Writing styles of Good Earth compared to chinese sagas
Uploaded by kg_cresent_fresh on Oct 20, 1999
Every author has his or her own style of writing. The way authors use words to create ideas give them different styles. One interesting writing style is that of Pearl S Buck, the author of The Good Earth. Peter Doyle criticizes Buck's writing style as "almost biblical". Pearl Buck's writing is also compared to Chinese sagas. I agree with the criticism because of striking similarities between them.
The Good Earth and the bible are similar in the way they were written. In
The Good Earth Buck uses choppy sentences, using "and" to link the fragments. Often one sentence will be an entire paragraph having many parts: "And he urged them to eat and they ate heartily of the good fare, heartily and in silence, and this one praised the brown sauce on the fish and that one well-done pork, and Wang Lung said..." (Page 17)
The bible is almost exclusively written the same exact way: "And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith." (Acts 6, 7)
Throughout The Good Earth were many morals. Morals were one of the books many and most power theme. Very similar to this style of morals is Chinese Sagas. The main theme of most Chinese sagas was morals. In sagas such as Jeweled Sea: A Book of Chinese Sagas (Hartwell James with illustrations by John R. Neill. Henry Altemus Company, Philadelphia, 1906) the moral is the main part of the story. The bible is also filled with morals. Morals such as the burning bush ( 3 Exodus) are all throughout the bible.
All of the books I researched above each had their own unique writing style. However, with so many similarities between the writing styles of The Good Earth, the bible, and Chinese sagas, I agree with Peter Doyle's criticism. Pearl Buck's writing style is in fact, "almost biblical".