The Good Earth, Pearl. S. Buck

The period, from 1890s to 1930s, when Pearl S. Buck was resided in, the China society was in a great chaos with both internal and external issues. First of all, there was a severe antipathy against foreigners and its cultures. It was not merely because of their nationalism but, above all, foreign countries such as United Kingdom, France, Japan, and United States etc., in fact, invaded China ruthlessly from the preceding years, forcing them to agree with the unequal treaties. Those treaties resulted in the destruction of the national independence - represents their pride - which lasted for nearly four-thousand years. Moreover, treaties legalized the importation of opium which produces all evil and no good, ruining the human-health and social functions. It is estimated that the opium-addicts in China, at the time, were approximately twenty-five million . Christianity was unwelcomed either. Despite the sincere endeavor of many missionaries, the Chinese response to their religious message and social activities was at best disappointing and at worst violently hostile. The bitterest opposition came from the gentry, who reacted against what they saw as a threat to their position in rural society. Also, Christianity had long been rejected by Confucian scholars as intellectually spurious . After all, those sentiments resulted in the outburst of the Boxer Uprising in 1900, which attempted and failed to eradicate foreigners and its cultures including Christianity. Pearl Buck also had her own experience of this as well. The year 1927 saw one of the most dramatic events in her life when an anti-foreign movement erupted in Nanjing. She made a narrow escape because some Chinese friends offered to hide her from the attacking army. She wrote later about that escape:
“I have had that strong and terrible experience of facing death because of my color. At that time nothing I might have done could have saved me. I could not hide my race. The only reason I was not killed was because some of those in that other race knew me, under my skin, and risked their own lives for me and mine. ”

Secondly, the quality of life in China become devastated by the ongoing wars and conflicts both in and out. While internally, two political parties – Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, and Guomindang – fighting against each other, externally, foreign countries, still, especially, Japan after it became a winner-country in the first World War, invaded and plundered the land aggressively. It produced a fatal economic recession in China, and it led people loss of their life and distrust over the government. To make the matter worse, the population of China has been skyrocketed. It was approximately 0.3 billion in 1800s, but it became 0.4 billion in 1850s. By those factors, people were, eventually, exploded into a myriad of rebellions against government or landlord, and mobs become prevalent across the country.
In addition, the traditional values were faltered significantly. Set aside of the on-changing concepts on the social status, image of women, or Confucianism, the Xinhai(辛亥) Revolution, occurred in 1911 with Wuchang Uprising, motivated by anger at corruption in the Qing government, imply the most important message over the entire China history. This revolution was the first to overthrow a monarchy completely which had been lasted for about four-thousand years and attempt to establish a Republic .
The unstable and unsecured society stimulated a number of Chinese to emigrate to the other countries. Since Chinese coolies(苦力) – means laborer doing arduous job, originated from Hindu –, were the cheap workforce so that they became welcomed by the colonial powers including United States after the abolishment of slavery from the British possessions in 1849. The time when Pearl Buck was born, in 1892, a plenty of Chinese were already immigrated to the United States especially in the east-coast area such as San Francisco and California to work in the Central Pacific Railroad and the mining industry. According to the Census Bureau, in June, 1880, the total Chinese population in all over the states, at the time, were 127,193. Interestingly, Chinese population in California and San Francisco were 75,025 and 21,745 each out of whole population of 864,686 and 233,953 respectively . Despite with this great number, Chinese so called inferior race, were suffered from the harsh racial discrimination. On October 8, 1888, President Grover Cleveland signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which restricted Chinese immigration to the United States. The law prohibited Chinese immigrants who returned to China from coming back to the United States. President Chester Arthur passed the first bill limiting Chinese immigration in 1882, and the federal government did not eradicate barriers to Chinese immigration until 1943 . In addition, by 1924, all Asian immigrants were utterly excluded by law, denied citizenship and naturalization, and prevented from marrying Caucasians or owning land .
The fierce discrimination throws back to the spirit of “Manifest Destiny” spoken by John L. O’Sullivan in 1845, a belief that the United States - or Whites - is destined to expand across the North American continent. It also believes the natural superiority of what was then called the “Anglo-Saxon race”. This justified the war with Mexico, taking lands away from Indians, called Trail of Tears, freedom away from blacks , and in later, imperialism , colonizing other countries over the globe. Interestingly, Hegel, the thinker of the period, described China as, “China with space, without time.”, meaning that there is neither change nor development throughout the history; Weber, similarly, said, “Chinese are timid, dull with no dignity and sympathy. ” Likewise, Whites, at the time, were captured by the superiority, and still underestimated different skin colors like Chinese.
One more thing that needs to be addressed in the history of United States in this period is the Great Depression. The crash of 1929 had precipitated the most wrenching domestic crisis since the Civil War. An economic structure that had seemed unshakable simply disintegrated, and no one could explain why. By the middle of 1932, American industrial production had been cut in half, and wages for workers who still had jobs had dropped almost as steeply. Unemployment was nearing one-quarter of the workforce, the largest figure in the nation’s history. The prices of stocks fell by as much as 90 percent. Under the statistics lay millions of individual tragedies, which bred an unprecedented mood of national anxiety and doubt . The depression had been prolonged up until the Second World War.

The ‘Earth’ is sometimes referred to a ‘Mother’. Like a mother bears a child and give birth to a baby, the earth embrace a life and deliver a fruit. The author, in this respect, indicate a greatness of a woman indirectly through depicting both O-lan, a mother, and earth in the novel, giving similarities between the two. Both pictured as dull, rough but silent, devotional, honest, hardworking, wise, and most of all, conceive life. Thus, in this perspective, O-lan who delivers the child continuously and easily seems to be the “Good Earth”. O-lan’s endurance and patience is also, very alike with the earth. In the novel, O-lan endures quietly any hardship that comes her way, both physically and emotionally. When she bears a child, she bears it alone – without a doctor, without a midwife, without her husband, even without a scream. Furthermore, she goes back to work beside her husband without a word right after she gives birth to their second son, thinking not about herself but that the rice has to be gathered into sheaves before the rain. During the year of famine, the entire family starves, but O-lan is the one who suffers most. Here is what Wang Lung sees after O-lan kills the infant girl to avoid another mouth to feed:
Her eyes were closed and the color of her flesh was the color of ashes and her bones stuck under the skin – a poor silent face that lay there, having endured to the utmost, and there was nothing he could say. After all, during these months he had only his own body to drag about. But this woman had endured what agony of starvation with the starved creature gnawing at her from within, desperate for its own life!

Apart from physical hardships, O-lan endures much emotional pain. When Wang Lung gets tired of O-lan and becomes infatuated with Lotus, he reproaches her for not dressing properly and having feet too big to be fit for a landowner’s wife. O-lan takes the reproach humbly and hides her feet under the bench. At Wang Lung’s anger, she only says in a whisper: “My mother did not bind them, since I was sold so young. But the little girl’s feet I will bind.” The most unbearable thing that O-lan confronts is the time when Wang Lung forces her to give up the two pearls, which she wants to keep not for her own sake, but as a future wedding gift for her younger daughter. When Wang Lung laughs at the sight of the pearls O-lan puts in his hands,
O-lan returned to the beating of his clothes and when tears dropped slowly and heavily from her eyes she did not put up her hand to wipe them away; only she beat the more steadily with her wooden stick upon the clothes spread over the stone.

Like O-lan, the earth, too, accept and endure every earthly things whether or not it is clean.
In addition, O-lan’s intelligence is shown in many cases – not only in terms of the way she sees things, but also in terms of how she expresses her own opinion and gets things done while still seeming to remain obedient and submissive. During the famine, she helps Wang Lung to resist his uncle and two city slickers who have been pressing him to sell their land. She sees farsightedly that if they sold the land then, they would have nothing to feed themselves when they return from the South. She will sell the furniture since they have to move, but she will not sell the hoes and plows, which they will need to work on the land. O-lan is also more practical than Wang Lung in many other ways. Wang Lung cannot bear to kill the ox and eat the meat, while O-lan sees an ox as an ox, which should be sacrificed to save human lives. Similarly, when their second son brings home some meat, Wang Lung throws it away because it is stolen. O-lan simply picks up the meat, washes the dirt off and puts it back into the boiling pot, for “Meat is meat,” as she says quietly, and it is the time of famine .
What and how the author picturing about O-lan throughout the story, of her important role in the family and to her husband, contradicts the traditional image of women. A typical image of woman in China can be found in the Confucianism. Confucianism seems to have assigned three roles to a Chinese woman: the sexual object and possession of the man, the childbearing tool to carry on her husband’s family name, and the servant to the whole family. This can be seen, first of all, in the way she was addressed. After her marriage, a woman became nameless. She was addressed by the role she played in the family. If she was married to the Wang family, she would be called Wang Jia Xifu when young, Wang Saozi once she reached her thirties, and Wang Da Ma beginning from her forties. She would be referred to by her husband to others as Nei Ren, an euphemism for wife, which literally means “inside person” or “person inside home.” Second, there are sayings, phrases, and proverbs that reveal how women have been viewed by society. The treatment of women by society is also reflected in the Chinese language itself. The word lihun (divorce) did not come into the Chinese lexicon until the 1920s. Before that, one could only find xiu, the closest equivalent to “divorce,” which literally means “a man getting rid of his wife,” or “sending the wife back to her own home.” At the morphological level, we find that the Chinese word for male is 男, which is made up of two parts. The upper part, 田, means “field” and the lower one, 力, means “strength.” The word, therefore, means, “one who works in the field,” which was later semantically expanded to mean one who works outside. The word for female, 女, pictorially symbolizes a person who sits on her crossed legs, and the word for woman is 婦, the combination of “female” and “broom”, suggesting that a woman was supposed to be always confined to the home, doing housework. The word for entertainment is 娛 the left part meaning “female.” Similarly, the word for wonderful is 妙, which, taken apart, 少女, means “young women.” Clearly, Chinese women were sexual objects for men .
In the novel, author presents the typical image of women. Like in the scene when Wang Lung is about to bring O-lan as a wife in the Hwang’s house, the Ancient Woman told O-lan, “Obey him and bear him sons and yet more sons.”, or the scene when O-lan delivered a daughter, Wang Lung felt it was an evil omen. Even though the novel still picturing the traditional image of women, O-lan, however, was carefully deviated from those typical image of woman in various ways; showing her resemblances with the earth, intelligence, and pragmatic character, even her big feet implies that she is not just a typical woman as a sexual objects but someone who takes an important role bringing the prosperity to the family.
Another aspect of the earth is that it never lies. In earth, what you reap depend on what you sow; how much you reap rely on how much you sow. The reason why Wang Lung’s family became rich is because both did worked hard in the field from morning to night, plowing and pulling up the weeds diligently. On the contrary, his uncle, was always in the poor condition simply because he did not worked hard. There are similar examples in the bible scriptures of this spirit:
“Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.” - 2Corinthians 9:6
“He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed, Shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.” - Palms 126:6

When all things taken together, Wang Lung consider the earth as much as God. It is because the land not only gave him the strength and the reason to hold his breath even in the indescribable moment of hardships, but also he thought that the land is the source of life and death, happiness and misery. Besides, by showing the images of the land of silence, endurance, embracement, deliverance, forgiveness, and love, attracted readers to really believe as if the earth to be a real God. However, the author reverse the thought suddenly at the last paragraph. Author raises up the question to the reader what is the most crucial part in our lives – or a truth - which the earth, apparently, lacking of. The last paragraph is likewise:
Though living a life of plenty now, Wang Lung has no peace, for there is always quarrelling in the house. Near the end of his life, Wang Lung, with his third young slave wife, Pear Blossom, goes back to live in the old house so as to find peace on his land, which, ironically, his two elder sons are plotting to sell.

The thing that the earth absent from is this: the Spirit of God. Even if the land or anything else in the earth is similar to God, it is in vain to pursue, since in some day, whether in shortly or in later, will eventually be perished. Only the Spirit of God is resurrected and lives forever: Jesus is the only way, truth, and life.
After “The Good Earth” has been published to the public, some people in the missionary community, who read the book with particular interest, had a deep disappointment. Those are the people who knew of Pearl’s lifelong association with the missionary enterprise and startled by the complete absence of Christianity from the novel. The Chinese characters routinely invoke their traditional gods, praying for rain or good harvest or sons, but their lives are fundamentally secular, and Western religion has no effect whatever on them . However, in my speculation with a Christian perspective, there are many Christian values resided in the novel, encoded in an indirect ways. Moreover, technically, since Pearl Buck was born and raised up in the Christian family, she could hardly lurk her Christian-based perspective, or even if she struggled to avoid her faith-related writings, but she might had been stained the Christianity unconsciously in anyway.
The novel’s greatest effect, however, is that it humanizes the Chinese people for the American public. The readers feel a kinship toward Buck’s characters, who engage their sympathies and with whom they could easily identify. Thus Carl Van Doren, in The American Novel (1940), commented that “The Good Earth for the first time made the Chinese seem as familiar as neighbors”. The writer of a review in New Statesman and Nation (1931) said: “I can recall no novel that frees the ordinary, flesh and blood, everyday Chineseman so satisfyingly from those screens and veils and mirrors of artistic and poetic convention which nearly always make him, to the Western readers’ eye, a flat and unsubstantial figure of a pale-colored ballet .” Her writing style invoked people’s sentiments enabling them to resonate deeply of the humanism no matter what the skin color they have. In 1939, she said about her writing style likewise :
“A good novelist, so I have been taught in China, should be above all else tse ran, that is, natural, unaffected, and so flexible and variable as to be wholly at the command of the material that flows through him. His whole duty is only to sort life as it flows through him, and in the vast fragmentariness of time and space and event to discover essential and inherent order and rhythm and shape.”

Consequently, “The Good Earth”, have a significant meanings that the book not only consoled Chinese-Americans’ wounded hearts who were still suffering from the harsh discrimination, but also attracted American public to go one step forward to understand Chinese-Americans as the same kind.
Finally, by the time when Americans were experiencing the Great Depression from 1929, the book had been published and introduced to the public in 1931. Most of people at the time were agonized by loss of job, salary, house, and skyrocketing life-expense and so on. They were utterly exhausted both physically and spiritually. However, they were motivated and encouraged through “The Good Earth” by reflecting the life of Wang Lung and O-lan, of their diligence, hardworking, above all else, their indefatigable passion, even under the brutal circumstances: famine. The book, surely, presented people a hope like a silver-lining in the sky.



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