I was in a complete daze after reading Pearl S. Buck’s remarkable novel,The Good Earth. It was somewhat hard not to stop what I was doingafterwards and try to put myself in the characters’ shoes and visualizeeverything that happened in the book. I was so taken by the plot that Iremember not wanting to put down the book till I knew what happened nextin one of the conflicts in the story. Considering my reaction to it when I firstgot the book and my reaction to it now, you would really think it’s ironic.First of all I wasn’t quite happy when I found out about the reading we hadto do and obviously not looking forward to reading having to squeeze it in my hectic after school schedule. I remember when I was at the bookstoreand saw how thick of a book it was I thought to myself, “Great...here’sanother long boring book.” But after reading it I eventually proved myselfwrong and found out it was well worth reading it all the way through thelast page. Pearl S. Buck did an outstanding job on the book’s vividdescription of the characters, emphasizing the importance of Wang Lung’sland, and its sense of dramatic reality.The way the characters are described in the book you can reallypicture in your mind who they are. It’s very important to be able to visualizethem because it helps you get to know them better as characters and have abetter understanding of the book. One vivid description is O-lan’s, WangLung’s wife. “Wang Lung turned to the woman and looked at her for thefirst time. She had a square, honest face, a short, broad nose with largeblack nostrils, and her mouth was wide as a gash in her face. Her eyes weresmall and of a dull black color, and were filled with some sadness that wasnot clearly expressed. It was a face that seemed habitually silent andunspeaking, as though it could not speak if it would.” (p.19) As I wasreading this I got the impression that O...
