Study Guide to The Good Earth by Pearl Buck

Intelligent Education

• Publisher: Influence Publishers
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781645423713
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Aides à l'étude
• Subtopic: Guides d'étude

A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1932. As a novel of the mid-twentieth century, The Good Earth was inspired by Buck’s experience living in China during the Boxer rebellion with her missionary parents. Moreover, the novel shows the author’s intense interest for people through description of the cycle of life. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history of Buck’s classic work, helping students to thoroughly explore the reasons it has stood the literary test of time. Each Bright Notes Study Guide contains: - Introductions to the Author and the Work
- Character Summaries
- Plot Guides
- Section and Chapter Overviews
- Test Essay and Study Q&As The Bright Notes Study Guide series offers an in-depth tour of more than 275 classic works of literature, exploring characters, critical commentary, historical background, plots, and themes. This set of study guides encourages readers to dig deeper in their understanding by including essay questions and answers as well as topics for further research.

INTRODUCTION TO PEARL BUCK

 

BIRTH

On June 26, 1892, a daughter was born to Absalom and Caroline Sydenstricker. The child was named Pearl. The couple had been missionaries to China; but when Caroline became sick, they returned home to Hillsboro, West Virginia, where their daughter was born. In 1894, at the age of two, Pearl went to China with her parents. Her father was assigned to a mission at Chinkiang on the Yangtse River, and there Pearl spent the next six years of her life.

EARLY LIFE

These formative years spent in China were probably the most important ones in developing the ideas of Pearl Buck. She was not merely an American girl living in a white colony of some highly civilized Chinese city. Because her father was a missionary, her entire existence was rooted in that of the land in which she lived. She was a child living among the Chinese themselves. All her friends and her schoolmates were Chinese. Their language became familiar enough for her to think in. Moreover, her native land, America, was like a storybook place. Her parents told her about it, spoke its language, and preserved its customs in their dress and in the manner in which they lived within the privacy of their own home. Thus, the young Pearl became a sort of American Chinese. As she describes herself in her autobiography, My Several Worlds, she became “mentally bifocal.” From her parents, she learned the American way of life. Her Chinese friends encouraged her to become one of them. In other words, in China she was like the European child, for example, that we all know in our own country. At home the parents preserve the Greek or Italian or Polish language and customs. On the streets and in school, the child learns the American way. Consequently, this young person’s knowledge of people may be much broader than that of those of us who have been limited to the narrower confines of one culture and language.

BOXER REBELLION

It is difficult to fully appreciate how Pearl Buck felt in the year 1900 when her world began to crumble around her. From the time she was two years old, she had been loved and accepted by the Chinese people among whom she lived. In her autobiography she speaks, for example, of eating the Chinese food. This was something usually not done by foreigners who often were made violently ill by it. Yet she never got sick and seemed to develop the same kind of immunity that the Chinese themselves had. She had lived among these people not as a stranger, but as one of them. Therefore, when her Chinese friends stopped speaking to her and even began avoiding her, the child could not understand it. Her little world was shattered by something that happened hundreds of miles away.

A group of Chinese, referred to as Boxers, had convinced the Empress that all foreigners should be driven out of China. Chinese cities had been taken over by countries such as France and England, who established colonies in them. European products were introduced to the medieval Chinese economy. At the same time, Europeans were buying raw materials from China at a cost much less than these could be gotten elsewhere. There was, of course, much advantage to China, since the Europeans also built railroads and introduced methods of sanitation unknown before. Some Chinese people, including the young Emperor Kwang-hsii, saw the advantages in the changes that the Europeans were making. However, an older, conservative group did not want things to change. Therefore, in 1990, a coup d’etat took place in which the young emperor was captured and imprisoned. Soon after this came the outbreaks against the foreigners.

Pearl Buck’s parents were Americans and missionaries. Neither of these groups had done anything to harm the Chinese. In fact, the missionaries, both European and American, had contributed much to Chinese health and education. Nevertheless, they were included in the group which the Boxers accused of introducing Western civilization into the old China world and were also to be driven out or killed. The Sydenstrickers did not leave willingly, however. Pearl’s father took his family down to Shanghai only when he realized that it was absolutely necessary to do so.

EFFECT ON MISS BUCK

In her autobiography, Pearl Buck says that the full emotional effect of the Boxer Rebellion did not come to her until after her adventure was over. She had returned to America with her parents, and in September of 1901 was at her grandfather’s farm in West Virginia. There she was told of the assassination of President McKinley. In her little girl’s mind she connected this with the events in China. Her only thought was: “Must we have the revolution here, too?” With this she burst into tears. This emotional outpouring resolved itself into a question which has perplexed Pearl Buck all of her adult life. The Christian culture of the West teaches that love and brotherhood must be the rule of life. By the same token, Asian culture teaches that life is sacred, and that it is evil to kill even a beast. Yet these two groups cannot get along with each other, or even sometimes with themselves. Why then this dichotomy between the thought and the deed, between the philosophies and the lives of men?

LATER LIFE

Pearl’s early education had been given her by tutors and at the mission school in Chinkiang. At fifteen she was sent to boarding school in Shanghai. Afterwards, at seventeen, she was enrolled at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia. She graduated in 1914, and then taught psychology there for one semester. On May 13, 1917, she married Dr. John Lossing Buck. Although they were divorced in 1935, the author had always used the name Pearl S. Buck professionally.

Between the years 1917 to 1925, Miss Buck taught English at the University of Nanking, at Southeastern University and at Chung Yang University. Since she had spoken both Chinese and English from her early childhood, she was well qualified for this work. In 1925, however, she went to Cornell University with her husband. Here she received her Master of Arts degree in English.

PUBLICATIONS

Although Pearl Buck had previously published articles in various magazines, her first novel East Wind: West Wind did not appear until 1930. This work, however, did not attract much attention. In 1931, the author published the novel upon which her entire reputation as a writer very probably rests. The Good Earth was published as the first novel in a proposed trilogy. Sons appeared in 1932, and A House Divided came out in 1935. In this year also, House of Earth, a collected edition of these three novels, was published.

OTHER WORKS

A list of Pearl Buck’s other novels, classified according to theme, can be found in the Bibliography section of this study guide. Here it is appropriate to mention the two biographies which she wrote about her parents: The Exile and Fighting Angel, both published in 1936. The first of these, The Exile, had actually been written years before, but had never been published. These works, perhaps even more than any of her novels including. The Good Earth, show the author’s intense interest in people. In them she tells the story of her parents and of their struggle for the people of China. Their intention was not simply to bring to these people religion as dogma, but to bring to them the strength and love of Christianity.

THE GOOD EARTH

Published in 1931, The Good Earth is probably the author’s best work. In it she attempts to describe the cycle of life: beginning the story with her hero as a young man and completing it with his death. This novel aroused mixed reactions among both Americans and Chinese. Many Americans who regarded the story as too Chinese had difficulty identifying with it. On the other hand, many Chinese did not think it oriental enough. They regarded its subject - the peasant farmer - as unworthy of a book about China. These aristocratic Chinese intellectuals wanted the world to see their country as a center of culture and good living. But history has proven them wrong. Centuries of corrupt rule finally caused the country to collapse under the weight of its own inequities. The long-suffering farmer - the backbone of this agricultural land - was virtually given over to the most ruthless of his oppressors, the Communists.

Some comment on this subject was printed in the January 15, 1933, edition of the New York Times. Professor Kiang KangHu wrote a letter containing the following criticisms of Pearl Buck’s work:

“Her portrait of China may be quite faithful from her point of view … she seems to enjoy more depicting certain peculiarities and defects than presenting ordinary human figures … Pearl Buck is more of a caricature cartoonist than a portrait painter … Very often I felt uneasy at her minute descriptions of certain peculiarities and defects of some lowly bred Chinese characters … she portrays her own young life in China as much under the influence of Chinese coolies and amahs … They may form the majority of the Chinese population, but they are certainly not characteristic of the Chinese people.”

What the professor objected to, therefore, was the author’s selectivity: her focus on the hardships of the peasant farmer, borne with stoic courage, instead of the cultural lives of the upper class, certainly atypical of the China she knew. Pearl Buck answered these objections in a letter printed in the Times on the same day as the professor’s. Perhaps the most important part of it is her concluding remarks:

“As to whether I am doing China a service or not in my books only time can tell. I have received many letters from people who tell me they have become interested in China … I can write only what I know and I know nothing but China, having always lived there … I write about the people I do know … the people in China I love best to live among, the everyday people …”

Time has proven Pearl Buck right. The Chinese intellectuals with little concern for the realities of life failed to make China a strong, united nation. In their place, the Communists have been able to cash in on their policies and drive the last vestige of hope from the land.

SUCCESS

Although The Good Earth is a controversial novel, it has enjoyed considerable success. It was a best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for its author. Since its appearance, it has been translated into more than thirty languages. In 1932, Owen and Donald Davis dramatized it; later the story was made into a very successful movie. The reason for the success of The Good Earth is simple. It tells of a man’s struggle for life, for success, and for happiness. The concretes of this struggle may be of a Chinese farmer acting in his particular context, but the abstract meaning of his struggle - for existence and happiness - has a universality not limited by the geographic boundaries of China.

NOBEL PRIZE

When Pearl Buck was declared the winner in 1938 of the Nobel Prize for literature, a storm of protest went up. Many people thought that she had not contributed enough to world literature to deserve such a great prize. But perhaps these people were looking only at the concretes of her fiction. The abstractions involved in her stories had universal appeal and she had written with understanding of human beings weathering severe hardships. In addition, she had written two biographies in which she showed a man and a woman struggling to succeed in their chosen professions - as missionaries. After all, the purpose of the Nobel Prize is to reward those who are trying to promote peace and understanding among mankind. This is what Pearl Buck is trying to do. Anders Osterling in Nobel: The Man and His Prizes summed up the selection of Miss Buck in these words:

“The decisive factor in the Academy’s judgment was, above all, the admirable biographies of her parents … two volumes which seemed to deserved classic rank and to possess the required prospects for permanent interest.”

OTHER HONORS

The list of awards and honors which Pearl Buck has received during her lifetime is too long to include here. She has received honorary degrees from universities like Yale. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her books have received many individual awards.

PEARL BUCK, THE PERSON

When reading the works of Pearl Buck, one very quickly discovers that the author’s sympathies lie greatly with the Chinese. Yet it is not a political or a religious interest. Her interest is in people for themselves; and, as she has so often said, the Chinese are the people she knows best. In 1900, and again in 1927, she had had to flee because she was not Chinese. At present she is living in America and will probably never see China again because of the Communist takeover. However, Miss Buck continues to work to help her people. In 1949, for example, she founded Welcome House where American born orphans of Asian ancestry could live until new homes were found for them. In this way she continues the work which her parents did before her, and which she herself did for so many years as a missionary and teacher in China.

THE GOOD EARTH

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

CHAPTER ONE

The story begins on the wedding day of Wang Lung. He rises early, bathes himself, and goes into town where he is to meet his bride. Because his mother is dead, he must shop for the food for the wedding feast; at the market he buys some pork and some beef. He has himself shaven at the barber’s so as to present a perfectly clean appearance when he meets his bride. When he first goes to the House of Hwang for O-lan, his bride, he is frightened; he leaves and returns later. The gateman brings Wang Lung in to the Old Mistress who gives O-lan to him and ...