![]() ![]() Much less sentimental than one might expect if familiar with the usual plot synopsis of something like "The moving, epic story of poor Chinese farmer Wang Lung who survives on the land through famine and feast and grows wealthy, only to lose the wife who had helped him get ahead." It's a classic of understated storytelling. " Deceptively simple" may be the most apt description of The Good Earth, both in its characterizations and in its writing style. The rest, including his relatives and fellow villagers are a self-centred lot, trained by the hard-scrabble life to look out for themselves and their families first. ![]() Yes, the characters in Good Earth often appear uncomplicated-in their speech, their aspirations and their social relations-but they are after all, uh, peasants.Īnd usually not all that noble either, except for the main character's selfless, quietly suffering wife, O-lan. But this was hardly the reaction to The Good Earth in the early 1930s when it became a sensation in the West and when the slightly more sentimental movie based on it was released a few years later. Buck has sometimes been accused of stereotyping the Chinese peasants as noble, simple creatures. CRITIQUE | THE TEXT | THE MOVIE Simply true ![]()
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