The Good Earth
Pearl S. Buck (1931)
“A Chinese farmer rises from dirt-poor peasant to wealthy landowner — and discovers that the land he sacrificed everything to own is the only thing that was ever real.”
Characters in The Good Earth
by Pearl S. Buck · 1931 · 6 characters analyzed
Cast: Wang Lung, O-lan, Lotus, Wang Lung's Uncle, Ching, The Three Sons.
Character Analysis
A man of genuine virtue — hardworking, loyal to his father, capable of love — who is also a product of a profoundly unjust system and never seriously questions it. His tragedy is not villainy but ordinary moral blindness: he cannot see O-lan because his culture never taught him to look. He is the American Dream's Chinese equivalent: a self-made man whose making costs others everything.
Plain, direct, agricultural — names things by their function. As he grows wealthy, he begins using more formal constructions but never fully masters the speech of the educated class. His language stays rooted.