264/46 ( )

La estirpe del dragón nos habla de los míseros campesinos chinos, aferrados al terruño, hollado esta vez por el invasor japonés. Una oleada de fuego y de terror avanza por los campos, destruyendo vidas y haciendas. Pueblos enteros han de huir o someterse a la bestial dictadura del conquistador. Surgen guerrillas en la retaguardia invadida, como signo de un espíritu indomable que no se aviene a sucumbir sin lucha. Esta es la novela de la China eterna, de sus hombres y mujeres que por la vida arrostran la muerte en la guerra.

A powerful story of a Chinese peasant farmer and his family and how they deal with the senselessness and brutality of war. The language of the book is simple as it comes from the farmer, but his thoughts and feelings are beautifully expressed. Some parts of the book may be hard to read. The ugliness and horrors of war are all there, but the story is told without today’s graphic descriptions. Another wonderful Pearl S. Buck story. ( )

A strain of crazed, self-righteous fanaticism runs throughout Pearl S. Buck's work. In her better novels, such as The Good Earth, her storytelling skills are so strong that this fault, as I see it, fades into the background. But Dragon Seed is not one of her better works. It amounts to little more than wartime propaganda. And the constant pleading interspersed with revenge fantasies at times makes it an ugly work. Yes, China was undergoing a ruthless Japanese invasion and occupation. And Buck self identified with the Chinese. So, in that sense, it is all understandable. But the ferocity of the tone of the book, its lack of subtlety and its constant waving of the bloody flag will forever doom Dragon Seed to nothing more than a mere reflection of its times.

The story itself revolves around a fictionalized depiction of the Rape of Nanking in 1937, although the novel was not published until 1942, just as the United States was entering World War II following the attack on Pearl Harbor. That fact provides the only sense of hope in the story, that after four years of Japanese occupation China now has allies who promise that the "tunnel may be dark and long, but at the end there is light." The fate of the novel's characters reflect this state of affairs, for everything is left unresolved at book's end. The main and final struggle is yet to be fought.

Dragon Seed is bleak, heavy-handed effort. And it reveals Buck as something of a harridan. Her novels and her personal philosophy seem driven with her confirmed belief that she was in the right, that China's only appropriate future was the one she felt it must follow. However much she may have come to criticize the American and British missionary efforts in China, she retained that same zealous attitude, just for a slightly different set of values. She thought herself the defender against anti-Asian bigotry. How ironic that contemporary readers of her work, cut from the same desire to reshape the world in the 21st century image of Western "appropriateness" now condemn her efforts as racist filled stereotypes. There is something instructive in that. People who write books to please contemporary audiences and announce their own virtue often have their own voices turned against them in subsequent generations. Perhaps a fate that also awaits those so criticizing Buck today. ( )

Farmer Liang Tan knows only a quiet, traditional life in his remote Chinese farming community. When news filters in that Japanese forces are invading the country, he and his fellow villagers believe that if they behave decently to the Japanese soldiers, the civilians might remain undisturbed. They’re in for a shock, as the attackers lay waste to the country and install a puppet government designed to systematically carry out Japanese interests. In response, the Chinese farmers and their families form a resistance—which not only carries grave risk, but also breaks their vow of nonviolence, leading them to wonder if they’re any different than their enemy