In middle age, he lusts for Lotus, neglecting the much-deserving O-lan, and in old age, he steals Pear Blossom from his youngest son. Her major flaw is her ugliness.Wang Lung delights the reader with his simple wonder at the world and with his perseverance to care for his family and his land, but he, too, has failings. Even O-lan, the almost saintly earth mother, seethes with jealousy whenWang Lung takes a second wife, and she feels contempt and bitterness for the House of Hwang in which she was a slave. The eldest son is a pompous wastrel, but he does make the House of Hwang beautiful with flowering trees and fish ponds, and he does settle into the traditional married life his father has planned for him. Ching, Wang Lung’s faithful, doglike friend and later overseer, early in the novel joins a starving mob that ransacks Wang Lung’s home for food Ching takes Wang Lung’s last handful of beans. Whereas characters in Buck’s later novels too easily divide into good and bad, the characters of The Good Earth, like real people, mix elements of both. The strength of the novel also lies in its characterization, particularly that of the two main characters, O-lan and her husband Wang Lung. Her authorial presence never intrudes, though her warm feeling for the characters and her own ethical beliefs are always evident. In Chinese folk literature, the self-effacing author, like a clear vessel, transmits but does not color with his or her personality the life that “flows through him.” So, also, Buck presents her story objectively. The simplicity of the diction and the steady, determined flow of the prose fit the sagalike plot.

She chooses her details carefully: Her descriptions grow out of close observation and are always concise.

Although the sentences are long, the diction is simple and concrete. Her style also owes something to that of the Chinese storytellers, to whom she paid tribute in her Nobel Prize lecture, a style that flows along in short words “with no other technique than occasional bits of description, only enough to give vividness to place or person, and never enough to delay the story.” Most of Buck’s sentences are long and serpentine, relying on balance, parallelism, and repetition for strength. Added to these universal themes is the cyclical movement of the growth and decay of the crops, the decline of the House of Hwang and the ascent of the House of Wang, the changes of the years, and the birth and death of the people.īuck fittingly chose to tell her story in language reminiscent of the Bible, with its families and peoples who rise and fall. Echoing many elements of life, The Good Earth speaks of animosity between town and country, love of land, decadent rich and honest poor, marital conflicts, interfering relatives, misunderstandings between generations, the joys of birth and sorrows of old age and death, and the strong bonds of friendship.

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