given right.

The story in this novel is from the viewpoint of Wang, but the reactions of the women, while opaque to Wang since he never bothers questioning about their internal life (indeed, he doesn't really know how to ask himself questions very much), are revealed by the stances and actions of their bodies, or by vocal expressions Wang does notice. His adult male children, educated, more worldly (but not much more) speak their minds, but it is obvious they mystify Wang. However, readers can see they do not respect the old peasant morals of their father, and they are often patronizing Wang to get more money from him beyond the generous allowances he gives them. But it is obvious he is less and less involved with the details of what is going on around him.

Wang knew how to farm, and he worked hard. While his hard work and luck gains him the wealth and educated male children he had hoped for, he lives inside a smaller and smaller bubble of understanding and knowing the people of his life, not that he knows or cares to learn more about this, although he occasionally is disturbed by the signs of them changing around him. As he ages, the things which concern him most are the comforts of eating, sleeping, making sure his children are all married off, and occasionally walking about his land. The adult sons think the farm would better serve the family if it was sold, although they keep this opinion between themselves. However, they know he has made plans for his funeral when he dies, and they see he is getting old, so they are making plans, too. The women as well as the men are more and more fractious and disputatious, but as the patriarch who controls the purse, he can choose to send them away or punish them, and he does. Wang does not hesitate to punish those who disturb his peace of mind or mess up his plans. Having known extreme starvation and poverty, Wang believes only the owning of his farm and holding to the traditional ways gave him success and respect, and ultimately has made him safe. His adult children, though, are squabbling with each other and him, so he begins more and more to settle problems in a manner to stop their nagging rather than in the most efficient way. Money is no longer an obstacle to any solution, and he cares less and less about wasting it. His children have either never known poverty or do not remember it. They have no emotional connection to the farm whatsoever.

As girls were considered useless except for birthing boys in ancient China, even in the face of the obvious evidence women contributed much economically, clearly cultural mores are a powerful force in blinding or shaping the paradigm in which people see their lives and their family members. Buck shows this blindness pervading ancient Chinese cultural life. Even the slaves and women see themselves as unworthy to be anything but slaves during the times in history when very little was known about other cultures or even anything about the home country a peasant lived in beyond where people were born. Demonstrating how difficult it is to accept how awful and horribly wrong the more insane aspects of one's personal culture regarding women is we only have to look at today's theocracies which are connected, however imperfectly, to satellite television and radio shows, and travel to other countries, which allow other more open countries and their customs to be known. Many patriarchal cultures actually decide to attach deeper and harder into the mores and customs of their patriarchal culture, no matter how painful or psychotic towards women, despite the logic and evidence of the benefits of allowing women an education and any recognition of their contributions to economic prosperity.

Having been raised by parents with almost no education myself, and having had a patriarchal father with a traditional set of mores, I can vouch for the accuracy of the mindset of Buck's characters. Such people do not know what others know about other cultures or ideas, much less that there might exist other cultures, or what people learn from reading and books. They often do not understand how to compose a story or what the details shown of a character might imply. Not being able to write, they find it difficult to formulate ideas and questions. As they age, they either resist or fear change, or cannot understand the new cultural paradigms. So, I was impressed by what seemed to me to be Pearl Buck's accurate portrayal of illiterate minds.

Buck makes it crystal clear in 'The Good Earth' how Chinese peasants thought and lived before the Communist Revolution. Her writing has a slight intonation and cadence of the King James version of the Bible to it, but it is literary quality. I have read the commentary from professional critics about her representations of life in rural China, and the vast majority agree her books are authentic and true to life.

Btw, when I read this in high school almost fifty years ago, I did not understand it beyond the surface plot, and it bored me. Education and experience have changed every perception I had had about this novel. Wow.

How must you live your life?


This is a novel with a plot replete with startling developments and a female character—the farmer’s wife O-lan—who stood out heroically even though she had spoken maybe less than a dozen words in the entire novel.

One should live life treating what is unsaid as just as important as what has been said.

Published in 1931 and made into an Oscar winning movie in 1937, The Good Earth owes much of its popularity to the Depression. There were two options for Americans who didn't leap from a building or leave the country. You could sit in the dark of a cinema and watch rich people in gowns and tuxedos drink champagne and enter into comic/romantic situations OR you could watch the tearjerkers and other tales of even harder lives than your own. The Good Earth falls into the latter category on the screen as well as the page.

Whatever is happening to your bank balance or in your romantic life, this book will touch you.It's a very human story of good and bad fortune and the curve balls you don't see coming. If you want to visit China, go. I did when it first opened up. But don't confuse this novel with a copy of Fodor's or a Lonely Planet guide. Buck lived in China and knew it at a particular time. For something more up to date read Timothy Mo's Sour Sweet about Chinese immigrants in London. You may still order sweet and sour sauce, but won't look at it the same way again.