John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Pearl Buck's The Good Earth

John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, and Pearl Buck's The Good Earth are very similar books, both describing a life of a family during periods of hardship. Steinbeck's book focuses on an American family during the horrible times of the Great Depression. Pearl Buck's book describes the rags to riches story of a traditional Chinese family. Both families have very similar roots in the land, farming being their main way of life. Both authors present a unique and insightful view of a traditional farming family surviving the terrible changes of their times.

John (Ernst) Steinbeck is the Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of the novel The Grapes of Wrath. The novel, The Grapes of Wrath was first published in 1939, but it was banned in many states because 'well-meaning Americans' thought it would reveal too much about the nature of fascism and communism (not to mention bring people to shame) in the American society.

The Good Earth is a marvelous and captivating book about the rise and fall of a Chinese family. Its author, Pearl Buck, takes the readers deep within the cultural and traditional roots of China and its peasants. The book reflects on and opens up a world of traditional Chinese life in a setting that throws the reader back and forth between agonizing poverty, cruelty, and brutality sprinkling the lives of its rich characters with highlights of success and wealth. This is a book about China written in a way that Western people can grasp the complex and sometimes incomprehensible character of China and its people.
The Grapes of Wrath is a great American novel about an ordinary family facing the horrors of the Great Depression. During the Great Depression many American families faced poverty and had to leave their homes. The Joad family was displaced farmers. As sharecroppers, the Joads did not own the land, but leased farmland. Before the Depression, the Joads made a living and the farm was a steady source of income. However, during the Depression, many landowners had to sell their land and many farms were repossessed either by landowners or by banks. In addition, the falling commodity prices made it impossible for farmers like the Joads to earn a living. Oklahoma, the state where the Joad family lived was the center of the 'Dust Bowl'. The region was experiencing severe ecological changes due to excessive agriculture. There was a severe draught. The term Dust Bowl, widely used in the book and popular in the thirties, refers to a region in the United States. It includes states like Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas. The term was first used during the Great Depression. Steinbeck probably in creating the title 'grapes of wrath' was probably taken from a Christian hymn, but it's meaning is very strong. The term suggests a steadily growing anger that may burst when ripe. As the Okies suffered terrible injustice and were an oppressed people, their anger grew and was as grapes on a vine.

Buck introduces readers to a Chinese family whose lives change in many ways throughout the book. Wang Lung, the book's main character, is a simple farmer, who through his owns very hard labor takes his family from the dregs of humble poverty to the spoils and corruption of wealth. Along the way, Lung and his wife O-Lan also change as their situations become more complex and challenging. Buck provides an excellent insight into the treatment of women in traditional Chinese society along with the stern and unyielding power of the male-dominated culture. She also shows how wealth and success become the avenues of corruption and ruin. Underlying the whole sage is the essential and unquestionable experience of the land and its inherent hardships and unyielding power. The land does not change even though everything on it appears and disappears, lives and dies, blossoms and rots.

The most obvious force of this book revolves around the power of wealth. Poverty is a very real and always brutal reality. Wealth, however, is a tantalizing source of envy and desire. Even the very early part of the book, Wang Lung tries to acquire some symbolic status of wealth by desiring a wife with bound feet. The bound feet serve as symbol of irony and mark Lung's desire to have something to elevate his status. However, his fortune brings his O-Lan, whose feet is that of a peasant, but whose heart, resourcefulness, and endurance prove more valuable to Lung than empty symbols. Still. Wealth is Lung's ultimate goal. He experiences some success and some famine, but remains true to his goal. Eventually, he does attain a very envious success, but his soul and his humble goodness leave his and disappear proportionately with the rags he discards in favor of rich clothes. He becomes corrupted by wealth. He becomes very cruel to his most valuable and brave wife. While he refrained from selling his daughter during the harsh famine because he was afraid she would be mistreated, Lung himself purchases girls as slaves when he becomes a wealthy man. He mistreats Pearl Blossoms in the same way the Hwangs mistreated O-Lan. Lung's oldest son becomes an idle and useless may who lives of his father's wealth. In a complex but determined way, Buck shows how wealth does not always brings happiness. Instead, wealth seems to be a false god, luring humble people into believing they are no longer affected by the land.

By contrast, Steinbeck presents the other side of the coin in America, where during the Depression, Oklahoma farmers kept their identity through the grief and hardships and despite the evident destruction of their way of life.

The Grapes of Wrath is a great American novel about an ordinary family facing the horrors of the Great Depression. During the Great Depression many American families faced poverty and had to leave their homes. The Joad family was displaced farmers. As sharecroppers, the Joads did not own the land, but leased farmland. Before the Depression, the Joads made a living and the farm was a steady source of income. However, during the Depression, many landowners had to sell their land and many farms were repossessed either by landowners or by banks. In addition, the falling commodity prices made it impossible for farmers like the Joads to earn a living. Oklahoma, the state where the Joad family lived was the center of the 'Dust Bowl'. The region was experiencing severe ecological changes due to excessive agriculture. There was a severe draught. The term Dust Bowl, widely used in the book and popular in the thirties, refers to a region in the United States. It includes states like Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas. The term was first used during the Great Depression. Steinbeck probably in creating the title 'grapes of wrath' was probably taken from a Christian hymn, but it's meaning is very strong. The term suggests a steadily growing anger that may burst when ripe. As the Okies suffered terrible injustice and were an oppressed people, their anger grew and was as grapes on a vine. In contrast to Buck, Steinbeck shows how change affects a family and its traditions in a negative way. He makes very shocking and effective points, showing how tradition keeps the family together at least to the extent of the hardships they face.

Buck sees tradition as something to challenge and presents their hardships to show how they live. The role of women is an important issue in this book. Buck shows in explicit detail the awful cruelty, unbearable degradation, and constant fear women face in traditional Chinese society. As the lowest links in the traditional Confucian food chain, female slaves receive the brunt of cruelty and pain. O-Lan's childhood in the House of the Hwangs was an awful ordeal. She was beaten every day with a leather throng. Raped, exploited, and brutalized, girl slaves face the harsh and ugly filth of the traditional Chinese society without any mercy or any hope. The mysteries of China, as Buck so vividly shows, have a brutal and nightmarish form. During a harsh famine, O-Lan herself is forced to become brutal by suffocating her second baby daughter. However, this is another aspect of her reality that shows how low females stand in Chinese society. O-Lan's actions seem brutal and cruel, but they are really merciful because she let the baby die to avoid starvation of her other children and to avoid the inevitable. Still, had the baby been a boy, she would probably avoid killing him, or would instead take the life of her first daughter. The scene underlines the brutal realism where the hungry dog takes the unburied body of the baby. Yet, the Chinese obsession with male-dominance reflects even in O-Lan. She relishes her revenge on the Old Mistress by bringing her first son to the Hwang house. The first son is a status symbol and O-Lan is as much a participant in the traditional ways as she is a victim.
Steinbeck's Ma Joad, like O-Lan, is keeping the family together, but the traditions which Buck shows as demeaning to women, Steinbeck shows as the vital glue keeping the family intact under the worst of times and in the worst of conditions.
The Joad family was from Oklahoma, that is where the account of their ordeal begins. The Joad families were farmers for many generations. Tradition was probably their most powerful connection with the land, in a cultural sense. Also, the farm animals, particularly the pigs, had significant importance judging from the way they left the pigs alone until the last decision was made to leave. However, farming, as a way of life was the more influential of all other connections with the land the Joads had. As farmers, they were intimately familiar with the land in a way that is incomprehensible to a city dweller.

Living simply is what the Joad family does every day. As farmers, the Joads must have lived a very simple life, in harmony with the land and nature. Then, their lives became even simpler. But, it is possible that too much simplicity brings hardships and danger. The Joads would probably do anything to live in a normal house with running water and electricity. They would also prefer to have a medical facility nearby. All their loved ones dying on the side of the road without proper medical care was not what they wanted. A simple life is for a romantic and naïve city resident that may run home at the first opportunity. The Joads lived a simple life that was very hard and full of grief.

Route 66 is the main highway used by the Joad family and thousands of others migrating to California. The long 'winding' highway runs from the panhandle all the way to Bakersfield and goes through New Mexico on its long journey southwest. On his way home from prison, where he served four years for murder, Tom was coming home. Tom's clothes and shoes were new because he, at the beginning, is only worried about himself and wants to make up for the years he spent in prison. When Tom arrives home he sees that the house is empty and there are timbers lying around the yard. There is also a stray cat. Tom first thinks that the house was robbed as happened to the neighbors who went to big city for Christmas. Tom finds and captures a turtle. The turtle may be a symbol of the stoic perseverance and an unstoppable drive southwest. Like the migrating farmers, the turtle crawled southwest. The turtle keeps trying to escape.

When the Joads begin to prepare for the journey, they can only take essential items. Anything that they cannot sell, they either burn or leave behind. Ma Joad has some belongings. She finds an old box of stationary with some photos, newspaper clippings, and jewelry trinkets. She burns everything but the trinkets. This way she leaves her past behind. It is a way to cut herself off from her past and focus on the future. The burning memories represent a past she can never have again. She is determined to find a new future and she does not even look back as they pull away in the truck. The Joad men decided that the truck was Al 's responsibility. Along Route 66, at a campsite, Grandpa Joad died. He was the first to die in the Joad family during the trip. He had a stroke in the Wilson's' tent. Near the Colorado River, at Needles, Noah tells Tom he's going down river to stay. Noah does not stay with the family; his journey takes him down Colorado River. Connie did not want to go to California; he told Rosasharn that he was better off driving a tractor back in Oklahoma. The Willsons are the Joads' neighbors. They were also migrating to California along Route 66. They meet the Joads on the way to California. They are "adopted" into the family after Grampa dies in their tent. They show the transition of caring for the individual family to caring for anybody in need when the Joads stay with them to help them fix their truck. The Joads have to leave them behind when Sairy develops an illness that won't allow her to cross the desert. They decided they could not go on. Wainewrights shared the boxcar with the Joads' before the floods came. Like Buck, Steinbeck shows the terrible hardships of the Joad family, their poverty is so shocking and desperate that it is a wonder they survive at all. Still, Steinbeck shows that the terrible poverty, cruelty, and despair and how tradition keeps the family together. Despite the hardships, no fortune finds the Jode family and unlike the heroes of Buck's novel, the Jodes do not forget their ties to the land.

The land is the constant and persevering feature of the book. No matter what happens to the characters and no matter what fortunes and misfortunes come their way, the land is always there. It is where they are born and it is where they will die. Wealth and status are false gods and Lung sees that in a glimpse of enlightened grief when Ching dies in the field. However, he is very far along the spoiled path of riches to dwell on the matter and soon becomes to blinded by his gold.

Once again returning to the most striking similarities between Buck's O-Lan and Steinbeck's Ma Joad, it is important to note that Ma Joad is the driving force and the glue of the American family. O-Lan is the glue of the Chinese family in times of hardship. Both women, although very different in age and character, show tremendous strength in their character. The awful poverty in China during the drought described by Buck is a most effective setting showing the tremendous strength and sacrifice made by O-Lan. Her ability to maintain the family and to make terrible decisions is a source of inspiration. Subsistence is a state of being where one cannot adequately satisfy basic needs. It is survival, but only by a very narrow margin. It is less than existence. Ma Joad is the backbone of the Joad family. When things were really bad the family turned to her and not to Pa. The family gauged their own emotions by looking at her reaction. She knew that if she faltered then the whole family would collapse. She is always concerned for the welfare of her own family, but still tries to help others as much as possible as show by her helping of the Wilsons and when she gave food to the children in the camp when she barely had enough to feed the family anyway. She fights throughout the book to keep the family together, and without her the family would have fallen apart quickly. In spite of this she still sees that the family is breaking apart. She fights this as much as possible, but isn't completely successful. She knows that if Pa ever gives up, the family will collapse, so sometimes she goads him into anger so that he doesn't.

The Good Earth, by Pearl Buck is a wonderful saga of a Chinese family and its rise and fall along the way. There is much emphasis on the substance of the land and its power to last despite many changes. The role of women shows the intricate, complex, and often brutal side of traditional Chinese society. Wealth corrupts and Buck makes the moral very clear by showing how rich men rise and fall and how families appear and disappear off the face of the land. The Grapes of Wrath is a novel of the American family in the impoverished south of the Great Depression. One is a rags-to-riches story of a family losing their bond with the land as their fortune grows. The other is horror story of what poverty was like in the south and the shame of the American people, the racism and fascism of our society, challenging and corroding the strong and incorruptible spirit of a traditional family caught up in the terrible changes.