An Analysis On Land Complex In The House Of Earth

Pearl S. Buck is a controversial American woman writer in 20th century. Living in China for many years and having extensive contact with Chinese lower classes, she creates a lot of literary work that reflects Chinese rural life such as Mother ,Dragon Seed and The House of Earth which consists of three stories: The Good Earth(1931), Sons (1933) and A House Divided(1935), etc. The House of Earth won Pulitzer Price and has been translated and published in more than 60 countries. Due to her great achievement in literary field, she became the first woman who had won Nobel Prize in American history in 1938.In her master work The House of Earth, she truly and accurately described the life of Chinese peasants, showed their national consciousness based on land and vividly depicted the deep love and attachment of Chinese peasants to land. At the same time, the work also analyzes the interdependent and inseparable relationship between man and land, man and nature.This thesis will analyze the land complex reflected in The House of Earth from the perspective of Aldo Leopold's"land ethic",and then discuss the close relationship between human and land thus draw the following conclusion: land is the root of human, to create a harmonious relation with land, people must change their role from the conqueror of land into a member of the nature. What's more, the thesis is also practical to awaken people's emotional return to land in such a busy modern society. The thesis consists of an introduction, three chapters and a conclusion.The introduction first gives a brief summary of Peal S. Buck and her work The House of Earth. It also makes a general survey of current criticism on the work. And then, the origin and main content of Land Ethic will be introduced.The first chapter discusses the inseparability of man and land based on Land Ethic and the novel. There are two parts in this chapter; the first part analyzes the significance of land to people from three aspects: land is the basic of survival, the source of wealth and authority, the spiritual support. In the second part, the retribution for people abandoning land will be listed to emphasize the natural rule that man can't live without land.The second chapter takes Wang Lung and Wang Yuan as examples, combining with land ethic, to show the land complex of male characters in The House of Earth. There are two parts in this chapter, the first part illustrates two stages of Wang Lung's land complex, the first stage is a contridictionary feeling with craze and conqueror, the second stage is the full understanding of human-land relation. The second part analyzes Wang Yuan's land complex by analyzing his desire for getting close to land and final return to land after learning abroad.The third chapter focuses on the land complex of female characters in The House of Earth. The first part analyzes the oneness of female and land from the perspective of body function, emotional feature and patriarchy oppression based on the character analysis of O-lan; the second part discusses the silent love of O-lan and Pear Blossom for land. Their land complex reflects the combination of female value and land ethic.The conclusion summaries the thesis and restates its main points, pointing out the practical meaning of land ethic and The House of Earth.