O-Lan kills her second daughter at birth to spare her the misery of growing up in such hard times, and to give the remaining family a better chance to survive.ĭuring the devastating famine and drought, the family must flee to a large city in the south to find work. Her father greatly pities her and calls her 'Poor Fool', a name by which she is addressed throughout her life.

O-Lan delivers three sons and three daughters the first daughter becomes mentally handicapped as a result of severe malnutrition brought on by famine. However, the House of Hwang slowly declines due to opium use, frequent spending, uncontrolled borrowing and a general unwillingness to work.įollowing the marriage of Wang Lung and O-Lan, both work hard on their farm and slowly save enough money to buy one plot of land at a time from the Hwang family. The House of Hwang, a family of wealthy landowners, lives in the nearby town, where Wang Lung's future wife, O-Lan, lives as a slave. The story begins on Wang Lung's wedding day and follows the rise and fall of his fortunes. However, the 1937 film, The Good Earth, which was based on the stage version, was more successful. Ī Broadway stage adaptation was produced by the Theatre Guild in 1932, written by the father and son playwriting team of Owen and Donald Davis, but critics gave a poor reception, and it ran only 56 performances. In 2004, the book returned to the bestseller list when chosen by the television host Oprah Winfrey for Oprah's Book Club.

The novel was included in Life Magazine's list of the 100 outstanding books of 1924–1944.

The realistic and sympathetic depiction of the farmer Wang Lung and his wife O-Lan helped prepare Americans of the 1930s to consider Chinese as allies in the coming war with Japan. Buck, who grew up in China as the daughter of American missionaries, wrote the book while living in China and drew on her first-hand observation of Chinese village life. It was the best-selling novel in the United States in both 19, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1932, and was influential in Buck's winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. It is the first book in her House of Earth trilogy, continued in Sons (1932) and A House Divided (1935). Buck published in 1931 that dramatizes family life in a Chinese village in the early 20th century. The Good Earth is a historical fiction novel by Pearl S.

The good earth pearl buck review