A Stylistic Analysis Of Pearl S Buck's The Good Earth

Pearl S Buck, the first female American writer who won the Nobel Prize, attracted great attention from readers and critics. Her most famous work, The Good Earth, published in 1931, received critical and popular acclaim, zooming to the top of the best-seller list and staying there longer than any book before, and was translated into more than thirty different languages. Many critics, both at home and abroad, carried out studies on it. There is no verdict for her and her works among critics and readers, but most of the literary critics focus on the themes of the novel rather than its writing style. Some critics focus on feminism, some study it from colonialism and some concentrate on the characters.However, and systematic studies of stylistic features are seldom found. The few such studies are based on subjective perception rather than objective analysis. As a matter of fact, the work itself conveys to the readers much information from its way of presenting the tale. The stylistic features reveal the theme of the work and the writer's concept. The author of this thesis bases the interpretation of Pearl S Buck's The Good Earth on quantitative stylistic analysis. The theme of the novel is explored based on its stylistic features, which have been analyzed from three aspects. Quantitative stylistic analysis begins from the lexical features which include the use of simple daily words, the words with local color and the expressions in Chinese style. The simple country life, women's low social status and farmers'love of the land, which is the source of their life and also wealth, have been vividly manifested by the author's wording. Then the syntactical features from four angles have been analyzed: the simple and short sentences used in the conversation part, the compound sentences in the whole text, the sentences with connectives as sentence beginners and sentences with Chinese style. The natural life of Chinese farmers is well displayed in front of the readers by easily-to-understand sentences and the uncontrolled fates of the farmers are revealed from the construction of sentences as well. The last part is the narrative perspective of the novel: the alternation of the perspectives, the employment of direct discourse (which includes the direct speech and direct thought) and indirect discourse (which includes the indirect speech and indirect thought) by turns. The writing strategies make the story more vivid and reliable. The themes, the land complex of Wang Lung and the woman's low social status and the simple life of Chinese farmers at that time have been deduced from the stylistic analysis in the end.The strategies Pearl S Buck employed in her writing, words choices, sentence patterns and the alternation of the perspectives exhibit vivid scene of Chinese common people's life in front of readers. This is characteristic of the realist writing style that the language which is fit for the character's social position is used to express their life. The simple words and distinctive sentences along with natural and objective expressions make English readers gain a better understanding of Chinese people and their culture. The Good Earth, by introducing the real China and Chinese people to the whole world, makes great contributions to communication and understanding between China and Western countries.