Rating: 
Summary: Excellent story and a fine fable
Review: I'll be the first to admit, the premise of this book is not the most appealing. The life of a struggling peasant farmer in rural China during the turn of the century did not strike me as being a page turner. But Pearl S. Buck made me a fan after the first twenty pages and I could not put it down. At the urgings of my friends who knew that I was a fan of historical fiction I picked this one up. The story is thoughtful, told with compassion, and surprisingly fast paced. The characters are fascinating and are the main element that kept me reading. The unconventional protagonist is Wang Lung. A very self aware and sincere farmer whose story is told in third person but soley from his point of view. He marries a slave girl, O-lan, from the nearby village. They come to love each other not with passion, but with unspoken admiration and respect. Whats more is that they both earn the respect of the reader. O-lan clearly lives a hard life and has been given a bad hand, even sometimes at Wang Lungs doing, but it is hard to see her as a victim becuase does not see herself as one.
Before finishing this book I became so sure that I liked the authors work that I bought Pavillion of Women. I was also pleasantly surprised to find that this was a Pulitzer prize winner over seventy years ago. Obtusely dismissing those books as stuffy and pretentious, I now look forward to reading those as well. Especially if they are written with such earnestness as this fine fable.
Rating: 
Summary: Epic Novel with Universal Appeal
Review: Having heard that Ms. Buck spent most of her life in China, I began reading The Good Earth expecting an authentic, albeit fictional, portrayal of life in China in the early 1900s. The first half of the story begins in this way. Protagonist Wang Lung, in his early years of marriage and family life, represents the honest, hard-working farming peasant immersed in a man vs. nature struggle for existence and, to a lesser extent, a man vs. society challenge of social positioning. Through Wang and his wife, O-lan's, courage and strife, we see a society of contrasts: simplicity of rural life vs. luxury of city life in turn-of-the-century China, years of abundant harvests vs. occasions of widespread famine, traditional roles favoring men over women, rich landowning "great houses" vs. poor laborers and slaves, Confucian work ethic vs. idleness.About halfway through the novel, there is a transition in both literary style and thematic content. Once Wang Lung rises to wealth, his problems become more complex. Behind the story's events, the grand themes of literature rapidly unfold: inner turmoil in relationships between men and women, husband and wife, and father, sons and grandchildren; one's destiny and duty vs. the sense of freedom that wealth and achievement bring; emotional and generational conflicts resulting from changing social values in a modernizing world; lifelong friendship and the loneliness in old age. By the end of the novel, with traditional Wang ever so fervently tied to his land while his forward-looking sons devise to sell it, the simple story about a Chinese peasant's life has fully blossomed into an epic tale about real people having truly universal appeal. What I find most remarkable about the book is the author's presentation of the human predicament in an artistic, literary way through the ebb and flow of events in the life of our protagonist, without pausing to probe deliberately into his psychology, motivations and emotions. The character's actions and events in the novel speak for themselves and display both the author's keen understanding of human nature and her exceptional talent in painting with words a beautiful, realistic picture of human feelings and relationships. One caveat concerning the novel is its controversial believability as a true depiction of life in China a century ago. I come away from the book certain that I have learned something about China and its culture but sensing that literary license has played a larger role in the book's creation than the author would readily acknowledge or even be aware of. In this sense, I judge the work to be more a masterpiece of realistic world fiction than a firmly grounded Chinese historical novel.
Rating: 
Summary: ...
Review: The sheer idiocy of this work struck me dumb; in fact I could not even discern the purpose among the idiotic lines of this writer. It seems to be another humanistic attempt to bring to knowledge the "noble" suffering of the farmer attached to his land more than to antyhing else. It might evoke empathy in a fellow slave mind-set, but beyond this limitation there is no further audience to be attracted to it. The stupid attachment to land is paradoxial- it might be an allusion to culture, which does make sense- people love to wallow in their own dung.
Healthy adulation of secular symbols is reduced to a vice, while superstition and ignorance are portrayed saccharinely and as noble.
One might call this a poor written diary.
Rating:
Summary: Authentic Chinese story - I can't believe she was American!
Review: While reading this book, I was totally struck by the honest and compassionate way Pearl Buck told her story. Born and raised in China, I can see my great grandparents in Wang Lung and his wife O-Lan, although in the end they didn't make it to the riches but stayed in the middle class among farmers and had put all their kids through schools which was the first ever in their village. What I love most about this book is that it shows the Westerners what life was REALLY like in rural China at the turn of the century instead of the usual stereotype or common cliche. In that sense, Pearl Buck was more Chinese than Chinese, for Amy Tan, Dai SiJie and the alike are just commercial writers in my opinion, who more or less only wrote what they thought would sell. The book itself is certainly well written too. It's as if walking through a living museum of the past and one could vividly envision what Wang Lung and O-Lan had gone through as the story unfolds. Pearl Buck used simple yet powerful narrative language in which I felt Wang Lung's pain, suffering, ambition, agony, pride and all sorts of emotions and couldn't help but empathized with him as a human being. There are also small things that delighted me in Perl Buck's writing. To name just one, she had faithfully translated the characters' dialogs into English and I have to say you can't get more authentic than that. For example, she used moon for month, old head for old man, etc., and those are exactly how we say in Chinese, literally. It's a pity that neither in the US nor in China Pearl Buck is recognized or respected as much as she should have been. Though I went to Nanjing University where Pearl Buck had taught for years in China, little have I heard of her until just now, after finishing the Good Earth. Then I found that she also did a lot of humanitarian work in addition to writing after her return to the US, including pushing for the legalization of interracial/international adoptions that now has benefited so many families. I would recommend Camel XiangZi by Lao, She ( Original in Chinese and translation in English available) which is the tale of a urban pedicab driver in the same era if you enjoy the Good Earth. I think the two authors have similar styles in story-telling.
Rating:
Summary: The Good Earth
Review: This book by Pearl S. Buck is quite possibly the best picture of pre-Revolution China that you can read. It centers around a man named Wang Lung... When the novel starts, Wang is getting ready to go and retrieve his new wife, a former slave in a grand house. He and his father live in a three room house on their land, and they are very poor. Wang's new wife, O-lan, is really hard working, if kind-of simple, and she bears him three children: three boys and two girls. The family moves to the city during a time of famine, and they experience a revolt in a very, very rich man's house. They come away not only with a lot of gold coins, but also a huge amount of jeweled necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. When they go back to their house in the country, they buy even more land, and soon become very, very rich themselves... what's really amazing is that during all this time, Wang's still a pretty nice guy because he can still work his land and be outside. But then a time of great flooding occurs... Wang gets infatuated by a concubine named Lotus, and he takes her into his house. Poor O-lan is totally neglected, and eventually dies. Wang is completely changed by Lotus, and he feels repulsion for O-lan until she finally dies. They move into a large house and then Wang falls in love with a, like, sixteen year old girl servant (he at the time is SEVENTY) after Lotus starts to age. At the end of the book, he overhears his sons talking about selling the land that he worked so hard to get, and he gets really upset... My thoughts about the characters, starting from the biggest to the smallest: WANG LUNG: changed from good to worse as the book progressed; a few times toward the end you really wanted to go in there and slap him. O-LAN: she did everything possible for her husand and her family, and in the end she didn't get anything at all in the end. It's really sad... LOTUS: For starters, she's a concubine, and then there's the thing that she's incredibly mean and unloyal to everyone else... THE SONS: the oldest needs to get his mind off girls, the second one's okay, but obsessed with money, and the youngest one is just really independent and ends up going to war. None of them are really honorable. THE DAUGHTERS: the 'little fool' can't help herself, and thank heavens the youngest one got married off. PEACH BLOSSOM: why would she do what she did? That really grossed me out. My final opinion: This is good to read, probably some of the best historical fiction that I've ever read, and everything that happens is just so grotesque and scary, especially if you're a girl, that it keeps you reading without stopping. I recommend this to everyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book writing, but don't take it as a FULL concept
Review: I have read this book, and enjoyed its complex emotions, but don't use it as what Chinese people are like. This book, is a great book, the way it's written, the way it's thought out. But the only thing is that you shouldn't take it as a full concept of what Chinese is. In the book the man has bought a concubine for himself, it's not usually respected among Chinese people. It's more of tolerance, especially when that person is rich. The people can't say anything about it, because that person is rich. There is a level of respect from age differences in the Asian and Chinese culture. There was also the way the men kept calling the female genders "slave." Yes back then in China, some men didn't respect women as much, but there are many families in China that were matriarch. Women, in China, before revolutionary times, were respected. This is the controversy with this book the thing is that the characters, male, keep refering to the women as slaves. This is why we can't take it as what China is like. Yes there were peasents, and yes, there were rich people. There were a lot of farmers, and it is yet another book that shows the majority of Chinese, not the evil stereotypes. There were traditions in which many have never seen. Pearl S. Buck knows the Chinese culture and is familar with it, not only because her parents were Presbyterian missionaries in China, she also studied with the Chinese people, interacted with them, and she tried to see what Chinese is. This book has been glorifed so much that Asian writers who write about China with stories or history, don't get recognized, instead they use Pearl S. Buck as a "diversity", through the majority race in America, so she could speak about them. It is interesting to see that so far the biggest recognized race of literature prizes are white or caucasian. And a white woman, who has written this book about Chinese, has been recognized. A movie has even came out of the book. Another "yellowface" movie, in which white actors dress up as Asians characters. It's interesting to see her knowledge about the Chinese culture. I gave this book 4 stars because it moved me a lot, with good writing skills. Good book, though I would recommend other book writers of stories of Chinese people before and after revolutionary times.
Rating:
Summary: Did not like AT ALL
Review: This book was required for English last year, and I absolutely hated reading it. The beginning was ok, showing the culture of China and how things were...but after a while, the events in the story became unnecessary, particluarly when Wang Lung started meeting up with Lotus and having an affair with her. I do not know why I was required to read this book as I learned nothing from it--other than how to survive a long, horribly boring book.
Rating:
Summary: The Good Earth.
Review: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck describes the lifestyle and culture of the Chinese people. The entire novel is based upon the simple fact that the earth is good. The earth takes care of mankind by providing food and shelter, it offers the possibility of wealth if cared for and managed properly, it cannot be taken away or stolen and all men must eventually return to the land. "Out of the land we came and into it we must go, and if you hold your land you can live, no one can rob you of land." The novel also touches on the differences in the thinking of the older generation, Wang Lung, and the newer generation, his children. Wang's entire life was dependent on the good earth. Eventually, his children and possibly even Wang Lung himself, desert the land Wang loved and respected.
The author wants the reader to realize that the earth is to be respected and revered. I believe that another important point she made was that corruption, grief and unrest were all brought about by the wealth Wang Lung and his family received. It was almost like a domino effect. Wang Lung started to gain riches, his family-life began to deteriorate, soon after, he broke off ties to his land. Eventually, he became like the people he had once despised. "At least I have the land, I have the land." The earth was the one thing Wang thought he could never lose. Near the end of the book, it is obvious his priorities changed. Instead of worrying about when the rain will come to make his harvest grow, Wang is concerned about taking the positions of the Lord and Mistress who had once treated him so poorly. It was true that "all their lives depended upon the earth." As the sons of Wang Lung and even Wang Lung himself became less dependent on the earth, they began to depend more on their wealth and social position. I believe, toward the end, Wang lung realizes this when he says, "If you sell the land, it is the end."
Rating:
Summary: The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
Review: This work is a classic which describes life in the pre-
revolutionary period. The author traces the life of Wang Lung-
a Chinese peasant who eventually becomes wealthy through
land acquisition. The story progresses from a life of poverty
to the wealth of Wang Lung. The transition into a higher
social status is not a panacea of pure contentment because
the main character suffers a series of disappointments and
adversities. The Good Earth documents a facet of life in the
Old China. We are reminded that poverty has a unique set
of problems and challenges. Wealth acquisition does not
necessarily resolve all of our problems. In fact, money
brings other types of issues into our personal lives because
we can never be fulfilled completely by subsisting on
worldly acquisitions and their accoutrements. The work
teaches young readers to aspire to great things but to expect
hard work and adversity on the long road to success and the
attainment of material rewards. In addition, the reader
should understand that faith and a belief in a better life
help to facilitate living through the series of adversities
that will come for certain during life's journey.
Rating:
Summary: The Good Earth, A review of China¿s History
Review: This book at first is not the most exciting book but latter on the reader becomes more into it. It is about a Chinese man, Wang Lung, and his family. They face many challenges in there lives such as death and famine. The way that Pearl S. Buck describes the lives of the characters is astounding because person has a certain personality. The book tells the reader how life was for the peasants in China at that time. The cities are described in such a way that the reader feels that they are in the book.
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