Essay, Research Paper: The Comparison Of The Good Earth And Nectar In A Sieve

The Good Earth and Nectar in a Sieve Comparisons
The Good Earth and Nectar in a Sieve were two very
different novels. One was about a family in India under
Hindu beliefs. The other was about a family in China that
followed Buddhist beliefs. Both books share similar ideas.
Although this is the case, the books have some unlike ideas.
In Nectar in a Sieve and The Good Earth, three things
are compared: weddings, duties of wives,
and treatment of children.
Weddings in a Hindu society are very different
than those of a Buddhist society. In Nectar in a Sieve,
the marriage of Rukmani and Nathan's daughter Irawaddy,
the family was poor and she had a plain wedding.
At her wedding, she had a small party and food set aside
for the guests to eat. Nathan paid a dowry to her husband
of one-hundred rupees. Wang Lung and O-lan, the parents
in The Good Earth, had a more exuberant wedding.
Their first son's bride had many things given to her,
such as oils, her fingernails were painted, and she
received new clothes. A dowry was paid but the amount
was not revealed. While finding a suitable wife is
important to both, how the wives are treated and
expected to do is different.
Women are expected to do different things in Hindu
and Buddhist religions. In The Good Earth, O-lan is
expected to bear sons and take care of them. She also had
to cook, clean, and help in the growing of their crops.
By the time she had many children, she had stopped working
in the fields. Ruku in Nectar in a Sieve, was expected
to do more. She had to bear children, preferably boys,
work in the fields, cook, clean, sew, sell produce,
wash and several other things. Having children, they
were treated depending on the sex that they were.
Children in the book The Good Earth were
handled in a different way of that in Nectar in a
Sieve. In The Good Earth, male children were
respected and their futures were thought of in advance.
On the other hand, females were not as highly respected
and usually sold as slaves around the age of ten or twelve.
Otherwise they are kept and given away as brides. Ruku and
Nathan's boys in Nectar in a Sieve were supposed to be
farmers, but they all turned away from farming and became
things like doctors and servants. Their only girl was
only to help her mother and to be wed. The treatments of
both sexes of children are different everywhere.
The three things that are similar yet different in
Nectar in a Sieve and The Good Earth are weddings, duties
of wives, and treatment of children. Weddings are altered
depending on the culture. While Chinese women have little
to no respect, Indian women have little respect but not
none at all. Boys and girls have very different
management. In the novels, the three examples of the
differences are shown intensely. The Hindu and Buddhist
cultures are very different, yet they are similar in some
ways.