Influence
The work aroused considerable popular sympathy for China and helped foment poor relations with Japan prior to World War II. Hilary Spurling's book Pearl Buck in China: Journey to The Good Earth observes that Buck was the daughter of American missionaries and defends the book against charges that the book is simply a collection of racist stereotypes. In his view, Buck delves deeply into the lives of the Chinese poor and opposed "religious fundamentalism, racial prejudice, gender oppression, sexual repression, and discrimination against the disabled."
Read more about this topic: The Good Earth
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“I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country’s God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks.”
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