I remember reading The Good Earth in middle school or so, but all I remember is that it was a very hard book for me. I think I read all the words, but I didn’t really get any meaning from the text. So I was surprised, though I probably shouldn’t have been, at how much it grabbed me when I picked it up again earlier this month as part of my Nobel laureate reading project. Pearl Buck received the 1938 Nobel Prize in literature, so I read her as part of my Nobel literature project.
I like to go into a book as ignorant as possible. I don’t want to know much about the author, the plot, or the reviews before I read it. I am very impressionable, and I can often be persuaded to read a book a certain way if I know too much about it before the fact. I’m especially glad I did that for The Good Earth because I’ve been reading some impressions of the book that are very different from mine.
My favorite aspect of the book was the way we see other characters through Wang Lung’s eyes, which tells us about both him and the other characters. He says that O-lan is dull and simple, but we see her resourcefulness and strength time and time again. We learn that he doesn’t understand or appreciate her at the same time we learn she is a quiet but deep character. Some reviews and comments I’ve read about the book have taken Wang Lung’s word for it, which to me seems like it’s missing the entire point. Wang Lung tells us what her character is, while O-lan shows us something very different.
I guess the thing that struck me the most about the book was the tension between the way I felt about Wang Lung and the way I should have felt based on his behavior. He was the protagonist of the book, and he was a sympathetic character even though he also did a lot of bad things. His self-image as a wholesome, hard-working farmer came through in how I felt about him despite his many shortcomings.
The Nobel Prize was awarded to Buck for her “rich and epic descriptions of peasant life in China.” I don’t know very much about how the novel is now viewed by Chinese and Chinese-American people. Knowing that Buck was a white American woman made me uncomfortable about some of the descriptions of Chinese cultural practices. It’s too easy to read about things like foot binding or buying a woman and think about how barbaric and backwards “they” were. While that only occasionally came to mind for me, I can understand why some people would find parts of the book offensive.
That said, I was drawn in by the story of The Good Earth, and I hope to finish the trilogy eventually.
Recent Comments