The discussion of beauty in Pearl S. Buck's "The Good Earth"

Pearl S. Buck's "The Good Earth (1931)" has no match among the twentieth century American novels in depicting the value of beauty in a woman's life. It has presented the epitome of the characterization of an ugly female protagonist who struggles and suffers lifelong, unsuccessful even at the end, to get her husband's love and care.

O-lan, a homely servant girl sold to the village's greatest house, the House of Hwang, as a kitchen slave because of her lack of beauty, otherwise she would be sold to prostitution, is taken as a wife by Wang Lung, a poor Chinese farmer. She gives birth to four children and toils in the field for the family's survival. The sustenance in the land is the only hope for the family, but the fear of starving in the famine force them to flee to the city for begging in the streets. It is O-lan's strong will to survive combined with good luck brings them back to the village with good fortune they never dreamt of. They return to their land in the village with the money they got by joining a mob in town that was looting a wealthy man. But the wealth brings only deception and heartbreak for O-lan who has to sacrifice more than she ever expected.

There are many events and scenes in the plot of this novel that implicitly or explicitly emphasizes upon both the pros and cons of beauty in a woman's life. Set against a China on the brink of change, the novel has presented a clue on how much the beautiful slaves were sexually exploited by their landlords.

Though Wang Lung himself lacks handsome appearance and personality, he has a dream to marry a beautiful woman. Therefore, he is not so much pleased about his father's choice of bride (O-lan) for him. His father tries to shake him off his fancy and put the reality by reminding him of their rough hands and dark skin. He says a pretty woman cannot do work in the field while tending their house and bearing children. Also, his son doesn't deserve a beauty in his house because of his coarse personality and poverty. In reply, Wang Lung says, "At least, I will not have a woman who is pock-marked, or who has a split upper lip." (p.9)

At his first meeting with O-lan, Wang Lung does not like her 'not bound' feet (p.17). Her square face, a short broad nose with large black nostrils, wide mouth, small eyes that are dull black in color and her brown complexion do not attract him. He is satisfied to some extent due to her unbroken virginity and moderateness, but that does not last long. The richer and more vigorous Wang Lung becomes the more restless and lonelier he feels due to his realization that his wife and the children are not up-to-date with his new status in the society. Having given birth to three children, his wife has still been a dull and common creature who does not know how she appears to others. Wang Lung hates their 'as brown as the soil' color (p. 41) and they are 'like figures made of earth' for him.

Wang Lung grows more restless when he sees several imperfections in his wife. Her hair is rough, brown and un-oiled, her face is large and flat and coarse-skinned, her features 'too large altogether and without any sort of beauty or light' (p. 167). Now, he has different eyes to look at his wife whose eyebrows are 'scattered', hairs are 'too few', lips are 'too wide' and hands and feet are 'large and spreading'. When it's too much to bear, he screams at his wife, "Now anyone looking at you would say you are the wife of a common fellow and never of one who has land which he hires men to plow!" (p. 168). He is even more irritated when she does not answer him except throwing her bare look at him. Her docility uncovers her ugliness even more to him. She looks as if she doesn't understand her husband's dissatisfaction. But, in fact, she is so helpless that she easily yields to him.

Then, out of rage and frustration, Wang Lung starts visiting the tea shop where he meets Lotus, his dream girl.

Though he feels a bit guilty for thinking ill of his wife, he is tempted by his desire for newness in his relationship. The figures of beautiful women painted on the walls of the great hall of the tea shop make him feel embarrassed at the first sight. He finds Cuckoo, Old Lord's former slave, who takes him as the same poor farmer she had met seven years before and humiliates him. The silver-rich Wang Lung gets infuriated at her rude behavior and becomes ready to waste his silver for beautiful women when he knows they are achievable with his silver coins.

Wang Lung chooses the most beautiful woman for his future mistress. The woman called Lotus has small face with pointed chin, small and rosy feet and fingers, white complexion and apricot-shaped (round) eyes. In fact, he found in Lotus what lacked in his wife O-lan. Therefore, he gets very much fascinated to Lotus on the very first meeting. Then, he is obsessed to make her his own at any cost. Finally, he gets married to her spending a lot of his property. O-lan, partly due to the fear of his violence and mostly because she feels inferior to Lotus' beautifulness, cannot protest her husband's second marriage. She has to tolerate it silently.

As O-lan dies, she bemoans her lack of beauty and says she is too ugly to be loved. Wang Lung feels guilty, but still cannot love her as he does Lotus.

Reference:

Buck, Pearl S. (1997). The Good Earth. UK: Simon & Schuster Inc.

Chetan Bhagat's 'Two States'

Chetan Bhagat can create interesting narrative out of common events. What he uses for this purpose are short and pithy dialogues, sudden twists and turns in events and sublime characterization techniques. He has successfully followed this trend in his fourth novel 'Two States', as he had done in the previous ones.

Bhagat has used plain and lucid English with simple vocabulary and sentences without 'and', 'but', or any other conjunction. Therefore, even a reader with basic English skills can read and enjoy his novel. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that have made him one of the best-selling English writers of India.

Based on the writer's personal experience, as he has admitted in the preface, the events in the novel are described with the first person narrative of Krish Mulhotra, a Punjabi boy, who loves Ananya Swaminathan, a Tamil girl from Chennai. They want to change their relationship into a successful love marriage, but their families are against their decision. So, they have to struggle a lot to change their wish into reality.

The novel begins when the main character and narrator Krish has been admitted to the clinic of a psychotherapist in Delhi. He is suffering from a series of early signs of nervous breakdown such as sleep deprivation, loss of human contact for more than a week, loss of appetite and google-searching on best ways to commit suicide. Having been coaxed by the doctor, he goes into flashback to tell his story of relation with Ananya, his girlfriend.

Krish meets Ananya while standing in the queue for lunch at the IIMA mess in Ahmedabad. He is immediately fascinated by her beauty and hopefully attempts to draw her attention. At first, Krish agrees with Ananya to be 'just friends'. But once he starts going to the girls' hostel at night to study with her until midnight, Cupid, the god of love, strikes his heart with his arrow. Then, suddenly he stops going to her room and shows apathy toward her. After some days, Ananya comes to the boys' dorm in the hostel to meet him with two Frootis. He admits his love for her which she replies with a 'stunning' kiss on his cheek and leaves the room. After that incident, they spend many romantic nights together.

After their graduation, both Ananya and Krish join lucrative jobs and plan to settle down. But their families, which have completely different cultural bases, stand against their will. They try really very much to put their families together, but the more they attempt to do so the less hope they find.

Krish's mother, a die-hard Punjabi housewife, doesn't like a Tamil girl for her future daughter-in-law because she finds her arrogant. She also doesn't like Ananya's parents and kinsfolk, for their skin is not fair and they cannot afford as much dowry as any Punjabi family for her only one son. On the other hand, Ananya's parents find Krish's mother insulting and ignorant. So, the parents hate each other strongly. But their son and daughter do not give up easily. They keep on trying to win each other's parents.

After being a good helping hand for Ananya's father, brother and mother, Krish finally wins their heart and makes them ready to accept their marriage. Ananya, too, manages to win her boy friends' kith and kin but her future mother-in-law is adamant to her opinion, and she finally gives up her hope and returns to her parents. She also disconnects communication with Krish for some time.

Krish has a very bad relation with his father, so he always avoids talking to him. But it is his father who helps him at the last moment. He asks for the forgiveness of Ananya's parents for his wife's insults to them. Then, everything is settled and the novel ends happily after Krish and Ananya marry and give birth to twin sons.

Bhagat has skillfully woven the plot to depict the differences between the people and cultures of two states (Punjab and Tamil Nadu) of India. He has been able to show how the differences among people can be settled with patience and love to each other. He seems to support inter-cast or inter-culture marriage for this purpose. Bhagat has used his specialty in creating the plot in such a way that the reader finds any part of it interesting and enticing. But too many filmy flips have almost made the plot a boring stuff.

The reader generally expects the epilogue of the novel to start from exactly where the section 56 of the plot is. But with the elaborate description of the wedding party Bhagat seems to want to check his reader's patience. The epilogue, where he describes how his wife gave birth to twin-sons in the hospital, seems too dramatic and unreal.

The nicest thing about the novel is that it can be a window to peep into the cults and cultures of Indian people. And with every event in the novel, you'll feel as if you are watching a mainstream Bollywood movie. If you enjoy reading for pleasure, the novel is a good one for you.

The stranger

I had to go to Sankhu from Purano Bus Park. The minibus was on the stand. Passengers were coming on board. I was on the seat just behind the driver. Another passenger would fill up the seat.

A young handsome slightly built man of average height boarded on the vehicle. He had a large backpack that he dropped beside me and looked around. His pale white skin and clean clothes revealed he was a foreigner. He was wearing a beautiful round hat with a feather on it and he had a black silky moustache though he was clean shaven. I guessed he could be a Korean or Chinese or Japanese. When he saw space in my seat, he smiled at me and asked in English with Asian tone, “Can I sit here?”

“Of course!”, I smiled back at him.

When the bus moved ahead, I studied the stranger from top to bottom. He was wearing a light grey shirt and cream pyjama. He had carried a navy blue backpack, half his size, with a camera port hanging out from its hood. He was a small young man with average Nepali height. 

It was going to be a long route of about two and a half hours. I didn’t know where he would go up to, so I decided to start conversation with him.

“Hello, Where are you from?”

At first, he smiled at me and then, politely said, “I’m from Tokyo, Japan.”

“It’s a famous city. I know your city”, I said in an effort to extend our conversation.

“Have you been there?”, he fired back.

“No, never”, I said hurriedly, “But I have heard and read a lot about it”.

“Oh”, he smiled nodding his head up and down.

He was not an extrovert person. So, he kept quiet as soon as he had answered. I had to resume the talk.

“By the way, what’s your good name?”

“My name’s Ken Okura”.

“When did you come to Nepal?”

 “I came here three days ago from New Delhi, India.”

“From New Delhi?”, I asked in surprise, “Why?”

“I am in a tour of South Asia. I have taken 6 months’ holiday from my company. I’m going to travel around as far as I can. This is my hobby.” This was the longest he had spoken since we met.

Ken could not speak English fluently, so he preferred using signs and body movements to make me understand what he was saying. I enjoyed his way. Some other passengers were also curiously staring at us. They might have thought we two were foreigners.

“How old are you?”, I asked him again.

He said he was twenty one. He said he was an employee of a famous restaurant in Tokyo that has its branches all over the world.

I felt a bit jealous of him. How a Japanese man less than my age could manage so much money that he was going to travel all over the South Asia!

“Are you alone?”

He felt uneasy with this question. He looked around once, and said, “Yes”.

He told me about his plan of journey. He was going to stay in Nepal for two days more. Right now, he was going to Nagarkot. Then, he would go to Swayambhunath Temple and then to Lumbini. After that, he would go to India again, and to Sri Lanka from there.

“How do you communicate with the local people you meet in your journey?” I was so curious to know that.  

“Sorry”, he gestured he didn’t hear me properly. I cursed silently the bus that was coming from the opposite direction for its ear-piercing honking.

“How do you ask for food, shelter, water, etc. to the local people at places because they might not understand English or Japanese?”, I explained my question to him.

“It’s easy”, he smiled at me again, and took a small pocket book out of his backpack, “I take help of this”.

Turning the pages, he showed me how he would read the typical sentences in Nepali. In that book, necessary phrases for conversation (like: What time is it now? Do you have a room? Can I get food?, etc.) were written in Nepali in Romanized form besides English and Japanese. Any country he would go, he would turn the respective section where he would find the phrases written in local languages. He had bought the book in Tokyo.

Suddenly, we were surrounded with din and chaos.  Our bus stopped at a point in Gausala- chabahil section. The passengers were pushing and pulling each other in the crowd. Somebody’s hand hit Ken’s hat from the back and it dropped on his lap. He looked a bit disappointed but smiled at me and resettled it on his head. It was a usual traffic jam. So, everybody looked habituated.

“Are you ok?”, I tried to check his mood.

“Yeah….little bit”, he said, “How far is Sankhu?”

“Still more than half”

My answer disappointed him.

“By the way, what did you like about Kathmandu?”

“I have yet to decide”, he laughed.

“Anyway, what difference did you find between Kathmandu and Tokyo?” I was curious to know what impression Kathmandu had had upon him.

“Well”, he looked interested, “Here, people can cross the roads anytime and anywhere they like. The drivers stop the vehicle at any place. They do not follow traffic rules if they don’t see the police. It’s different in Japan. We follow the road rules even in absence of the police.”

“You people are educated and self-conscious. Many of us are not”, I don’t know whether I said the truth.

“But your people should love their lives”, he said, and smiled at me again. That pricked my heart.

Really my people don’t love their lives? The most recent data published by Nepal Police shows that the number of accidents and people killed in the roads are increasing every year. In 2011/12 alone, there were 21,577 accidents that rose by 10.22 percent against last year’s. The number of people killed was 1,664 with 5.4% increase in the last year’s killings. The number will certainly rise this year, too, for almost every day the news of accidents and deaths is being heard, read and watched. 

I remembered the pedestrians, who go across the road unheeding, the cyclists and motorcyclists, who prefer to compete with large vehicles for spaces in the road, and the drivers, who do not stop or slow down when they see pedestrians in front of them crossing the road through zebra-crossing.

The minibus resumed its journey almost after half-an-hour. Then, pushing and pulling began again. The insatiable hunger of the driver and the conductor for passengers had created a lot of troubles, but who would care?

My Japanese friend looked weary and sleepy. I was willing to speak to him more. But he had closed his eyes. So, I looked out through the window until the minibus finally arrived at Sankhu. It was almost dark in the evening. Perhaps the bus conductor would ask him for more than the usual fare, but he saw me helping the stranger. He looked at me indignantly while taking the bus fare from him. I was ready to help Ken, but he didn’t seem interested. Therefore, I bade him farewell.