Jr Bacdayan's Reviews > The Good Earth

There is a gush of red, marvelous, and mysterious blood running through my veins. I am part Chinese. A race that has given me these small eyes and this yellowish complexion. A race that I have associated with frugality, hard work, mass production, internet restrictions, and Jackie Chan. China, I've only been there once as a tourist when I was a bit younger. And as much as I'd like to think that I am familiar with the Chinese culture, I have to admit that my knowledge about that is limited and my views about them a bit stereotypical. My Grandma, the real Chinese in the family, still brings Moon Cakes during the Chinese New Year and we do maintain fireworks when celebrating. We also drink herbal tea at home and have this uncanny favoritism for Chinese restaurants during family get-togethers. Aside from that, you could say that I'm really much more familiar with Filipino and Western cultures. So when I picked up this book, I didn't know what to expect. My only assurances were that it won the Pulitzer Prize and the author is a Nobel Prize winner. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck is a beautiful and sweeping story of farmer Wang Lu and his wife O-lan. The Land, the man, and their bond. This beautiful tale left me thirsty and craving for knowledge about this race that resides within me yet has not fully manifested itself. This may sound fancy but I have to say what I feel. This book made me fall in love with China, the Chinese culture, my Chinese roots.

“And roots, if they are to bear fruits, must be kept well in the soil of the land.”

The beauty of this sweeping tale can be understood by hearing its voice, its message. It whispers an earnest plea of the oldest kind, it whispers "Remember the land." The land which has provided for your father, your father's father, and countless generations before him. In this age of technology, internet, GMOs and fast foods, we forget the land. We ignore the Good Earth that has sustained the lives of everyone before us, and lives of this generation.

"If you sell the land it is the end.

And his two sons held him, one on either side, each holding his arm, and he held in his hand the warm loose earth. And they soothed him and they said over and over, the elder son and the second son,

Rest assured, our father, rest assured. The land is not to be sold.

But over the old man's head they looked at each other and smiled."

This book, written in the year 1931, exposes a problem that has continually been growing worse as each generation progresses. Each son telling his father "the land will not be sold" but inwardly smiling at this statement he knows to be untrue. Each son, each daughter, each generation, saying we will save this good earth. But for every tree he plants, he cuts down two more. For every bottle she recycles, she throws out two more. For every plot turned into a garden, there are two plots turned into garbage dumps. Each man, woman, son, daughter thinking about their self, their success apart from the land. They forget that their success lies with the land. They forget the Earth that has been good to them.

“Wang Lung sat smoking, thinking of the silver as it had lain upon the table. It had come out of the earth, this silver, out of the earth that he ploughed and turned and spent himself upon. He took his life from the earth; drop by drop by his sweat he wrung food from it and from the food, silver."

This book touches a lot of other social issues like Feminism, Slavery, Concubinage, Civil Wars, etc. I will not discuss much of these issues and will only say in passing that a different culture enabled them to see nothing wrong with things we in modern times would consider abhorrent and terrifying. Things like selling daughters, feet-binding, polygamy aren't limited to China as these practices can also be found in other Asian countries. But I marvel at how Mrs. Buck was able to make it feel natural despite all these cultural differences. She effected a normalcy on these weird practices that I didn't once think that I was unfamiliar with them. This speaks of her grace and her skill as a writer. She writes with a natural grace and an earnest plea. I am engrossed by her writing, her message, her book.

The Good Earth is a timeless, moving story that depicts the sweeping changes that have occurred not only in the lives of the Chinese people during the last century, but also of everyone who has walked a part of this good earth. She traces the whole cycle of life: its terrors, its passions, its ambitions, its rewards. Her beloved and brilliant novel is a universal tale of the destiny of mankind.

"Out of the Land we came and into it we must go."