The Good Earth

This review will be different from the others because it spans over 4 decades.  I had read The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck when I was in fifth grade. the same age as my son is now.  I was too young at that time to appreciate the themes of the book - I had no concept of mistresses and lust so that part of the book went over my head.   Through the years several aspects of the book stayed with me.  The first was the notion of the good wife as portrayed by O-Lan.  There was something about the portrayal of her giving birth to a child and then being back on the field doing hard work the next day.  Back then I had no idea of the jealously and betrayal she felt when Wang Lung took on a mistress, Lotus.  Especially when he gave the pearls O-Lan "found" and that she desired to Lotus.  Yet O-Lan stayed loyal and suffered through her pains all the way to her death.  She played the role of the sacrificial mother to the very end.  As  I re-read this now although I can understand lust and the driving force it can be in shaping people's lives, the book is a reminder that their are consequences for those choices.  In the end, Wang Lung repents for how he treated O-Lan.   He ends up being stuck with an older Lotus who causes him more grief than anything else.  He finally settles with a younger slave named Pear Blossom.  While the age difference is stark, his youngest son wanted her, at least we can feel some sympathy that Pear Blossom chose him and he was kind to her in many ways including sparing her from the rapacious cousin who returned to the family compound as a quartering soldier.  

Another facet of the book that stuck with me is the real life threatening poverty and famine that has plagued most of humanity for most of our existence on the planet.  My grandfather grew up in a relatively small town in India.  He was born around 1920 and lived through many periods of drought or floods  with the resulting famines.   To lose ones job meant losing ones life.  Living in America we cannnot imagine the existential threats that a bad monsoon season brings.  We talk about food deserts or food insecurities without any notion of what is true hunger and starvation.  This is a good thing and one of our greatest achievements as a people, to have the capacity to feed all of us.  The book though is a reminder of the suffering of our ancestors and how we shouldn't confuse our notions of inconveniences with what real food shortages means.  Also our parents insecurities and risk aversion have been shaped by the life of death consequences of poverty while ours have not.  To understand their hesitance and caution requires one to assess their risk profile.  

Finally, as I re-read this the central theme of the importance of land stands out even more.  After all, this is the same path that I have gone down.  While I do not tend crops the land that I own/control produces income and provides people with housing.  While I am still called a LandLORD, the privileges of owning land have - unfortunately :-) - been whittled down.  However, there is still a responsibility to the people who live on the land to provide clean safe housing.  There is also the pride of ownership that leads one to want to make the land better over time and leave something more than when you took over the land.  Wang Lung as he gets older is re-investing and building on the land he bought.  He added Courts, rooms, ponds, and resisted all temptation to sell the land even when he faced starvation.  He will die upon this land.  The final chapter ends with his sons smiling over him and assuring him they will not sell his land all the while knowing that as soon as he dies the land is sold.  It is a terrible ending for Wang Lung who has become so attached to his land.  

That isn't my concern.  My dad on his last days made peace with himself knowing that he did everything he needed to do to take care of my mom and that his sons were firmly in position to take care of ourselves.  That will be my concern to the people that I leave behind.  If they want to sell the land, which with work and proper tending, would offer them a comfortable living, that will be their choice.  It would of course be a shame, however there is nothing particularly sacred about the land.  Land holds the promise of enjoyment and a good return at the expense of work, toil and investment.  Those that are willing to put in that effort deserve the rewards.  And life has a way of making sure those people end up with the Land.  

This is a classic book, one that has aged well through the years.  It is good to have re-read it now with a fuller capacity to understand the themes in the book and how they are still relevant even more so now.  

4/8/2026