Comparison Of The Good Earth And Nectar Essay

Submitted By janvidance
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Comparison of the Good Earth and Nectar in a Sieve
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. Rukhmani 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