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Paddy 邱平龙
The book has been written by Buck to introduce China (specifically rural China) to a new audience. She uses Wang Lung as a conduit through which the reader can understand the context that she creates. As China was so different to what a 1930s western readership will have experienced, she makes him naive and principled, and quite unlike the other people around him. However, in the end as he (and we) look back on his life, he has behaved exactly how a Chinese of the time might have expected to have lived his life.
We explore this new world through his seemingly fresh eyes. He comes to conclusions and makes decisions that ultimately are Buck's as she tries to navigate her western reader through the complexities of rural China. In this sense, I find Wang Lung to the most non-credible major character in the book. More than any other, he is manipulated by Pearl Buck's inauthentic, orientalist perspective. Having said that, there would have been hardly a better person to undertake a literary endeavour like The Good Earth at that time.
My favourite character was O-Lan. I have met people in rural China who give so little of their personality away that you suspect that they have none.
Pear Blossom was a character that I thought was unusual and not entirely credible. It was another time and another place, and Pear Blossom has a back story which is never elucidated by Buck, so perhaps there are compelling reasons for he to be portrayed as she is. Nonetheless, she appears to be a caricature created straight from Arthur Smith's 1894 best seller and ultimate orientalist dissertation, 'Chinese Characteristics'.
We explore this new world through his seemingly fresh eyes. He comes to conclusions and makes decisions that ultimately are Buck's as she tries to navigate her western reader through the complexities of rural China. In this sense, I find Wang Lung to the most non-credible major character in the book. More than any other, he is manipulated by Pearl Buck's inauthentic, orientalist perspective. Having said that, there would have been hardly a better person to undertake a literary endeavour like The Good Earth at that time.
My favourite character was O-Lan. I have met people in rural China who give so little of their personality away that you suspect that they have none.
Pear Blossom was a character that I thought was unusual and not entirely credible. It was another time and another place, and Pear Blossom has a back story which is never elucidated by Buck, so perhaps there are compelling reasons for he to be portrayed as she is. Nonetheless, she appears to be a caricature created straight from Arthur Smith's 1894 best seller and ultimate orientalist dissertation, 'Chinese Characteristics'.
Katie
Yeah I think they were believable enough. I think O-lan was the most believable. She was just what I imagine from back then.
Felicity Barron
Pearl S. Buck spent most of her life in China so she thoroighly understood how society worked there. She used this book to try to show Americans what life was like in pre-revolutionary China, and how an ordinary Chinese person at this time's perspectives. To present the cultural differences and similarities between the intended Westerner reader and the Chinese characters was the purpose. The characters were meant to be an accurate representation of a Chinese man, but some Chinese-Americans disputed it's accuracy and said she got it wrong. Many people believe her critics were just upset that China was painted in such a bad light though and that this book was spot on. So in answer to your question, they were supposed to be credible.
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