Modeling Dumas

I selected this first passage because I love the vivid imagery (and utilization of adjectives) Dumas employs to describe the story.

"The next day was gloriously fine. The sun rose red and resplendent, its first rays tinting the fleecy clouds with many delicate and brilliant hues (Dumas 19)."

•  "The night was quietly majestic. The moon shone regally and mysteriously, its beams casting clouds into dancing shadows and light-bathed wisps."
• "The afternoon was horrifically calm. The wind blew its bated breath out gently, trying not to disturb the echoes and remnants of the previous night's dance of death."
• "The twilight was beautifully mournful. The trees reached for the hidden lovers, their branches embracing and weaving leaves into their fallen footsteps."

I selected this second passage because I like the third person omniscience in which Dumas employs to convey his characters' emotions and motivations.

"Dantes threw himself into the arms of his new friend, for whom he had waited so impatiently and so long, and drew him toward the window that the little light that penetrated into his cell might reveal his features (Dumas 67)."

• "Claire collapsed on the pebbled shore of the cold lake as her once-dead husband ran toward her, for she could hardly breath from the sorrow and joy constricting her chest."
• "Penryn walked steadily towards the broken zombie child, dragging her under a tree and covering her with leafy branches, so as not to scare her little sister when she came back from finding berries."
• "Naughty John hummed softly under his breath as he carefully carved pentagrams into the muddy soil, thinking of how soon his patience would finally pay off." 

The Good Earth Storyboard

"The Good Earth" Book Review

Title: The Good Earth
Author: Pearl S. Buck
Genre: Culture/Asian Literature
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

• Defense (Explanation) of Rating: 
• On a Goodreads scale, (1) means "didn't like it," (2) means "it was okay," (3) means "liked it," (4) means "really liked it, and (5) means "it was amazing." So for this novel, I opted for a 3.5, because to me it was somewhere between "liked it" and "really liked it." Although I hated Wang Lung for most (if not all) of the second half of the book and called him all kinds of obscene names during that time, I did not hate the book; and although I thought it was a brilliantly written and well-visualized novel (especially when I finished it and took a step back to analyze the structure), I did not love it. I don't think I have ever hated a fictional protagonist so much in my life before, and while I thought that Wang Lung's characteristics and path allowed Peal S. Buck to communicate her theme and message very clearly, the bitter taste he left in my mouth and his lack of clearly redemptive choices (for the most part) in the second half of the book ruined it from gaining a full (4) from me.
• Characters
• Overall, I thought the character portrayals were excellent; there was a wide range of characters with personalities that spanned a large spectrum, and many of them were given a complex depth that was very realistic. Even Wang Lung, who I wanted to punch in the face for quite a few chapters, was a very well-portrayed and realistic character; he had to be, for me to hate him so ambivalently. Yet even he had his good moments, with how he cared for his mentally handicapped daughter and rescued Pear Blossom from his nephew. O-lan was diligent and patient and unselfish, and yet she had her moments of longing for jewels and anger with a figure from her past. Lotus was physically beautiful and very demanding, but she was also pettily shallow and kind to Pear Blossom (for the most part). The sons and their wives were the most interesting in diversity, I thought, and everything they did worked within their personalities. 
• Plot
• I liked the cyclic structure of the plot, and how the author was able to subtly arrange the series of events so that they followed the cycle unnoticed until the second half of the book. It was a very realistic plot that served Pearl S. Buck well by communicating her theme effectively. It was also a plot that made me furious towards the protagonist for a large part of the reading; if it had been my choice, Wang Lung would have fallen in love with and truly cherished O-lan for her kindness and diligence and faithfulness before she had died; but then I suppose it would have been a romance story instead of a realistic picture of the nature of man. 

Overall Impression: Overall, I realized that this novel is what I like to call a "gray novel": a novel whose characters are neither completely good nor completely evil, where "good men" do terrible things and "bad men" do good deeds. The only other book I have read beside this one that I can categorize as a distinctively "gray novel" is George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones, but I knew that it was a "gray novel" going into it; with The Good Earth, I actually did not. But I like how "gray novels," and The Good Earth in particularly, can make me think so hard about how human nature works and how we should respond to it. I thought that this novel was culturally rich and written in a very sparse, factual sort of prose, which gave it a very comforting/ambivalent cadence. So although Wang Lung evoked some incredibly strong negative reactions from my semi-feminist conscience, and while I wish I could have seen a bit more redemption in the storyline, I think it very well deserved the Pulitzer Prize it earned in 1932.