A measure of the quality, prescience, and veracity of Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth is that, nearly a century after its first publication, the book remains required reading in literature, world history, and social science courses. The novel is a simple, straightforward narrative about 50 years in the life of Wang Lung, an uneducated farmer in eastern China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While this era period was one of continual political turbulence in China, Wang Lung’s personal struggle centers on securing good harvests, purchasing more land, and building a lasting foundation for his growing family. To accomplish this, he must work around tempestuous nature, unscrupulous relatives, opportunistic soldiers and brigands, and other common people who, like him, are just trying to survive. His greatest ally is his wife, O-lan. Like the land itself, she is fertile, dependable, and completely accepting.

Growing up in China in the 1890s as the child of Christian missionaries, Buck watched many of the changes she writes about firsthand. The first of a trilogy, the book received a Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and was the bestselling novel in the US in 1931 (the year of its initial publication) and 1932. Buck received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1938, largely because of The Good Earth trilogy.

This guide refers to the 2016 Simon and Schuster paperback edition.

Content Warning: Throughout The Good Earth there are numerous references to opium use and frequent references to sexual abuse. In addition, the book refers to cannibalism during a famine and an instance of infanticide.

Plot Summary

On his wedding day, 20-year-old Wang Lung leaves the small farm where he lives with his widowed father and walks to the nearby village to meet his bride for the first time. Mistress Hwang has arranged the marriage, selling one of her kitchen maids, O-lan, to Wang Lung’s father. The newlyweds walk silently to the farm, where Wang Lung tells his bride to prepare a feast for his friends and relatives. While he serves the meal she prepares, he makes her wait outside with the ox. After everyone leaves, he takes her to his bed. While Wang Lung doesn’t find O-lan attractive, she’s the perfect wife in other respects: deferential, hard-working, loyal, and clever. When she finishes her housework, she joins Wang Lung in the fields. Although pregnant, she works beside Wang Lung until the birth. She delivers a boy, and O-lan presents their son to the House of Hwang, where she lived for 10 years as an enslaved woman. She tells Wang Lung that the Hwangs face financial difficulties. He responds by using their saved money to buy part of Hwang’s property. O-lan bears a second son.

Wang Lung experiences a series of events he considers evil omens. After arguing with his aunt, Wang Lung sees Uncle, his father’s shiftless brother, approaching him. Reminding Wang Lung of his social obligations, Uncle extorts some silver from him. Then, O-lan gives birth to a daughter, and a drought descends upon the land. Wang Lung has saved enough money that, despite the drought, he buys another piece of Hwang farmland. However, the drought is so severe that it results in famine, and the family becomes so malnourished that O-lan—who is pregnant again—can’t produce milk. Uncle appears with strangers who ask to buy Wang Lung’s property for a pittance. Instead, O-lan offers to sell their furniture. Wang Lung and O-lan plan to go to a city and beg for food after the baby comes. Wang Lung hears the new baby cry once and fall silent. O-lan tells him the baby is dead and asks him to take the body to the cemetery.

Weak with malnourishment and struggling to walk, the family passes the village on their way south and, for the first time, sees a “fire wagon,” or train; it takes them 100 miles to the city. Many migrants gather for rice each morning, and the family can eat again. O-lan teaches the boys to beg, and Wang Lung pulls a rickshaw—but they can’t earn enough to return home. Wang Lung hears street prophets calling for a revolution. He isn’t interested because nothing they say pertains to farming. Soldiers randomly conscript men to serve on civilian crews for the military. Wang Lung hides during the day and finds hard, menial work at night. A revolt occurs in the city one night. Wang Lung and O-lan hear that the great house behind the wall where they shelter is open. O-lan quickly disappears into it, and Wang Lung follows. The fearful lord of the house comes out of hiding and offers Wang Lung gold if he’ll let him escape. Wang Lung takes the gold.

Using the gold coins, Wang Lung leads his family back to his farmhouse, which is in disarray. As O-lan restores the home, Wang Lung replants his fields. One night in bed, Wang Lung realizes that O-lan has a pouch tied between her breasts, full of precious gems she found in the ransacked great house. Leaving her with two small pearls, Wang Lung uses the jewels to buy the remaining Hwang land. He engages his trustworthy neighbor, Ching, as his steward. They enter seven straight years of excellent harvests. O-lan gives birth to fraternal twins, a girl and a boy—but the delivery is difficult, and O-lan never fully recovers. Tired of merchants mocking his illiteracy, Wang Lung sends his two older sons to school.

Disaster strikes the land in the form of a lingering flood. Wang Lung, however, has stored food and funds. Discontent because he can’t work the land, he goes daily into the village to patronize a new teahouse that’s also a gambling establishment and bordello. Cuckoo—the sales agent who sold Wang Lung the last of Master Hwang’s land—is a madam there. She takes Wang Lung to Lotus, a beautiful, tiny sex worker. Smitten, Wang Lung returns to Lotus each day. Uncle, his wife, and their son—the remains of Uncle’s family—move into Wang Lung’s house. Uncle’s wife figures out that Wang Lung has another woman, and Wang Lung overhears her telling O-lan. He decides to move Lotus into the farmhouse. He adds a courtyard and three additional rooms. Lotus comes to his house, accompanied by Cuckoo as her servant. O-lan is emotionally devastated but doesn’t complain. The arrangement creates multiple problems for Wang Lung, however. His father loudly proclaims that Lotus is a “harlot.” O-lan, who Cuckoo mistreated when they were both in the House of Hwang, treats the intruders with passive aggression, so Cuckoo and Lotus complain to Wang Lung. When the eldest son, who agitated to go south for better schooling, calms down, Wang Lung discovers it’s because the boy has been going to see Lotus every day. Wang Lung beats him and drives him from the house. Once the flood recedes, Wang Lung returns to farming, which relieves him of his obsession with Lotus. He betroths his older sons to carefully selected young women. Wang Lung attaches his second son to a grain dealer, his eldest son’s future father-in-law. The second son will become a grain dealer to help Wang Lung move his harvests to market.

Noticing O-lan’s growing difficulty completing her chores and continual swollen stomach, Wang Lung sends her to bed and summons a physician. They discover that O-lan is dying. Bedridden and approaching death, O-lan orchestrates the return of the elder son and his bride. After the elaborate wedding, O-lan dies. Wang Lung seals her body in a casket, leaving it in a temple for three months as he awaits the date predicted by a geomancer (one who bases divination on geographic features). Meanwhile, Wang Lung’s father also dies. He buries them both in a private hilltop cemetery.

Wang Lung’s oldest son complains that Uncle’s son watches his new bride with lust. Wang Lung explains that he can’t remove Uncle’s family because Uncle is a member of the Red Beards, an outlaw group. As long as Uncle remains with them, the family’s house is safe from the gang. The eldest son suggests that Uncle, his wife, and his son receive free opium because, as they have substance use disorders, they’ll become docile. Wang Lung employs this tactic when Uncle’s son sexually assaults the twin daughter. Uncle and his wife quickly develop an addiction to opium. Their son continues to leer at the women servants. Wang Lung’s oldest son suggests that he buy Hwang House and move all but Uncle’s family there. This is a completion for Wang Lung, who ends up owning the house he went to years ago to buy O-lan. Over time, the family and servants end up in Wang House. Uncle’s son approaches Wang Lung for money so that he can join the military and fight in the war. Wang Lung’s daughter-in-law gives birth to the first grandchild, a boy. Within five years, his two sons father seven children, all living in the 60-room city house. Wang Lung’s old friend Ching and then Uncle die. Wang Lung buries them in the hilltop cemetery.

Soldiers come to the village and billet (lodge) with area residents. Uncle’s son is one of the soldiers. He brings a rowdy group of men into the Wang House. To pacify Uncle’s lusty son, they let him take a servant girl as his “concubine.” When they leave a month later, the girl is pregnant. Wang Lung marries her to one of his field workers. When Uncle’s wife dies, Wang Lung buries her in the cemetery. The youngest son asks Wang Lung for permission to join the military. Wang Lung offers to get him a wife instead, thinking of 17-year-old Pear Blossom, the youngest of the servant girls. Wang Lung becomes infatuated with the girl, even realizing how inappropriate it is. She briefly becomes his “concubine,” and his younger son runs away to join the military. Yearning to enjoy the land again, Wang Lung moves with his elder daughter, Pear Blossom, and several servants back to the farmhouse. He tells his oldest son to procure his casket, which he keeps with him at the farm. His older sons visit him there. One day, he overhears their plan to divide and sell the farmland once Wang Lung is gone.