"The earth lay rich and dark and fell apart lightly under the
points of their hoes. Sometimes they turned up a bit of brick, a
splinter of wood. It was nothing. Some time, in some age, bodies of
men and women had been buried there, houses had stood there, had
fallen, and gone back into the earth. So would also their house,
some time, return into the earth, their bodies also. Each had his
turn at this earth. They worked on, moving together --- together
--- producing the fruit of this earth --- speechless in their
movement together."

The simple raw imagery of THE GOOD EARTH won Pearl S. Buck the
Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1932. Its poignant portrayal of a
poor farmer's life and his bond with the land is as relevant to our
own ancestral roots as it is to rural China. Wang Lung, the central
figure around which the entire narrative revolves, is a man of many
complexities depicted by his relationships with his wife, his
father, his children and his village. His land is precious, its
value equating to his own self-worth. Although steeped in the
ancient traditions, he reflects certain enlightened thinking at
times that may be more for the author's emphasis of injustices than
a true depiction of the average Chinese peasant in the early
1900s.

Wang Lung's story begins as a young man seeking a wife to cook,
clean and bear his children. O-lan, a slave's slave from a wealthy
household, comes to live and share his life in the subservient
fashion that traditions dictate. Initially their marriage brings
satisfaction to both, although for vastly different reasons. Wang
Lung has a sense of fulfillment in having such a wise and competent
woman to raise his children and maintain his home. And even though
women are still considered "slaves" by their men, O-lan has found a
better life than she's ever known; she is well-cared for and Wang
Lung is kind. Together they bring five children into the world and
work their thriving farm.

But just as the life of a peasant is harsh, so are the traditions
that mold marriage and family. Women are little more than chattel,
necessary for procreation and to serve the household needs. A girl
child is an unwelcome birth and can even bring shame to families
unable to produce a boy. During hard times young girls were often
sold into slavery or worse. For all the compassion that Pearl Buck
feels for these people and the beauty she finds in their simple
lives, her outrage at the conditions of the women is apparent.
Although Wang Lung's thoughts are a bit more liberal than we might
expect, he still maintains his distance, displaying neither open
affection nor love for the woman who shares his life.

". . . she was like a faithful, speechless serving maid, who is
only a serving maid and nothing more. And it was not meet that he
should say to her, 'Why do you not speak?' It should be enough that
she fulfilled her duty."

"Sometimes, working over the clods in the fields, he would fall to
pondering about her. What had she seen in those hundred courts?
What had been her life, that life she never shared with him? He
could make nothing of it. And then he was ashamed of his own
curiosity and of his interest in her. She was, after all, only a
woman."

As the years pass, Wang Lung's family suffers abject poverty and
famine but their strength of character sustains them through stark
conditions that we would find inconceivable. Reduced to begging in
the city, Wang Lung steadfastly refuses to sell his land. Then as
China experiences the first rumblings of revolution, the cycle of
prosperity returns and Wang Lung eventually becomes the wealthy
landowner that he once envied and despised. But his evolution from
a proud hardworking peasant to the decadent life of an idle lord is
disheartening. Pearl Buck eloquently portrays the sad
disintegration of this man and his family as they become alienated
from the land and the noble values it imparted.