A young girl, bent over a crate of potatoes, her red and swollen hands working at the potato eyes; a young Chinese farmer working his precious land under the copper sun, his back glistening with perspiration, imagining the great prosperity his work would bring him. One may envision these scenes while reading Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan and The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. In these two novels, the protagonists of each are largely affected by the social expectations of their respective communities. Esperanza Ortega, a young Mexican girl on the brink of her teenage years, has been brought up in the best of all conditions, in the most comfortable of all settings, receiving a superb education from a sophisticated private school among the daughters of other wealthy and educated land-owners, and living like a princess. Suddenly, she and her mother are forced into abject poverty with the death her father in 1930, as her greedy half-uncles strives to make life thoroughly difficult for them, burning down the Ortega house and vineyard. Wang Lung, a Chinese farmer, was born into a poor family; he has been helping to work his family’s land ever since he was old enough to guide the ox and donkey. All his life, he has worked steadily, saving bits of money from harvests; this saving of bits of money eventually made Wang Lung one of the richest men of his area. The two novels Esperanza Rising and The Good Earth, social expectations and caste affects the lives of the main characters in the form of social mobility, living conditions, and parent-child relationships within the household.…
There’s a reason why the phrase “life is a rollercoaster” has been around for so long. The Good Earth, a novel by Pearl S. Buck, tells the story of a poor Chinese farmer known as Wang Lung. Wang Lung goes through many ups-and-downs in his life, and the book illustrates how with dedicated work and a little luck, a man’s life can change for the better. The Good Earth makes the story of a farmer in China relatable to everyone in the world and tackles issues and challenges that people still face today.…
The first example the readers can relate their lives to in The Good Earth is Wang Lung’s determination with his land. This determination is caused by his thirst for wealth and will to survive. The readers are able to relate to Wang’s determination because everyone at one point in their lives have had the feeling of wanting to succeed in something for their own purposes. Lastly, the land means the world to Wang just like how everyone in the world has something that means the world to them.…
6. The abundance of food in the city contrasts with the characters’ impoverished lives. Wang Lungs feels…
This story focuses on the experience of a man, Chen Xin (pronounced "Chen Zin") who is returning to the city of Shanghai after an absence of ten years. He has spent that time in a rural area and has looked forward to being reunited with his family, which consists of his mother, his elder brother and the brother's wife and child, and his younger brother. The family lives together in cramped quarters and the introduction of the middle brother into this space creates something of a crisis.…
At the age of four, Michael Jackson already knew he wanted to become a singer. Although Jackson did not know how he was going to achieve his goal, Jackson had the American dream on his side. In the short story, “His Father’s Earth” by Thomas Clayton Wolfe, Wolfe demonstrates how people have to dream before they can succeed through the main character. The main character is a young male, who in the story daydreams about joining the circus of the 1920s to achieve his goals of wealth and success (Wolfe). Wolfe exhibits how people have to believe in their dreams before they can succeed through the definition of the 1920s American dream, “His Father’s Earth,” and Wolfe’s own personal life.…
Many people and families live through the tragedies of life and work to find out where they lay in their society. In Pearl S Buck’s novel, The Good Earth, Wang Lung and his family embark on the long journey through life. Wang Lung and his family face both times of happiness and peace, and challenges and tragedy. Wang Lung, the main character, rose from poverty into wealth through hard work and luck. He faced many difficult challenges, but overcame them with the help of his family. Many others in this novel worked hard, but none has achieved wealth as he has.…
Two boys are sent to a mountain at the age of 17 and 18 during the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1970s for re-education. The narrator, a violin player, and his best friend Luo both have parents that are doctors and therefore classed as enemies of the people, which is the worst thing that can happen to an intellectual. The chance of going home from this remote village 500 kilometers away from their hometown, the big city Chengdu, is less than three in a thousand. At the mountain Phoenix of the Sky, which is just a poetic way of suggesting its terrifying altitude, they are put into a house on stilts with a sow underneath in the poorest village perched on a summit. Their re-education consists of working in a coal mine and carrying buckets of excrement up and down a mountain. With them in another village is an old friend called Fore-Eyes, because of his glasses. Soon the two discover his hidden suitcase that contains a large number of Western literature translated into Chinese. And when they meet the Little Seamstress, the beautiful mountain girl in need of culture, they decide to steal the suitcase.…
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck is about a farmer named Wang Lung who goes from rags to riches. He is able to become rich from his hardworking, loyal wife named O-lan. They both work hard on the land becoming very dependent on it and Buck personifies the land, which Wang Lung owns. Personification is useful in that it shows Wang Lung’s dependency on the land to find food, money, and family connections. With personification of the land, it helps enhance the novel for the reader to better understand how much the land meant to Wang Lung.…
1. Discuss the roles of "chance" and "change" in the life of the Chinese peasant (especially note Chapters 18, 19, and 20), as opposed to a cause-and-effect relationship, illustrated in the belief by Wang Lung that hard work will have benefits.…
The story takes place in china. The setting of this story is very important as it all revolts around the Chinese culture. One as a reader can be able to place oneself in the same situation and experience the feelings that are being presented in this story. The story is being told from a first person point of view. The narrator is Jing-Mei “June May” Woo. She is the 36-year old American born daughter of Suyuan a women who made the big decision which was to abandoned her twins, however she did it for love because at the time she thought she was going to die. June May is the one telling the story. We only know what the narrator thinks. We can only make inferences about the rest of the characters in the story by the way they behave. The narrator embarks an adventurous journey. Along the way she learns many things about her real roots she discovers things that she never knew before.…
• How does Buck portray the theme of contentment vs. greed? Can wealth destroy traditional values?…
The Good Earth has a setting that sets the hardships that Northern China faced; drought, flood, famine, cold, heat, and war. The setting also creates character by putting important obstacles in the paths of the characters in the book. How each character deals with these obstacles shows what kind of character they are, and helps to create the plot of the book itself. The themes of the book are also created by the setting. The setting especially effects Wang Lung, for conflicts influenced by the setting proves one of the themes that “the land has control of the life of a farmer”.…
II. Introduction- How Wang Lang is connected to the earth and his strong relationship with it and how his good work ethics and moral judgments guide him on becoming one with his land.…
Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou’s Yellow Earth is a meaningful and controversial film that highlights the young and old, realist and idealist, as well as the ideal utopia and bounded bureaucracies – touching on the notion of fate. Set in early 1939 in China, Yellow Earth follows the story of Gu Qing, a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) soldier sent out among the peasants in Northern Shaanxi to collect folksongs, to which the Communists intend to rewrite new lyrics to help inspire soldiers and peasant followers to fight the Japanese invasion and work towards the revolution. Gu Qing comes across a village holding a wedding procession and is invited to join the feast. He stays at a peasant’s home, and meets a father with a daughter (Cuiqiao) and a son (Hanhan).…