The Good Earth

Wang Lung, a poor farmer, rises through his devotion to the land, marrying the plain, steadfast slave O-lan, until famine drives the family south to a great city and back, and returning fortune lifts them into a wealth that draws the next generation away from the soil that made them. Buck kept her geography deliberately broad, but rooted it in the real farming country of eastern China she knew: the fields and the great landlord's house, and the southern city where the starving family scatters in the streets.

Wang Lung

Wang Lung's farm

The land

On his small plot of earth Wang Lung begins as a poor farmer, and his whole life and faith are bound to the land, its seasons, its harvests and its silent power to make and unmake him. Buck opens on this near-religious devotion to the soil, the theme the whole novel will test as fortune carries the family up and away from it.

The opening chapters

inspired by Wang Lung's fields are drawn from the farming country of eastern China that Buck knew; the setting is kept general and sited in that region.

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