What Are The Flaws In The Good Earth

Pearl S. Buck is the author of The Good Earth. She was born in 1892 in Hillsboro, West Virginia to Absalom and Caroline Sydenstricker, two American missionaries. When Buck was three months old, she and her family moved to China where she spent most of her childhood and young adult life. In 1910, she moved to the U.S. to study philosophy at Randolph-Macon Woman’s college in Virginia. Although she had planned on staying in America, Pearl returned to China after learning that her mother was severely ill. During her stay in China, she met her husband, John Lossing Buck, an agricultural economist. Together they moved to the rural Anhwei province of China, where she witnessed the poverty upon which she would later base Wang Lung’s experiences. In fact, his struggle with poverty is one of the many reasons why people are empathetic towards Lung. He also has many faults, such as his impulsiveness, that allow the reader to connect with his character. Although …show more content…
One reason why readers are sympathetic towards Lung is because he struggles with poverty. In the beginning of the novel, Lung works very hard to provide for his family. Even with all of his hard work, his family continues to live in poverty, and his wife even has to strangle his own daughter because they do not have enough food to provide for another child. Even though Lung becomes wealthy by the end of the novel and abandons many of his original values, readers remember his early struggles and are empathetic towards him. Another reason readers commiserate with Wang Lung is because he is the character who readers are most like. O-lan is a former slave, Lotus is a concubine, and Lung’s children only experience poverty very early on in their lives. Because of this, most readers do not identify with these characters and tend to connect with Lung, who goes through many hardships and has flaws that readers can relate