In The Good Earth, Pearl Buck explains the life cycle as a mixture of happiness and sorrow that takes its further extreme turn in familial drama and the resultant crisis. The Good Earth is about a poor farmer called Wang Lung and his hard-working wife O-lan. Their hard work earns them returns and they prosper in their life and goes to the extent of purchasing a part of the House of Hwang property who was the former landlord of O-lan. However, the first incidence of crisis occurs in the life of the couple with the financial and material demands of Wang’s uncle and Wang’s obsession to own more property and the drought that results in a bad harvest. O-lan manages crisis and in an attempt to save her newborn child from starvation she strangles the baby to death. At the end of the novel, Wang is an unhappy man due to the conduct of his two elder sons who are awaiting his death to sell their father’s hard-earned property. Even at the time of death, Wang is able to find fulfillment only when he returns to the kind of life he lived as a peasant irrespective of his huge property.
Likewise, Nectar in a sieve is a story about the poverty-stricken family of Ruku and Nathan. Though they manage to earn a good living, heavy rain spoils the crop. The crisis in the family looms large with the return of their married daughter and the loss of Ruku’s two sons who worked at the tannery. The family is set to move out of their village in search of a better livelihood. Their life in the new place is also a misery with the onset of drought. While Wang’s uncle plays a wicked plan to extort food and money in The Good Earth, it is Kunti, the ex-beloved of Nathan who plays the wicked role to extract money from both Nathan and Ruku.
Nathan and Ruku later return to their home village only to witness another death, the death of their younger son. Since the family was unable to make their ends meet the daughter takes to prostitution to feed her starving younger brother.
The concept of crisis, death, and giving in Lord of the flies is portrayed by the boys who are estranged on the island with no way to communicate with the mainland to save them. Therefore a leader is chosen to deal with the crisis. However, there is a disagreement about the leadership and results in two groups. The newly elected leader is over ambitious and wishes to overthrow the first leader and in the run, several boys are killed. Though the first leader portrayed by Ralph is a protagonist and a reasonable person, the antagonist spoils his plan to attract passing ships to rescue them. The protagonist delegates’ job among the boys to do the role of firekeepers and all of them give in to it in the hope of escaping from the island.
In The Good Earth and Nectar in a Sieve, people rise to the occasion to manage crises and protect their families from starvation. The Lord of flies, however, narrates the crisis of a group of boys who are first left alone on the island and are later battling an internal clash that can be related to a tribal act.
The plot of all three novels revolves around crisis, death, and giving. It may be concluded that the human life cycle is a mixture of these three factors which arise in various living settings like family or a group of people. The novels also indicate that there is a solution for all and finally man has to die a satisfactory or unsatisfactory death though one can establish several achievements in life.
References
Buck, Pearl. The Good Earth. 2009. Web.
Markandaya, Kamala. Nectar in a Sieve. 2009. Web.
Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. 2009. Web.