An Oriental Study Of The Good Earth

As the first western writer, Peal Buck wins the Nobel Prize for literature for depictingChina. As a Chinese American, she lives both in China and America. She knows well aboutChina and the Chinese, so her works open the door of mysterious China for westerners. Butbecause of her particular identity and experience, she wants to cater to the Americanorientalism; she also wants to get rid of the Americans’ bias on China. This thesis tries toanalyzes Pearl Buck as a contradictory complex. It also reconsiders American orientalismthrough the study of The Good Earth.Chapter One concerns the development of the Chinese Americans at first, so that wecan get the real reasons for most of the immigrants to have the common complexpsychology. In Chapter one, I also introduce Buck’s writing background and herembarrassment in two cultures. She is born in America, but she lives in China, her uniqueexperience makes her a contradictory complex. Great cultural deadlock lies behind herliteral brilliance.Chapter Two analyzes from an important concept “the others” in Orientalism. Here“the others” stands for China, Chinese culture, and Chinese people in Americans’ eyes. Inorder to cater to the westerners’ bias on China, Buck creates the image of gloomy andterrible China and Chinese other, together with the image of suspicious and stupid Chineseculture. Writing like this, she gives the Americans a kind of feeling that China is poor,barbaric and uncivilized. Chinese was superstitious and stupid, she fulfills her originalintention: misleading the readers, especially the American readers.Chapter Three reconsiders the orientalism in the novel “The Good Earth” and makesubversion to American orientalism in The Good Earth. Pearl Buck leads a difficult life;she is not accepted by both Chinese and Americans. She is eager to see the co-existenceand supplement of China and the America, Chinese culture and the American culture, theOrientalism and the Anti-Orientalism. So ultimately Buck is an anti-oriental writer. Shebreaks the Stereotype of feeble Chinese, creating the images of strong and persistent Chinese men and Chinese women. The title of the novel, Earth, as the hope of the smallpeasant class in China expresses people’s nostalgia to eternal things. And this is coherentwith the West Christianism. So what Pearl writes in this novel is to link up the feelingsbetween the East and the West. Therefore, the conclusion is the sublimation: no matterwhat the cultural background is, all countries should respect mutually, all cultures shouldco-exist in the world harmoniously.