Rating: 
Summary: Phenomenal!
Review: This is undoubtedly THE BEST book I've ever read. I have read it at least 15 times! I have the video and the 2nd and 3rd parts in the trilogy. Pearl S. Buck gets right into the lives of "old" Chineese people. She tells it like it is, even if it's not always what we want to hear. I was mortified and ashamed of Wang Lung, even though I thought his character was well portrayed. His betrayel of Olan was hideous but considered not only "ok" in that era but expected of the wealthy. Sad, nontheless. I will read it again. And again.
Rating: 
Summary: The Good Book
Review: I had read a biography of Pearl Buck and her missionary-family recently without having read any of her fiction, which prompted me to pick up this book. I was well rewarded for doing so. It a simple book about some rather "simple" people who live rather extraordinary lives. Buck spent her youth amongst Chinese peasants and in this novel captured their lives--the struggles, triumphs, and everything in between--quite vividly. She also does an excellent job of describing the emotions of the characters she develops in the story. This is an excellent primer on the lives of common Chinese peasants in the early 1900's and is extremely readable. I would recommend it to anyone of any age who wants a good, quick, and enlightening read.
Rating:
Summary: A Marvelous Book!
Review: It was a wonderful read! Pearl Buck's story tells us about the struggles of a man's life in China during a turbulent time in history but it speaks of us all no matter what time period or part of the world we live in. It's about the cycle of life.
Rating:
Summary: The Good Earth
Review: This book was about a desperate farmer named Wang Lung along with his wife o-lou. This book was mostly about depression and the chinese culture in the 19th century. Im sure if you read it, you will have a better understanding of Chinese ways and basicly how they live...
Rating:
Summary: A New Understanding of Traditional China
Review: THE GOOD EARTH was, for me, different from anything I had ever read; but I was glad I read it. This is the story of the humble and honest Chinese farmer, Wang Lung. It is the story of a hard-working and determined man who amasses great wealth even at the most overwhelming of odds. He and his wife, O-lan, climb their way out of the dirt of famine and poverty into the great and respected House of Wang.Pearl Buck's story shows the cycle of life going full-circle from the time when Wang Lung takes O-lan for a wife to the time of his death at the end of the book. In the beginning, Wang Lung is the poor farmer walking into the House of Hwang wanting a wife, prepared to accept the ugly slave woman no one else wanted. In the end, he is the lord of a house as great as was the fallen House of Hwang (indeed, the makings of his House took into it the ruins of its predecessor) giving away a slave to another poor farmer. Wang Lung's love of the land is the most unifying aspect of the book. He refuses to sell the land even when his family is near-starvation. He will sell everything else he owns before he sells the land. And as soon as he earns a little bit of money, that money will go to the buying more land. In the end of the book, when his sons talk of selling land, Wang Lung as terrified at the thought, for he feels that the destruction of a great house is near when they begin to sell the land. Pearl Buck shows brilliantly the change that comes over people as they amass more wealth and are exalted into a higher class. Wang Lung and his father and their family were all honest farmers, true to one wife throughout their lives. But when Wang Lung becomes a rich man, he turns to taking concubines as is accepted for a man of his stature. The difference between Chinese culture and American culture is striking; indeed, it is sometimes difficult for an American to understand some of the Chinese customs. The taking of concubines is not only accepted but is encouraged. Young girls have their feet painfully bound so that they will be small. But Pearl Buck presents an excellent representation of a culture that is becoming more and more important in our world today. This is a good read -- it isn't very difficult, but it is worthwhile. Pearl Buck demonstrates quite a talent for storytelling, and she clearly portrays an important culture. For anyone interested in Chinese culture -- and indeed for anyone else who might like to expand their interests -- this is a great book to read.
Rating:
Summary: Wung Lung`s Belive
Review: This book is about a young man, Wung Lung, whose family is poor and doesn`t have anything to eat. The land that they own is dying and does not produce any vegetation. Time passes and Wung Lung gets married and moves onto the land his father had left for him. Wung Lung struggles to take care of the land. This book is about Lung`s belief that the earth is sacred and man should protect it. This book was fun to read.
Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant Way to Understand China
Review: When great political upheaval occurs, do the "ordinary people" even know about it? How does it affect their lives? Is social change something palpable, or only something one can see in retrospect?
These questions are addressed in Pearl Buck's moving and exquisitely written Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel, "The Good Earth." It is the story of a simple Chinese peasant, Wang Lung. We first meet him as a young man on his way to pick up his bride, whom he has purchased from the estate of a wealthy landowner. Wang Lung is a farmer, barely able to survive, but it is time for him to marry and produce a grandchild for his aged father, who lives in his simple farm hut and is shown great reverence, as was the way in China at the time.
The only way that Wang Lung could afford a wife at all, and a virgin, which was highly desired, was to purchase an ugly female slave from the great house. All of the pretty slave women were defiled by the master and his sons early on; O-lan was so ugly that she was spared. Harsh? Evil? Yes. But the story is told with such simplicity, from the viewpoint of Wang Lung, who knows no other life. Which is one of Buck's points: the simple Chinese peasant, struggling to survive, had no wherewithal to stand back and say, "I should not be buying an undefiled slave from a corrupt landowner who keeps me in virtual slavery as well." It just didn't happen that way.
O-Lan turns out to be the perfect farmer's wife, hardworking, efficient, and, it turns out, wonderfully fertile. The scene where the young woman painfully gives birth in the field during harvest time and then goes back to work without missing a beat is almost a cliche by now. But in the book, it gives great insight into the strength of character that the silent O-Lan possesses, a strength that will save her family time and again, during good years and famine times, when she is forced to murder a newborn daughter so that the rest of her children might survive.
Against the framework of tremendous social change, the simple story of this one family gives us a framework within which we can observe its effect on ordinary people. The tremendous difference between the innocent and humble Wang Lung of the beginning of the book, and the prosperous and slightly corrupt elderly man at the end, is simply astoundingly written.
This book is Pearl Buck's single greatest work. She went on to become a prolific writer, and many of her books were brilliant, but none ever touched the simple genius of "The Good Earth."
Rating:
Summary: Matriarch's sacrifices empower peasant family in 1900s China
Review: Pearl Buck's Pulitzer Prize Winner tells the story of early 1900s peasant
family in China. The story of Wung Lung, a humble peasant, who takes a
plain looking kitchen slave for his wife, then with the family they build
together he sees life's deepest abisses and highest peaks. The book shows the conventions of pre-revolutionary China. Females were
expected to "serve" their husbands and even their children. Respect for
elders was absolute. Males, especially if they are of means, may indulge in
any pleasures they wish, including taking "a second wife". When a family
rises socially, along with their newly elevated status they would shed the
humility in which they were enveloped. Wang Lung, born a farmer, upon
becoming wealthy and purchasing "the great house", insisted on still being
called "Wang Lung the farmer", NOT "Lord of the Great House". This is a wonderful novel for high school students or other mature readers.
"The Good Earth" lends itself to long discussions. I also highly recommend
the vintage film-version (1936), with Oscar winning Special Effects and Best
Actress Louise Reiner.*****
Rating:
Summary: A Glimpse into the Past
Review: Very few of us have ever bothered to ask their grandparents what life was like for them let alone their own parents. Sadly so much of history is lost through that. Yes, we will always know the big things, such as the fact a war was fought and who it was against but we don't know the little things. What is it was like in a small village near but not in the battle. What really was the every day life and ambition of an average guy or girl. In Pearl S. Buck's novel The Good Earth she captures just that. Although it gained great acclaim in its time its appeal is endless. The rarity of being able to go into the mind of an isolated peasant farmer and still feel the pain of an entire nation is truly noteworthy. I believe the book does a good job of conveying the Pre-revolutionary culture of China and would would help even a young girl in Sri Lanka, for example, to understand the mindset of the Chinese people and truly understand this monumental event in history.
Rating:
Summary: A Fascinating history of a Chinese family!
Review: gThe Good Earthh is one of the great novels ever written. There is no big adventure, no fantastic romance in this novel, but there is almost real life story of a family lived in the early 20th century. I found this novel very fascinating and outstanding. If you are interested in reading stories about family dynamics in relation to the change of a society, this is highly recommended. A poor farmer survived the great famine, and luckily became a wealthy men. His attitudes toward his family had changed as his socio-economic status elevates. His ideas about child raring reflected his life experiences, and it turned out that his children became very unique and different in many aspects that made the story more interesting. However, his attachment to his land had not changed at all through out his life, and it seemed almost his obsession in his life. The authorfs perspective is less ethnocentric, and conveys more realistic and accurate descriptions of the life in China in the early 20th century. This great history novel will bring you knowledge of how Chinese people lived at that time, how family members interacted, and what did the land taught the farmer through out his life.
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