The Good Earth4

The reason that Wang Lung manages to get land for such a low price was that the great house has been experiencing considerable hardships. The lady of the house has died, the young lords has squandered their wealth, almost all the slaves have run away, etc. There were only two people in the great house when Wang Lung returned from the great city: the Old Lord and an old slave called Cuckoo, who will do just about anything to get a little money. She was the one who managed the sale of the great house's remaining land.
Wang Lung becomes quite prosperous through his land, and even hires workers to help out. He becomes aware that he can't read or write, so he sends his sons to school so they can read and write for him when he makes business deals.
Then, one year the fields are flooded, and Wang Lung can't do anything. He gets bored easily, and he goes to the village, where he finds a brothel run by the slave Cuckoo. He succumbs to the temptations of good food and takes a concubine. Wang Lung starts to realize that O-lan is not attractive to him, and he gets angry at her for this. "He stood there silent for a while and then he said to her roughly, and he was rough because he was ashamed and would not acknowledge his shame in his heart"
It is interesting to note the author's views about boredom. The author brings up the interesting point that boredom should be considered a major historical factor. Up to this point, the major conflicts in this book are starvation, sexism, and boredom. Boredom is not normally considered a major plot device, but the author makes good use of it.

The good earth3

In the great city, Wang Lung's wife, children, and father were forced to beg for money to live, while he himself pulled heavy "jinrickshas" around town for whoever would pay. Everyday, he came back to the hut exaughsted and weary and everyday, he had just enough money to buy the meager meals of rice for his family. Occasionally, he would pass revolutionaries telling onlookers that "You are poor and downtrodden and it is because the rich seize everything." Everywhere he looked, Wang Lung saw the squalor and filth of the street contrasting sharply with the lives of the rich, and even with the life he dreamed of when he got back to his farm, for he rarely stopped thinking about the land. He dreamed of a way to get back, but he had no money. At on point, he even considered selling his daughter into slavery, but he decided against it. He was so desperate for money that when the revolutionaries rioted in the city and destroyed the houses of the rich, he stole some money from the rich man whose house he had been living next to for the past several months. Wang Lung then moved with his family back to the village, but found their house torn apart. They had some money left over, however, so they began rebuilding. Then, one night O-lan revealed that she had stolen some gems from the rich man's house in the great city, so Wang Lung could buy some more land.

The Good Earth 2

In the fifth and sixth chapters, Wang Lung makes a small profit from his small farm, so he decides to buy a little piece of land from the estate of the great house and life seems to be going well. However, the next year, things take a turn for the worse: "The rains, which should have come in early summer, withheld themselves, and day after day the skies shone with fresh and careless briliance."
From the preceding passage, we can infer two things: that the farmers in Wang Lung's village are in trouble, and that the author places an emphasis upon the land in her writing style.
The drought gets so bad that Wang Lung and his family are forced to migrate south, to a big city. Wang Lung, however, makes a point of not selling his land or his house, so he has something to return to. In the big city, the reader gets a glimpse into the author's view of the socioeconomic divisions that plauged the urban areas of pre-Revolutionary China. The poor of the city live in small huts made of mats along the side of some rich guy's large house, with several huts fitting along a single wall. The poor are forced to eat rice for almost all their meals, while the rich can eat anything they want.

The Good Earth1

The book "The Good Earth," by Pearl S. Buck starts off with Wang Lung, a Chinese farmer before the revolution, about to get married. Note, however, that he has never actually met the woman who is to be his wife and his old father has insisted that she should be a slave, "Not a slave too young, and above all, not a pretty one"! Wang Lung's own father has insisted this because otherwise the wife would be too demanding.
Wang Lung goes to the great house to pick up his wife, and he comes out of the gate followed by O-lan. Within the first seven chapters, O-lan bears Wang Lung two sons, and then, much to Wang Lung's horror, a girl, or "only a slave".
In case one cannot tell, the first chapters lay out a setting of considerable sexism and similar discrimination.

Butterflies2

This book has continued to annoy me. The dance at the end of chapter 6 is a blatant attempt at symbolism. The whole rebellion can easily be viewed as a very careful dance to stay alive, to stay on Trujillo's good side. It is a very thinly veiled representation of life at that time. Symbolism shouldn’t be so obvious; the author is trying too hard. I expect better from my literature. (Actually, it’s a good book; it’s just that I need something to complain about.) The book takes a very complex concept and tries to make it simple, something that rarely leads to a good outcome. We can only wait and see. I have some hope that it will be at least tolerable.

Butterflies1

The first seven chapters of this book have been mildly interesting at best. At worst, they have been boring or melodramatic, not to mention contradictory. For example, in the first chapter, the narrator mentioned her complaint that the sisters had been made into legends, yet the narrators in later chapters went on to fictionalize and hero-worship their lives. Admittedly, the book gives the sisters just enough flaws and quirks to seem to avoid this, but it is only at a superficial level. The book raises questions about the morality of each sister's actions, but generally defends it apparently unknowingly. Besides, the book seems to try to make the sisters seem superhuman in their responses to oppression. The book over-simplifies the sisters. We as readers can never know what the sisters were actually thinking, not to mention what they actually did, because the book is so fictionalized.