Acquaintance (1) The American Scholar : The American Scholar was a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson on August

31, 1837, to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was invited to speak in recognition of his groundbreaking work Nature, published a year earlier. Sixty years after declaring independence, American culture was still heavily influenced by Europe, and Emerson, for possibly the first time in the country's history, provided a visionary philosophical framework for escaping "from under its iron lids" and building a new, distinctly American cultural identity.

The text begins with an introduction (paragraphs 1-7) in which Emerson explains that his intent is to explore the scholar as one function of the whole human being: The scholar is "Man Thinking." The remainder of the essay is organized into four sections, the first three discussing the influence of nature (paragraphs 8 and 9), the influence of the past and books (paragraphs 10-20), and the influence of action (paragraphs 21-30) on the education of the thinking man. In the last section (paragraphs 31-45), Emerson considers the duties of the scholar and then discusses his views of America in his own time.

Moby Dick : Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is a novel by Herman Melville, first published in 1851. It is considered to be one of the Great American Novels. Moby-Dick has been classified as American Romanticism. The story tells the adventures of wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod, commanded by Captain Ahab. Ishmael believes he has signed onto a routine commission aboard a normal whaling vessel, but he soon learns that Ahab has one purpose on this voyage: to seek out Moby Dick, a ferocious, enigmatic white sperm whale. It is infamous for his giant proportions and his ability to destroy the whalers that seek him. In a previous encounter, the whale destroyed Ahab's boat and bit off his leg. But Captain Ahab is bent on revenge and he intends to get Moby-Dick. As the novel draws to a conclusion, the Pequod encounters the whaling ship Rachel whose captain asks Ahab to help him in search of his missing whaling-crew. But when Ahab learns that the crew disappeared while tangling with Moby-Dick he refuses the call to aid in the rescue so that he may hunt Moby-Dick instead. The encounter with Moby-Dick brings a tragic end to the affair. Ishmael alone survives, using his friend Queequeg's coffin as a flotation device until he is ironically rescued by the Rachel, which has continued to search for its missing crew. In Moby-Dick, Melville employs stylized language, symbolism, and the metaphor to explore numerous complex themes. Through the journey of the main characters, the concepts of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God are all examined. The Zoo Story : The Zoo Story, originally titled Peter and Jerry, is a one-act play by American playwright Edward Albee. It was the first play that he wrote as an adult and only the

second play that he wrote in his lifetime. It was written in 1958 and completed in just three weeks. The play explores themes of isolation, loneliness, social disparity and dehumanization in a commercial world. The play concerns two characters, Peter and Jerry. Peter is a middle-class publishing executive. Jerry is an isolated and disheartened man. These men meet on a park bench in New York City's Central Park. Jerry is desperate to have a meaningful conversation with another human being. He intrudes on Peters peaceful state by interrogating him and forcing him to listen to stories like "THE STORY OF JERRY AND THE DOG", and the reason behind his visit to the zoo. He tickles Peters ribs, driving Peter into almost hysterical laughter. He pokes Peter, then punches him in the arm and forces him to move down the bench. But when Jerry clicks open a knife and tosses it at him, Peter refuses to pick it up. Jerry rushes over, grabs him by the collar, slaps him, spits on his face, and forces Peter to kill himself by a knife. Jerry brings his victim down to his own savage level. Jerry thanks Peter for ending his anguished life. Jerry cleans the knife handle with his own handkerchief and urges peter to hurry away. Jerry ends the play with a combination of scornful mockery and a desperate supplication to the God who failed to give him a cure for his desperate alienation.

A streetcar Named Desire : A Streetcar Named Desire is a play by Tenessee Williams, first performed in New York in 1947. It ran for 855 performances and received both a New York Drama Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize. The action revolves around the visit of Blanche Du Bois to her sister Stella, who lives in New Orleans, near the stop of the streetcar named Desire, with her brutish husband Stanley Kowalski. Blanche has an appearance of lady like grace, and constantly refers to her early life at the family estate of Belle Reve. Bewildered by her new environment and by the antagonism of her brotherin-law, she turns to his friend Mitch for consolation and company. Stanley, however, learns that Blanche is not the Southern belle she purports to be, and tells Mitch that she is in fact a lonely alcoholic who has been forced into bankruptcy and who has lost her job because of an affair with a young boy who reminded her of her dead husband. Blanches antagonistic relationship with Stanley culminates in his raping her. She tells Stella but Stella does not believe her, and at the end of the play she is taken into psychiatric care. The three prominent themes in this play are Desire and Fate, Death and Madness. Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf? : Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee. It was first performed in New York City in 1962. The first of his three-act dramas, it is also the most admired of Albees plays. It examines the breakdown of the marriage of a middleaged couple, Martha and George.

George is a history professor at a small New England college. His wife Martha is the daughter of the college president. The play depicts the events of a single night, when George and Martha bring a young colleague and his nervous wife back from a party. The elder couple involve Nick and Honey in the verbal abuse that seems to be a nightly ritual with them. Honey drinks too much and becomes ill. Martha tries to seduce Nick. The sexuality of all four characters is impugned. Albee calls the second act a Walpurgisnacht, a night of conflict and purgation. The final purgative comes in Act Three, titled Exorcism, when George and Marthas imaginary son, created by them as some kind of sustenance, is declared dead by Martha, thereby acknowledging their allusions and allowing compassionate feelings to surface. It becomes clear that George and Martha never had a son and George has decided to "kill" him. Martha broke their rule of never speaking of their son to others. Nick and Honey leave, realizing that the cause of their shameless antics was their inability to conceive. The play ends with George singing, "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" to Martha, whereupon she replies, "I am, George...I am." Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? won both the 1963 Tony Award for Best Play and the 1962'63 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play. The film adaptation was released in 1966, written by Ernest Lehman, directed by Mike Nichols, and starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, George Segal and Sandy Dennis.
Walden : Walden or Life in the Woods is an autobiographical narrative by Henry David Thoreau. It was published in 1854. It details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond. This was Thoreaus own Transcendentalist experiment. He sought to put into action a programme of self-reliance, whereby the individual spirit might thrive in its detachment from the fractured world of mass society. By immersing himself in nature, Thoreau hoped to gain a more objective understanding of society through personal introspection. Simple living and selfsufficiency were Thoreau's other goals, The book compresses the time into a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to symbolize human development. Much of the book was derived from the journals Thoreau kept during his stay. Comprising 18 essays, it effectively creates a sense of the multiple dimensions of the authors self. His prose can be complex and poetically evocative, but also lucid, even scientifically direct; at times he engages in allegory and parable. Other passages catalogue the various animals and plants in the area. The narrative often digresses into lengthy discussions of philosophy and poetry; famous sections involve Thoreaus visits with a Canadian woodcutter and with an Irish family, a trip to Concord and a description of his bean field. The Glass Menagerie: The Glass Menagerie is a four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams. It was Williams's first successful play; he went on to become one of America's most highly regarded playwrights. It was first produced in 1944, and published in the following year.

It is framed by the recollections of Tom Wing-field, whose impressionistic narratives, accompanied by images projected on a screen, introduce a number of the scenes. Tom recalls his life in St Louis with his mother Amanda, a faded Southern belle who clings persistently to glamorous illusions about her past, and with his sister Laura, a crippled and painfully shy young woman whose intensely private world is centered on a treasured collection of small glass animals. Amanda, whose husband has long since deserted the family, has transferred her romantic hopes to Laura, continually asking her about her nonexistent gentlemen callers. She persuades Tom, who has become a compulsive movie-goer to escape this intolerable situation at home, to invite his friend Jim OConnor to dinner. Jim turns out to be the same young man with whom Laura was infatuated at high school: for a moment her sensitivity and reserve are eased by his warmth, but then, suddenly embarrassed, he tells her he is engaged to another girl, and leaves. Amanda is enraged with Tom for what she thinks was a deliberate practical joke. Finally pushed too far, Tom runs out of the house, never to return. The play ends with Amanda comforting Laura, and with Toms final narration filled with pain for his sister. The Glass Menagerie is accounted by many to be autobiographical, the characters and story mimicking his own more closely than any of his other works. Williams would be Tom, his mother, Amanda, and his sickly and mentally ill sister Rose would be Laura. It has been suggested as well that the character of Laura is based upon Williams himself, referencing his introvert nature and obsessive focus on one part of life.

The Grapes of Wrath : The Grapes of Wrath is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by John Steinbeck, published in 1939. It is a landmark of American literature. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one mans fierce reaction to injustice, and of one womans stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. It tells the story of Oklahoma farmers who are driven off their land by soil erosion. The Joad family drives to California, hoping to take advantage of what they imagine to be a land of plenty. The grandparents die on the way, and the Joads arrive only to be worn down by the impossibly hard life of migrant fruit-pickers. They find a temporary respite in a government labour camp, but when it closes they are forced to take work at a blacklisted orchard. There Tom Joad joins with Jim Casy, a minister turned labour organizer. During ensuing strike violence Casy is killed, and Tom, who had once served time for killing a man in Oklahoma, kills again to avenge Casys death. In panic, the Joads flee and try to hide Tom, but they are exhausted by struggle and starvation. Finally Ma Joad decides that for the good of all the family Tom must leave. The rest of the family struggles on together, though to what end and in what direction nobody knows. At the controversial end of the novel, the eldest daughter, Rose of Sharon, who has just given birth to a stillborn child, nurses an anonymous starving man with her own milk. The Grapes of Wrath is frequently read in American high school and college literature classes due to its historical context and enduring legacy. A celebrated Hollywood film version, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford, was made in 1940. Leaves of Grass :

Leaves of Grass is a poetry collection by the American poet Walt Whitman. Though the first edition was published in 1855, Whitman spent his entire life writing Leaves of Grass, revising it in several editions until his death. The first edition was very small, collecting only twelve unnamed poems in 95 pages. Whitman once said he intended the book to be small enough to be carried in a pocket. "That would tend to induce people to take me along with them and read me in the open air: I am nearly always successful with the reader in the open air." Among the poems in the collection are "Song of Myself", "I Sing the Body Electric", "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking", and in later editions, Whitman's elegy to the assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd". Whitman's poetry praises nature and the individual human's role in it. He does not diminish the role of the mind or the spirit; rather, he elevates the human form and the human mind, deeming both worthy of poetic praise.The book did not include the author's name, instead offering an engraving by Samuel Hollyer depicting the poet in work clothes and a jaunty hat, arms at his side. Leaves of Grass was criticized because of Whitmans exaltation of the body and sexual love and also because of its innovation in verse formthat is, the use of free verse in long rhythmical lines with a natural, organic structure. Critic William Michael Rossetti considered Leaves of Grass a classic along the lines of the works of William Shakespeare and Dante Alighieri. Herzog : Herzog is a novel by Saul Bellow, published in 1964. It won the National Book Award for fiction in 1965 and became a best-seller. The leading character in the novel is Moses Herzog, a 47 year old scholar, twice divorced, who undergoes an emotional, intellectual and moral crisis. As the novel opens, he is tucked away in a house in the Berkshire Mountains. It is summer and since spring he has been composing letters to various persons- dead or alive, obscure or famous- in an effort to explain, to justify, to put in perspective, to clarify, to make amends. Among those he addresses in these mental letters are the woman in his life, friends, relatives, and his psychiatrist, politicians, philosophers and even God. Flashback scenes provide information about his relations with his family, his two ex-wives (Daisy and Madeleine), his Japanese mistress Sono, and his current lover, Ramona.

The Glass Menagerie:

The Glass Menagerie is a four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams. It was Williams's first successful play; he went on to become one of America's most highly regarded playwrights. It was first produced in 1944, and published in the following year. It is framed by the recollections of Tom Wing-field, whose impressionistic narratives, accompanied by images projected on a screen, introduce a number of the scenes. Tom recalls his life in St Louis with his mother Amanda, a faded Southern belle who clings persistently to glamorous illusions about her past, and with his sister Laura, a crippled and painfully shy young woman whose intensely private world is centered on a treasured collection of small glass animals. Amanda, whose husband has long since deserted the family, has transferred her romantic hopes to Laura, continually asking her about her non-existent gentlemen callers. She

persuades Tom, who has become a compulsive movie-goer to escape this intolerable situation at home, to invite his friend Jim OConnor to dinner. Jim turns out to be the same young man with whom Laura was infatuated at high school: for a moment her sensitivity and reserve are eased by his warmth, but then, suddenly embarrassed, he tells her he is engaged to another girl, and leaves. Amanda is enraged with Tom for what she thinks was a deliberate practical joke. Finally pushed too far, Tom runs out of the house, never to return. The play ends with Amanda comforting Laura, and with Toms final narration filled with pain for his sister. The Glass Menagerie is accounted by many to be autobiographical, the characters and story mimicking his own more closely than any of his other works. Williams would be Tom, his mother, Amanda, and his sickly and mentally ill sister Rose would be Laura. It has been suggested as well that the character of Laura is based upon Williams himself, referencing his introvert nature and obsessive focus on one part of life.
Man Who Had All the Luck :
The Man Who Had All the Luck is a play by Arthur Miller. David Beeves is a young Midwestern automobile mechanic who discovers he is blessed with what appears to be almost supernatural good fortune that allows him to overcome every seemingly insurmountable obstacle that crosses his path while those around him fall in defeat. Like Midas, everything he touches is tinged with gold, leaving him to wonder if and when his luck will change and he too will be forced to deal with life's tragedies, until he eventually realizes that his good heart, hard work, and quick thought have been responsible for his success far more than luck.

Plot[edit source | editbeta]

Arthur Millers first play, The Man Who Had All the Luck, follows protagonist David Beeves existential exploration into the enigmatic question of how fate and the human will interact with each other. The play takes on a fantastical, parable-like architecture in its plot construction and character development as we follow Beeves into three and a half of the luckiest years of his life. The story begins during an evening in April at an undisclosed Midwestern town, evoking a feel of nostalgia and Americana in the process. David Beeves works as a self-taught auto mechanic in a barn that doubles as a repair station this is where the entire first act takes place. The scene unfolds as David tells J.B., a local shop owner, that he plans to confront his girlfriend Hesters father about their intention to marry. This, of course, is not as easy as it seems; her father, Andrew Falk, has resented David for over seven years and still controls every aspect of Hesters life. After receiving conflicting advice on how to mediate the situation from J.B., Hester, his father Pat, and Shory (a disabled veteran who manages the feed and grain store adjacent to the barn), a rich farm owner named Dan Dibble brings his Marmon over for repair after a competing mechanic informs him that the engine will have to be taken apart. J.B. then notes to David in secrecy that getting the Marmon to run properly might cement his place in the tractor business, despite Davids lack of prowess in tractor repair. David agrees to the job with brisk charm, though is filled with doubt about his ability to diagnose the Marmon properly. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Falk arrives in a bitter frustration, ordering Hester to return home and confronting David Beeves directly. David, restraining himself from rash emotion and violence, bluntly tells Falk that he and Hester are marrying. Falk subsequently threatens to kill Beeves if he sees him again and pushes his

stalled car away. Only moments later Dan Dibble returns with Hester, admitting in a stunned confession that he accidentally hit and killed her father with the front of his vehicle. David, feeling an ambivalent combination of sympathy for Hester, elation now that his obstacles have been removed, and a skeptical notion that what just happened was unreal, stays in the barn to work on the Marmon. As time presses on, Beeves gets progressively more tired and frustrated with his incompetence in diagnosing the Marmons mechanical issues. At the brink of his exhaustion, an Austrian mechanic named Gus enters the barn and offers to fix the Marmon at no charge while David rests. When he awakes in the morning, Gus has disappeared and Dibble has returned. Assuming that David was the one who repaired the automobile, Dibble promises to bring all of his tractors that need work done to David in the future, and guarantees the forming of other business connections along the way. In utter disbelief of his luck, David is unable to accept the money for restoring the Marmon. The play resumes following a three year lapse at the farmhouse David and Hester have inherited after Andrew Falks death. Davids close friends and family have gathered at the house, eagerly awaiting his brother Amoss baseball game. It is later revealed that Pat has received a telegram from Augie Belfast, a talent scout for the Detroit Tigers, notifying the family that he will be watching the game tonight specifically for Amos. After they return from the game, the crowd awaits Belfasts arrival and verdict on whether Amos has the skill to be drafted into the Major Leagues at the Beeves residence. During this brief interim, David decides to invest in a mink farm at the persuasion of Dan Dibble. Spirits are high within the group initially, but as time passes without any sign of Belfast, Beeves starts to doubt the value of mans hard work and determination. When the man ultimately does show, he lauds Amoss talent as a pitcher, but remarks that when the bases are loaded, he becomes panicky because he has been used to practicing in the cellar throughout his life. He leaves the house unwilling to make any sort of deal with Amos. Resentful and humiliated, Amos vows never to play baseball again, blames his father for his misfortunes, and discloses his envious feelings toward Davids fulfillment in life. Beeves tells him he is not fulfilled in life because of his perceived inability to have children, which spurs Hester to unexpectedly reveal that she is having a child. Several months pass, and Hester has begun to enter labor as David, J.B., Shory, and Gus wait downstairs for the child to be born. Beeves tries to convince Gus to take over sixty percent of his business ventures so he can raise enough money to purchase more mink. Gus refuses on the basis that David could lose everything he owns if his mink perish, to which he replies that he has already mortgaged most of his assets. As things escalate into quarrel, David divulges that Hester has fallen and that it is possible that the child could be delivered as a stillbirth or deformed. David is convinced that this catastrophe is his final payment for all of the luck that has pursued him throughout his recent life. Ironically, the child is born a healthy boy, and David continues to feel ashamed and guilty about his prosperity. A month later, Gus and Hester learn that Dan Dibbles mink have all died after consuming contaminated feed David uses the same feed for his own mink. Both decide to hold off on telling him; Gus fearing that his psychological and emotional stability might come into jeopardy, and Hester believing that such a loss would eventually make him happy in the long run. Dibble eventually calls the house and informs David, who begins to chastise Hester. She makes the decision to leave him, the reasoning behind this misconstrued by David as Gus having an affair with his wife. Just as things come to an emotional climax, Dibble arrives and assuages their fears he and David both realize that the careful monitoring of the feed has saved his mink. David has an epiphany after Gus points out that only Beeves hard work and meticulous care giving could have saved the mink, not luck. He then departs. Hester asks David to come up for bed, and as thunder roars in the distance, he stares out the window with apprehension.

Christopher Bigsby states that this is a study of human freedom. Beyond offering an account of a man's decline into madness, and eventual redemption, it explores the degree to which many of the characters become complicit in their own irrelevance, the degree to which they collude in the idea of man as a victim, as a subject of cosmic ironies."[1] Although written in 1940, the play did not reach New York City until four years later, Miller's first to be mounted on Broadway. Directed by Joseph Fields, it opened on November 23, 1944 at theForrest Theatre, where it ran for only 4 performances.[2] Karl Swenson starred as David Beeves. The play's failure nearly derailed Miller's career, and it remained one of his least known works until 1990, when the Bristol Old Vic staged The Man Who Had All The Luck with Iain Glen in the lead role. The production was directed by Paul Unwin.[3] It later transferred to the Young Vic in London. In 2000 director Dan Fields mounted a production that ran for seven weeks at the Ivy Substation Theater in Culver City, California. The following year, a production was staged by the Williamstown Theatre Festival, which had presented the American premiere of Miller's The Ride Down Mt. Morgan. After fifteen previews, a Broadway revival directed by Scott Ellis opened on May 1, 2002 at the American Airlines Theatre, where it ran for 62 performances. The cast included Chris O'Donnell as David Beeves, with Samantha Mathis, Mason Adams, James Rebhorn, Richard Riehle, David Wohl, and Sam Robards, whose performance garnered him Tony and Drama Desk Awardnominations for Best Featured Actor in a Play. In 2006, it was announced Ellis was directing a feature film adaptation of the play. [4] The play was revived at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in March 2008 in a production by Sean Holmes.[5] The 25th of September 2012 saw the start of a UK wide tour by Sell A Door Theatre Company, in association with Mull Theatre. The tour is directed by David Hutchinson and designed by Richard Evans. The tour took in the whole of the UK from Orkney Arts Theatre to Greenwich Theatre, London.

Arthur Millers earliest play to run on the Broadway stage, The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944), began in the form of a novel his student, friend and biographer Christopher Bigsby tells us in his pre-show talk on January 20. Over the course of four years, Miller wrote several drafts, unsure how best to present his themes; through which medium? through which plot? should there be an enlightened redemption or a tragic fall for his hero? From 1941 he began working the fable into a play. In late 1944 it arrived at the Forrest Theater, where it ran for three days and four performances before being called off the stage, a failure, though recognized by many critics as a promising indication of good work to come. The play has since been largely neglected, until 2001 when it resurfaced at the Williamstown Theatre Festival before running an immensely popular production directed by Scott Ellis (director of last seasons The Understudy) at the American Airlines Theater in New York City. A film adaptation will be released this year, directed again by Mr Ellis. It is certainly a deserving revival, for, as Lucy

Vaughan, head of Lyceum education, comments: This ones a treat for all fans of Arthur Miller. Its rarely performed, yet it has all the passion and drama of his better known plays.
Philip Cumbus and Kim Gerard in Arthur Miller's The Man Who Had All the Luck at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, photo Douglas McBride

The Man Who Had All the Luck is set in a small Midwestern town, somewhere not far from Detroit, as the characters support of the Tigers is (at first, at least) unquestionable. Here, in a shabby barn converted into the workplace of our automechanic hero, David Beeves (played well by Philip Cumbus), the first act is played. David is in love with a local girl called Hester Falk (Kim Gerard), but cannot marry her due to her fathers objections. While he is relatively successful in that he has his own business, he does not have all the tools or capital he requires. Both problems are fixed when Lady Luck comes to Davids aid as it always has done and will continue to do in acts two and three. But David must be spectator to the misfortunes of his comrades. Paradoxically, his empathy for their tragedies make him not so lucky as he chooses to think he is. As Christopher Bigsby aptly puts it, David feels a terror of failure and guilt at success. His constant success not only builds a guilt within him, but a fear that he is going to one day lose it all, with one fowl swoop of bad luck; he believes that tragedy is inevitable. Through this plot, the play deals with the theme of human incapacity to control lifes fortunes and misfortunes; the fear that all is left to a twisted supernatural power that determines our fate, that our personal skills and desires are meaningless in the end. Shory, who has had more than his fair share of bad luck, claims that we are all jelly fish caught in the tide. The first act of John Doves production is weak, though he must be commended on the set and the fine Marmon car wheeled onto the stage. Perhaps some of this acts failings can be attributed to those of the young writer, but not all, as the conversations do come across as well-written. The intelligence that David is our hero is a bit delayed by the many characters on stage with him from the beginning, but this is clarified soon enough. Kim Gerard and Andrew Vincent (playing JB Feller) both overacted. The former was loud, spasmodic and very difficult to like. The latters gestures were awkward and unnatural, and his speeches were directed too much at the audience, making him seem out of character sometimes. He improves very much in the later when he takes to the bottle. Andrew Falk (Peter Harding, who reappears as baseball manager Augie Belfast in the second act) was very good as Hesters disagreeable father.

Without yelling, his performance managed to instill an eerie effect in characters and spectators both. Acts two and three were better overall. The scene here is the new, vibrant, middle class living room belonging to our fortunate protagonist. In it we witness Davids tragic fall and his ultimate redemption in the understanding that he is just as much to blame for his successes as the supernatural puppeteers. Matthew Pidgeon, who I saw earlier this season in an excellent play by Scottish playwright David Greig called Midsummer at the Traverse, was a good Shory, especially in the second act. Because of his characters paralyzed legs, Pidgeon had to rely on his upper half to convey his cynical words of wisdom, which he did very well. Ron Donachie (Patterson Beeves, father of David and Amos) is also fine, playing particularly well the shattered father in act two. Generally, the accents (trained by Lynn Bains, an American expatriate based in Edinburgh) were passable. Kim Gerard had a rather disagreeable whining quality in hers to go with her course portrayal of Hester. There were some minor errors elsewhere (a brief slip by Perry Snowdon in the second act into a Londoners English), but with the not too discriminate ear one should carry to a British production of an American play, there was not much to complain of. Greg Powrie, playing the foreign mechanic Gustav Eberson, delivers his accent well and consistently. The Man Who Had All the Luck, while lacking the social and political relevance of The Crucible and Death of a Salesman, is a work that anyone with any worldly experience can relate to and learn from. All minor flaws in its presentation aside, this production is well worth a trip to the Lyceum.

The play depicts a young man, David Beeves, who has a hard time dealing with his good luck, especially when he sees his no less deserving brother have no luck at all. Beeves becomes a successful businessman, while his brother Amos loses his chance to pitch in the baseball big leagues and turns on the father he feels misled him in such a dream. Thinking that at any moment his luck must run out and disaster will strike, Beeves begins to live his life in constant fear, at one point even contemplating suicide. He expects his garage to fail, his son to be born dead, his mink farm to be devasted, but he is repeatedly rewarded with a healthy son and successful businesses, even when his fellow businessmen go broke. By the close he seems to at last accept that this is in part by his own diligence, which allows him to finally enjoy the fruits of his work (in an earlier novelisation of this story Miller had Beeves commit suicide at the close, but in the play he just has Beeves consider the possibility, but decide against it).

All My Sons :

All My Sons (1947) Joe Keller, is an apparently successful businessman who made his fortune by selling airplane parts to the army during World War Two. Not wanting to slow business he sent out a batch that he knew to be defective, and twenty-one pilots died as a result. Keller was arrested and tried, but lied, saying that the parts went out without his knowledge and his partner, Steve Deever, was the one who had covered it up. Deever is sent to jail and Keller is exonerated. One of his sons, Larry, is missing in action, but the mother, Kate, insists that their son is still alive, though we later learn that he committed suicide on learning of his father's arrest. When their other son, Chris, asks Larry's old girlfriend (who happens to be Deever's daughter, Ann) to marry him, it causes tension, which results in Keller's deceit coming out. Chris fought during the war and watched many of his peers die, so on discovering his father's guilt he totally rejects him. On discovering why Larry died, Keller finally accepts his responsibility for the crime and kills himself.
All My Sons is a 1947 play by Arthur Miller.[1] The play was twice adapted for film; in 1948, and again in 1987. The play opened on Broadway at the Coronet Theatre in New York City on January 29, 1947, closed on November 8, 1947 and ran for 328 performances.[2] It was directed by Elia Kazan (to whom it is dedicated) and won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, beating Eugene ONeillsThe Iceman Cometh. It starred Ed Begley, Beth Miller, Arthur Kennedy, and Karl Malden and won both the Tony Award for Best Author and the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play. All My Sons is based upon a true story, which Arthur Miller's then mother-in-law pointed out in an Ohio newspaper.[3] The news story described how in 1941-43 the Wright Aeronautical Corporationbased in Ohio had conspired with army inspection officers to approve defective aircraft engines destined for military use.[3][4] The story of defective engines had reached investigators working for Sen. Harry Truman's congressional investigative board after several Wright aircraft assembly workers informed on the company; they would later testify under oath before Congress. [3][4] In 1944, three Army Air Force officers, Lt. Col. Frank C. Greulich, Major Walter A. Ryan, and Major William Bruckmann were relieved and later convicted of neglect of duty.[5

In A Nutshell Arthur Miller started writing All My Sons in 1945, inspired by World War II and the true-life story (told to him by his stepmom) of a woman who alerted authorities to her father's wartime wrong-doing (source: Christopher Bigsby, "Introduction to All My Sons." Penguin Classics, 2000). The play focuses on the story of a businessman who once narrowly avoided financial ruin by shipping cracked machine parts to the military. He blames his business partner and builds an empire, but eventually his crime comes back to haunt him. The play was produced after the war, won the 1947 Tony, and beat out Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh for the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award that same year. You might already know Miller from some of his most famous plays, like The Crucible, Death of a

Salesman, or A View From the Bridge. All My Sons was one of Miller's earliest plays and his first commercially successful one but it already features the ideas of social responsibility that he obsessed with throughout his entire career.

All My Sons Summary

How It All Goes Down Joe Keller, a successful businessman, lives comfortably with his wife, Kate, and son, Chris, in a suburban American neighborhood. They have only one sadness in their lives the loss of their other son, Larry, who went missing in World War II. After three years, Kate still clings to the hope that her son is alive. Chris would like her to give up that hope because he wants to marry Ann, an old neighbor and Larry's former fiance. Ann arrives. Kate, sensing the reason for her visit, gets a little touchy. We learn that Ann's father is in prison for a crime he committed while working in Joe's factory. Faced with a batch of defective machine parts, he patched them and sent them out, causing the death of 21 pilots during the war. Turns out that Joe was also accused of this crime and convicted, but he was exonerated (set free) during the appeal. Steve went to prison; Joe returned home and made his business bigger and better. Soon after Ann's arrival, her brother George follows, straight from visiting his father in prison. He knows what Chris has in mind and is totally against him marrying Ann. Joe and Kate do their best to charm George into submission, but finally it's Ann who sends him away. She wants to marry Chris no matter what. The marriage of Chris and Ann is becoming a reality and Kate can't handle it, because it means Larry is truly dead. And if Larry is dead, she tells Chris, it's because his own father killed him, since Larry was also a pilot. Chris finally confronts his father's guilt in shipping those defective parts. But Chris won't do anything about it. He won't even ask his father to go to prison. Ann, who turned her back on her own father for the same reason, insists that Chris take a hard line. Joe Keller goes inside to get his things. A gunshot is heard. He's killed himself. All My Sons Summary
Joe and Kate Keller had two sons, Chris and Larry. Keller owned a manufacturing plant with Steve Deever, and their families were close. Steve's daughter Ann was Larry's beau, and George was their friend. When the war came, both Keller boys and George were drafted. During the war, Keller's and Deever's manufacturing plant had a very profitable contract with the U.S. Army, supplying airplane parts. One morning, a shipment of defective parts came in. Under pressure from the army to keep up the output, Steve Deever called Keller, who had not yet come into work that morning, to ask what he should do. Keller told Steve to weld the cracks in the airplane parts and ship them out. Steve was nervous about doing this alone, but Keller said that he had the flu and could not go into work. Steve shipped out the defective but possibly safe parts on his own.

Later, it was discovered that the defective parts caused twenty-one planes to crash and their pilots to die. Steve and Keller were arrested and convicted, but Keller managed to win an appeal and get his conviction overturned. He claimed that Steve did not call him and that he was completely unaware of the shipment. Keller went home free, while Steve remained in jail, shunned by his family. Meanwhile, overseas, Larry received word about the first conviction. Racked with shame and grief, he wrote a letter to Ann telling her that she must not wait for him. Larry then went out to fly a mission, during which he broke out of formation and crashed his plane, killing himself. Larry was reported missing. Three years later, the action of the play begins. Chris has invited Ann to the Keller house because he intends to propose to her--they have renewed their contact in the last few years while she has been living in New York. They must be careful, however, since Mother insists that Larry is still alive somewhere. Her belief is reinforced by the fact that Larry's memorial tree blew down in a storm that morning, which she sees as a positive sign. Her superstition has also led her to ask the neighbor to make a horoscope for Larry in order to determine whether the day he disappeared was an astrologically favorable day. Everyone else has accepted that Larry is not coming home, and Chris and Keller argue that Mother should learn to forget her other son. Mother demands that Keller in particular should believe that Larry is alive, because if he is not, then their son's blood is on Keller's hands. Ann's brother George arrives to stop the wedding. He had gone to visit Steve in jail to tell him that his daughter was getting married, and then he left newly convinced that his father was innocent. He accuses Keller, who disarms George by being friendly and confident. George is reassured until Mother accidentally says that Keller has not been sick in fifteen years. Keller tries to cover her slip of the tongue by adding the exception of his flu during the war, but it is now too late. George is again convinced of Keller's guilt, but Chris tells him to leave the house. Chris's confidence in his father's innocence is shaken, however, and in a confrontation with his parents, he is told by Mother that he must believe that Larry is alive. If Larry is dead, Mother claims, then it means that Keller killed him by shipping out those defective parts. Chris shouts angrily at his father, accusing him of being inhuman and a murderer, and he wonders aloud what he must do in response to this unpleasant new information about his family history. Chris is disillusioned and devastated, and he runs off to be angry at his father in privacy. Mother tells Keller that he ought to volunteer to go to jail--if Chris wants him to. She also talks to Ann and continues insisting that Larry is alive. Ann is forced to show Mother the letter that Larry wrote to her before he died, which was essentially a suicide note. The note basically confirms Mother's belief that if Larry is dead, then Keller is responsible--not because Larry's plane had the defective parts, but because Larry killed himself in response to the family responsibility and shame due to the defective parts. Mother begs Ann not to show the letter to her husband and son, but Ann does not comply. Chris returns and says that he is not going to send his father to jail, because that would accomplish nothing and his family practicality has finally overcome his idealism. He also says that he is going to leave and that Ann will not be going with him, because he fears that she will forever wordlessly ask him to turn his father in to the authorities. Keller enters, and Mother is unable to prevent Chris from reading Larry's letter aloud. Keller now finally understands that in the eyes of Larry and in a symbolic moral sense, all the dead pilots were his sons. He says that he is going into the house to get a jacket, and then he will drive to the jail and turn himself in. But a moment later, a gunshot is heard--Keller has killed himself.

Overview: All My Sons by Arthur Miller is the sad Post-World War II story about the Kellers, a seemingly All American family. But the father, Joe Keller, has concealed a great sin. During the war, he allowed his factory to ship faulty airplane cylinders to the U.S. Armed Forces. Because of this, over twenty American pilots died. Backstory: Before the action of All My Sons begins, the following events have taken place: Joe Keller has been running a successful factory for decades. His business partner and neighbor, Steve Deever noticed the faulty parts first. Joe allowed the parts to be shipped. After the deaths of the pilots, both Steve and Joe are arrested. Joe is exonerated and released and the entire blame shifts to Steve who remains in jail. Kellers two sons, Larry and Chris, served during the war. Chris came back home. Larrys airplane went down in China and the young man was declared MIA.

The Old Man and the Sea :

The Old Man and the Sea is a novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway and published in his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it centers upon Santiago, an aging fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 and was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954. The Old Man and the Sea is the story of a battle between an old, experienced fisherman and a large marlin. The novel opens with the explanation that the fisherman, who is named Santiago, has gone 84 days without catching a fish. Santiago is considered "salao", the worst form of unlucky. In fact, he is so unlucky that his young apprentice, Manolin, has been forbidden by his parents to sail with the old man. On the eighty-fifth day, Santiago sets out alone, taking his skiff far onto the Gulf Stream. He sets his lines and, by noon of the first day, a big fish that he is sure is a marlin takes his bait. Unable to pull in the great marlin, Santiago instead finds the fish pulling his skiff. Two days and two nights pass in this manner.On the third day of the ordeal, the fish begins to circle the skiff, indicating his tiredness to the old man. Santiago, now completely worn out and almost in delirium, uses all the strength he has left in him to pull the fish onto its side and stab the marlin with a harpoon, ending the long battle between the old man and the tenacious fish. Santiago straps the marlin to the side of his skiff and heads home, thinking about the high price the fish will bring him at the market and how many people he will feed. While Santiago continues his journey back to the shore, sharks are attracted to the trail of blood left by the marlin in the water. The first, a great mako shark, Santiago kills with his harpoon, losing that weapon in the process. He makes a new harpoon by strapping his knife to the end of an oar to help ward off the next line of sharks; in total, five sharks are slain and many others are driven away. But the sharks kept coming, and by nightfall the sharks have almost devoured the marlin's entire carcass, leaving a skeleton consisting mostly of its backbone, its tail and its head. Finally reaching the shore before dawn on the next day, Santiago struggles on the way to his shack, carrying the heavy mast on his shoulder. Once home, he slumps onto his bed and falls into a deep sleep.

A group of fishermen gather the next day around the boat where the fish's skeleton is still attached. One of the fishermen measures it to be 18 feet (5.5 m) from nose to tail. Tourists at the nearby caf mistakenly take it for a shark. Manolin, worried during the old man's endeavor, cries upon finding him safe asleep. The boy brings him newspapers and coffee. When the old man wakes, they promise to fish together once again. Upon his return to sleep, Santiago dreams of his youthof lions on an African beach. The Old Man and the Sea served to reinvigorate Hemingway's literary reputation and prompted a reexamination of his entire body of work. The novel was initially received with much popularity; it restored many readers' confidence in Hemingway's capability as an author. Its publisher, Scribner's, on an early dust jacket, called the novel a "new classic," and many critics favorably compared it with such works asWilliam Faulkner's "The Bear" and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick.

The Old Man and the Sea is the story of an epic struggle between an old, seasoned fisherman and the greatest catch of his life. For eighty-four days, Santiago, an aged Cuban fisherman, has set out to sea and returned empty-handed. So conspicuously unlucky is he that the parents of his young, devoted apprentice and friend, Manolin, have forced the boy to leave the old man in order to fish in a more prosperous boat.

At noon, a big fish, which he knows is a marlin, takes the bait that Santiago has placed one hundred fathoms deep in the waters. The old man expertly hooks the fish, but he cannot pull it in. Instead, the fish begins to pull the boat. On the third day the fish tires, and Santiago kills it with a harpoon thrust. Dead beside the skiff, the marlin is the largest Santiago has ever seen. He lashes it to his boat, raises the small mast, and sets sail for home. While Santiago is excited by the price that the marlin will bring at market, he is more concerned that the people who will eat the fish are unworthy of its greatness. As Santiago sails on with the fish, the marlins blood leaves a trail in the water and attracts sharks. Although he kills several sharks, more and more appear, and by the time night falls, Santiagos continued fight against the scavengers is useless. They devour the marlins precious meat, leaving only skeleton, head, and tail. He arrives home before daybreak, stumbles back to his shack, and sleeps very deeply. The next morning, a crowd of amazed fishermen gathers around the skeletal carcass of the fish, which is still lashed to the boat. Knowing nothing of the old mans struggle, tourists at a nearby caf observe the remains of the giant marlin and mistake it for a shark. Manolin, who has been worried sick over the old mans absence, is moved to tears when he finds Santiago safe in his bed. The boy fetches the old man some coffee and the daily papers with the baseball scores, and watches him

sleep. When the old man wakes, the two agree to fish as partners once more. The old man returns to sleep and dreams his usual dream of lions at play on the beaches of Africa. Summary For 84 days, the old fisherman Santiago has caught nothing, returning empty-handed in his skiff to the small Cuban fishing village where he lives. After 40 days without a catch, Manolin's father has insisted that Manolin, the young man Santiago taught to fish from the age of five, fish in another boat.
Men without Women :

Men Without Women (1927) is the second collection of short stories written by American author Ernest Hemingway (July 21, 1899 July 2, 1961). The volume consists of fourteen stories, ten of which had been previously published in magazines. The story subjects include bullfighting, infidelity, divorce, and death. "The Killers", "Hills Like White Elephants", and "In Another Country" are considered to be among Hemingway's best work.[1] It was published in October 1927 with a first print-run of approximately 7600 copies at $2.[2]

CLASSIC SHORT STORIES FROM THE MASTER OF AMERICAN FICTION First published in 1927, Men Without Womenrepresents some of Hemingway's most important and compelling early writing. In these fourteen stories, Hemingway begins to examine the themes that would occupy his later works: the casualties of war, the often uneasy relationship between men and women, sport and sportsmanship. In "Banal Story," Hemingway offers a lasting tribute to the famed matador Maera. "In Another Country" tells of an Italian major recovering from war wounds as he mourns the untimely death of his wife. "The Killers" is the hard-edged story about two Chicago gunmen and their potential victim. Nick Adams makes an appearance in "Ten Indians," in which he is presumably betrayed by his Indian girlfriend, Prudence. And "Hills Like White Elephants" is a young couple's subtle, heartwrenching discussion of abortion. Pared down, gritty, and subtly expressive, these stories show the young Hemingway emerging as America's finest short story writer.

Men Without Women was a milestone in Hemingway's career. Fiesta had already established him as a novelist of exceptional power, but with these short stories, his second collection, he showed that it is possible, within the space of a few pages, to recreate a scene with absolute truth, bringing to life details observed only by the eye of a uniquely gifted artist. Hemingway's men are bullfighters and boxers, hired hands and hard drinkers, gangsters and gunmen. Each of their stories deals with masculine toughness unsoftened by woman's hand. Incisive, hard-edged, pared down to the bare minimum, they are classic Hemingway territory - they helped establish him as one of the great literary authors of the twentieth century, and one of the best American authors of all time.
CLASSIC SHORT STORIES FROM THE MASTER OF AMERICAN FICTION First published in 1927, Men Without Women represents some of Hemingway's most important and compelling early writing. In these fourteen stories, Hemingway begins to examine the themes that would

occupy his later works: the casualties of war, the often uneasy relationship between men and women, sport and sportsmanship. In "Banal Story," Hemingway offers a lasting tribute to the famed matador Maera. "In Another Country" tells of an Italian major recovering from war wounds as he mourns the untimely death of his wife. "The Killers" is the hard-edged story about two Chicago gunmen and their potential victim. Nick Adams makes an appearance in "Ten Indians," in which he is presumably betrayed by his Indian girlfriend, Prudence. And "Hills Like White Elephants" is a young couple's subtle, heartwrenching discussion of abortion. Pared down, gritty, and subtly expressive, these stories show the young Hemingway emerging as America's finest short story writer.

Men Without Women was first published in 1927 by Charles Scribner's Sons. It was Hemingway's second short story collection. Following In Our Time (1925) and The Sun Also Rises (1926), Men Without Womensolidified Hemingway as one of America's most promising new writers. This collection encompasses many of Hemingway's common themes: humanity's competitive nature and/or culture, loss of innocence, war, and the inevitability of aging. It also illustrates Hemingway's style of brevity, usually called minimalism, both in dialogue and description. Many of the settings of these fourteen stories are Italy and Spain. This was undoubtedly influenced by Hemingway's time in Europe during and after WWI. "The Killers," "Hills Like White Elephants," and "In Another Country" have historically been the standouts of this collection in terms of critical acclamations and popularity. Subsequently, others such as "The Undefeated," "Banal Story" and "Fifty Grand" have gained more critical recognition. "The Killers" is about Nick Adams, Hemingway's major recurring character, who overhears two hired killers planning a hit on someone he knows. "Hills Like White Elephants," one of Hemingway's only stories in which a woman plays a primary role, concerns a discussion between a man and a woman regarding whether or not she should have an abortion. The man tells her it is an easy operation, because he wishes they could go back to their carefree lifestyle. She eventually concedes, but it is clear that she, at least, will not be the same: not able to whimsically sit and drink and imagine what the hills look like. "In Another Country" is about an injured soldier and an injured major. The major has a moment of weakness wherein, after hearing his wife has died, he berates the soldier telling him not to marry, because he will someday "lose it." This story, more than any other in the collection, captures the casualties of war in the major's disposition. At the end of the story, the major, aware of his badly injured hand stares out the window, ignoring the photographs of rehabilitated hands. "The Undefeated" begins the collection and is the story of an over-the-hill bullfighter's last hurrah. In the end, his performance is merely satisfactory, and this theme of "man against time" will become a recurring theme for Hemingway, perhaps most notably in The Old Man and the Sea. "To-day is Friday" is a short play featuring three Roman soldiers having a drink, following a crucifixion (presumably Jesus'). "Banal Story" is both a tribute to the great bullfighter, Maera, as well as a diatribe against trite writing and pseudo-intellectualism. "Fifty Grand," following the theme of "The Undefeated" and "A Pursuit Race," is about a boxer who bets against himself, knowing he cannot

win: though he almost does win on a technicality. "A Simple Enquiry" stands out, somewhat provocatively: a dialogue in which a major subtly propositions his adjutant. The title of this collection is something Hemingway thought of at the last minute (he had wanted to use something from the Bible). The overall emphasis is not just on masculinity but on harsh realism and a style of writing that is as compact as it can be. Maybe the most enduring quality in these stories is the proximity to modern, real-life speech. In many of his dialogues, he writes with the brevity, allusiveness, and ambiguity of real speech. The tone seems to manifest itself in the exchange. Some critics have attacked Hemingway's misogynistic tendencies and they have criticized his characters as dull-witted, proletariat, and lacking conscious complexity. But given the influence Hemingway's laconic style has had and continues to have, one might say these critics are classicists, elitists, or simply missing the point. The rawness of real speech and the concision of description is the point. Superfluity can be the tool of the insecure intellectual. Hemingway once referred to himself as the "Henry James of the People." He prided himself on creating both bookish and crude characters: neither more complex than the other and both descriptive examples of real life.
The Good Earth:

The Good Earth is a novel by Pearl S. Buck published in 1931 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1932. The best-selling novel in the United States in both 1931 and 1932, it was an influential factor in Buck's winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938. It is the first book in a trilogy that includes Sons (1932) and A House Divided (1935). The novel, which dramatizes family life in a Chinese village before World War I, has been a steady favorite ever since. In 2004, the book was returned to the bestseller list when chosen by the television host Oprah Winfrey for Oprah's Book Club.[1] The novel helped prepare Americans of the 1930s to consider Chinese as allies in the coming war with Japan.[2] A Broadway stage adaptation was produced by the Theatre Guild in 1932, written by the father and son playwriting team of Owen and Donald Davis, but it was poorly received by the critics, and ran only 56 performances. However, the 1937 film, The Good Earth, which was based on the stage version, was more successful. The story begins on Wang Lung's wedding day and follows the rise and fall of his fortunes. The House of Hwang, a family of wealthy landowners, lives in the nearby town, where Wang Lung's future wife, O-Lan, lives as a slave. As the House of Hwang slowly declines due to opium use, frequent spending, and uncontrolled borrowing, Wang Lung, through his own hard work and the skill of his wife, O-Lan, slowly earns enough money to buy land from the Hwang family. O-Lan delivers three sons and three daughters; the first daughter becomes mentally handicapped as a result of severe malnutrition brought on by famine. Her father greatly pities her and calls her "Poor Fool," a name by which she is addressed throughout her life. O-Lan kills her second daughter at birth to spare her the misery of growing up in such hard times, and to give the remaining family a better chance to survive. During the devastating famine and drought, the family must flee to a large city in the south to find work. Wang Lung's malevolent uncle offers to buy his possessions and land, but for significantly less than their value. The family sells everything except the

land and the house. Wang Lung then faces the long journey south, contemplating how the family will survive walking, when he discovers that the "firewagon" (the Chinese word for the newly-built train) takes people south for a fee. In the city, O-Lan and the children beg while Wang Lung pulls a rickshaw. Wang Lung's father begs but does not earn any money, and sits looking at the city instead. They find themselves aliens among their more metropolitan countrymen who look different and speak in a fast accent. They no longer starve, due to the one-cent charitable meals of congee, but still live in abject poverty. Wang Lung longs to return to his land. When armies approach the city he can only work at night hauling merchandise out of fear of being conscripted. One time, his son brings home stolen meat. Furious, Wang Lung throws the meat on the ground, not wanting his sons to grow up as thieves. O-Lan, however, calmly picks up the meat and cooks it. When a food riot erupts, Wang Lung unwillingly joins a mob that is looting a rich man's house and corners the man himself, who fears for his life and gives Wang Lung all his money in order to buy his safety. Meanwhile, his wife finds jewels in a hiding place in another house, hiding them between her breasts. Wang Lung uses his money to bring the family home, buy a new ox and farm tools, and hire servants to work the land for him. In time, the youngest children are born, a twin son and daughter. When he discovers the jewels O-Lan looted from the house in the southern city, Wang Lung buys the House of Hwang's remaining land. He is eventually able to send his first two sons to school (also apprenticing the second one as a merchant) and retains the third one on the land. As Wang Lung becomes more prosperous, he buys a concubine named Lotus. O-Lan endures the betrayal of her husband when he takes two pearls, the only jewels she had asked to keep for herself, to make them into earrings to present to Lotus. O-Lan's morale suffers and she eventually dies, but not before witnessing her first son's wedding. Wang Lung finally appreciates her place in his life, as he mourns her passing. Wang Lung and his family move into town and rent the old House of Hwang. Wang Lung, now an old man, wants peace, but there are always disputes, especially between his first and second sons, and particularly their wives. Wang Lung's third son runs away to become a soldier. At the end of the novel, Wang Lung overhears his sons planning to sell the land and tries to dissuade them. They say that they will do as he wishes, but smile knowingly at each other.

THE GOOD EARTH

Pearl S. Buck

Plot Overview

Wang Lung is a poor young farmer in rural, turn-of-the-century China. During the time in which the novel takes place, Chinese society is showing signs of modernization while remaining deeply connected to ancient traditions and customs. When Wang Lung reaches a marriageable age, his father approaches the powerful local Hwang family to ask if they have a spare slave who could

marry his son. The Hwangs agree to sell Wang a 20-year-old slave named O-lan, who becomes his wife. O-lan and Wang Lung are pleased with each other, although they exchange few words and although Wang is initially disappointed that O-lan does not have bound feet.

Together, Wang Lung and O-lan cultivate a bountiful and profitable harvest from their land. O-lan becomes pregnant, and Wang Lung is overjoyed when O-lans first child is a son. Meanwhile, the powerful Hwang family lives decadentlythe husband is obsessed with women, and the wife is an opium addict. Because of their costly habits, the Hwangs fall on hard times, and Wang Lung is able to purchase a piece of their fertile rice land. He enjoys another profitable harvest, and O-lan gives birth to another son. Wang Lungs new wealth catches the attention of his greedy, lazy uncle. Custom dictates that Wang Lung must show the utmost respect to members of the older generation, especially relatives, so he is forced to loan his uncle money despite knowing that the money will be wasted on drinking and gambling. The Hwang familys finances continue to falter, and the Hwangs sell another tract of land to Wang Lung. After O-lan gives birth to a daughter, a terrible famine settles on the land. In the midst of this crisis, O-lan gives birth to another daughter. She strangles the second girl because there is not enough food to feed the baby and the rest of the family. Wang Lung is forced to take his family to a southern city for the winter. There, O-lan and the children beg while Wang Lung earns money by transporting people in a rented rickshaw. They earn just enough money to eat. Wang Lung begins to despair of ever making enough money to return to his land. He and O-lan briefly consider selling their surviving daughter as a slave. Eventually, a group of poor and desperate people ransacks a rich mans home, and Wang Lung and O-lan join them. Wang Lung steals a pile of gold coins. With this new wealth, he moves the family back home and purchases a new ox and some seeds. O-lan had stolen some jewels during the looting. Wang Lung allows her to keep two small pearls, but he takes the rest and hurries to buy three hundred acres of Old Master Hwangs land. O-lan gives birth to twins shortly thereafter. The couple realizes that their oldest daughter is severely retarded, but Wang Lung loves the child dearly. Wang Lung hires laborers to plant and harvest his land. He enjoys several years of profitable harvests and becomes a rich man. When a flood forces him to be idle, he begins to feel restless and bored. He finds fault with O-lans appearance and cruelly criticizes her for having big feet. He becomes obsessed with Lotus, a beautiful, delicate prostitute with bound feet. Eventually, he purchases Lotus to be his concubine. When O-lan becomes terminally ill, Wang Lung regrets his cruel words and comes to appreciate everything his wife has done for him. Meanwhile, to lessen the

demands of his uncle and his uncles wife, who have moved their family into his house and continued to exploit his wealth, he tricks them into becoming opium addicts. Eventually, Wang Lung rents the Hwangs house and moves into it with his family, leaving his own house to his uncles family. After O-lans death, Wang Lungs sons begin to rebel against his plans for their life. They do not want to work as farmers and do not have his devotion to the land. Furthermore, his first and second sons often argue over money, and their wives develop an intense animosity toward one another. In his old age, Wang Lung takes a young slave, Pear Blossom, as a concubine. She promises to care for his retarded daughter after his death. In time, Wang Lung is surrounded by grandchildren, but he is also surrounded by petty family disagreements. By the end of the novel, despite Wangs passionate dissent, his sons plan to sell the family land and divide the money among themselves, signaling their final break with the land that made them wealthy.

Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Mans Relationship to the Earth

The overarching theme of The Good Earth is the nourishing power of the land. Throughout the novel, a connection to the land is associated with moral piety, good sense, respect for nature, and a strong work ethic, while alienation from the land is associated with decadence and corruption. Bucks novel situates this universal theme within the context of traditional Chinese culture. Wang Lung, a farmer, has an intimate relationship with the earth because he produces his harvest through his own labor. In contrast, the local Hwang family is estranged from the earth because their wealth and harvests are produced by hired labor. Buck suggests that Wang Lungs reverence for nature is responsible for his inner goodness, as well as for his increasing material success, and that the decadent, wasteful ways of the wealthy are due to their estrangement from the land. Buck also suggests throughout the book that while human success is transitory, the earth endures forever. These ideas about the earth give the novel its title.

Wealth as a Destroyer of Traditional Values

The basic narrative form ofThe Good Earth has an upward trajectory: as Wang Lungs fortunes rise, he becomes more decadent and more similar to the amoral Hwang family, whose fall parallels his own rise. It is the wealth of the Hwangs that enables them to loosen their ties to the land, hire laborers and spend their own days in idleness and leisure. In this climate, vice takes root and

thrives, as the Old Master becomes obsessed with debauchery and the Old Mistress becomes addicted to opium. As Wang Lung becomes wealthier, he too is able to hire laborers, and he becomes obsessed with women such as Lotus. He begins to fund his uncles opium addiction, and at last he buys the house of the Hwangs and moves into it. As Wang Lungs children grow older, it becomes clear that being raised in the lap of luxury has severely eroded their own sense of duty to their father, their respect for the land, and the religious observances on which Wang Lung and his father base their lives. In this way, Wang Lungs life story is a case study of how traditional values erode under the influence of wealth. But Buck does not attribute this erosion solely to the corrupting influence of wealth, or at least not solely to the individualexperience of wealth. The new ideals of Wang Lungs sons demonstrate the changing nature of Chinese culture. Buck suggests that the modernization of China, itself a function of wealth, creates cultural conflicts.

The Oppression of Women in Chinese Culture

Primarily through the character of O-lan, Buck explores the position of women in traditional Chinese culture, focusing on the hardships and limitations faced by women, from abuse in childhood to servitude in adulthood. Although she was a lifelong feminist, Buck takes a cool, neutral tone toward the oppression of women in China, choosing to focus on individual experience rather than to make large-scale political or social claims. She presents in an unbiased manner the practices of footbinding, female infanticide, and selling daughters as slaves, constantly drawing attention to the circumstances that would impel a woman to commit such actions without ever endorsing the actions themselves. She also suggests that husbands who take concubines and work their wives like slaves are not necessarily cruel men, but people behaving as their society mandates. Her criticism is directed less toward particular acts committed by individual characters than toward the larger cultural values that produce and allow those acts to occur. Bucks feminism is implicit in her portrayal of O-lan. Through O-lan, Buck emphasizes the crucial economic contributions women make to their families. She also uses O-lan to suggest that, ironically, the more women are able to help, the less men place sexual and romantic value on them.

Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the texts major themes.

Birth, Death, and the Cycle of Nature

Buck draws parallels between the natural cycle of growth, death, and regeneration and the rise and fall of human fortune and human life. When O-lan gives birth to her first two sons, for instance, she immediately returns to tending the fields, which connects the creation of human life to the bounty of the earth. Similarly, the droughts, floods, and famines that ruin the earths harvest are metaphorically linked to death and downfall.

Religion
Wang Lungs religious observance serves as a measuring stick of his mindset. When Wang Lung feels a strong connection to the earth and when his fortunes are good, he is extremely pious and frequently shows signs of faith in the earth god (as when, for instance, he burns incense to celebrate his marriage to O-lan). When his connection to the earth is weak and when his fortunes decline, he often reacts with bitterness toward the gods and does not outwardly worship them (as when he refuses to acknowledge their statues when he moves his family south during the famine). When Wang is in a period of transition, as when his fortunes are changing, he is often anxious about the gods and prays frequently to them to preserve his good luck.

Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Foot-binding
In traditional Chinese culture, small feet were considered an attractive female trait. The custom of binding young girls feet to ensure that their feet would remain small was practiced for almost a thousand years, from the tenth century to the Communist takeover of mainland China in 1 9 4 9 . Footbinding was usually begun when a girl was between the ages of five and seven. Her mother would fold all her toes except her big toe beneath her foot, then tightly wrap a thick bandage at least several feet in length around the foot, so tightly that it actually prevented the bones from growing and eventually caused the foot to fold in half. The ideal product of foot-binding was known as a lotus foot, a foot that, on a grown woman, was not more than three inches long. Foot-binding was extremely painful, and the pain lasted throughout a womans lifethough the pain lessened as she grew older because her foot was essentially dead. Today, the process would be considered nothing short of torture: apart from the crushing pain of retarded bone growth, the process caused the nails of the four folded toes to grow into the soles of the feet. It also caused an extremely bad odor as various parts of the foot died. Foot-binding made it nearly impossible for a woman to walk for any substantial length, and even a short walk was excruciatingly painful.

Despite the brutality of this practice, it was widespread throughout China, and by 1 9 0 0 only the poorest and most wretched girls did not have their feet bound. Bound feet were considered so much more attractive than unbound feet that, without bound feet, it was very difficult for a girl to find a husband. ThroughoutThe Good Earth, Buck uses foot-binding as a symbol for the moral depravity of wealth, which would subject young girls to torture simply to make them more attractive to men. Attraction to foot-binding also serves as a symbol of Wang Lungs longing for wealth and status. He is initially disappointed to discover that O-lans feet are not bound, even though her unbound feet enable her to work in the fields with him, which dramatically increases his familys fortune. Nevertheless, though she was an outspoken advocate against the practice, Buck takes a very objective, neutral tone toward foot-binding in The Good Earth,drawing attention to the cultural tendencies that might make a woman choose to do such a thing to her daughter. When O-lan binds her own daughters feet, for instance, she is motivated by Wang Lungs rejection of her, by his criticism of her large unbound feet, and by her desire for her daughter to have a happy marriage with a husband who loves her.

The House of Hwang

The House of Hwang is a symbol of wealth, extravagance, decadence, and downfall throughout the novel, a constant reminder of wealths corrosive effect on morality and long-term success. As the site of the Old Mistresss opium addiction, the Old Masters whoring, and the young lords abuse of slaves, the house is a palpable sign of disconnection from the land and of narcissistic selfabsorption. When Wang Lung buys the House of Hwang after O-lans death, the transaction is a grim symbol of his own familys fall from grace, represented by his childrens decision to sell his land and live in splendor in the Hwangs house.

O-lans Pearls
The pearls, which O-lan steals in the revolt in Chapter 1 4 and which Wang Lung allows O-lan to keep, are an important symbol of the love and respect Wang Lung affords his wife. Though O-lan does not say so, it is clear that she treasures the pearls as proof of her husbands regard for her. When Wang Lung takes the pearls away from her and gives them to the prostitute Lotus, it is as though he is taking away his love and respect. O-lan is inwardly devastated, and the incident symbolizes the extent to which wealth and idleness have corrupted the once admirable Wang Lung.