35 pages • 1 hour read
Pearl S. BuckThe Big Wave
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1947A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Pearl S. Buck
American author Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973) was born in West Virginia to Presbyterian missionaries who took her to China when she was five months old. She and her family lived in China for her entire childhood. Buck was raised to view the Chinese people as equal and was later dismayed by the racism of other white missionaries and expatriates in China. Buck was educated in both English and classical Chinese. She remained in China until 1911, when, at the age of 19, she moved to the US to attend Randolph-Macon Women’s College in Virginia.
In 1914, Buck returned to China, where she met and married fellow Presbyterian missionary John Lossing Buck in 1917. They lived in the Anhui Province near the Huai River, the region she made famous in her beloved novel The Good Earth. There, Buck taught English. In 1927, they were briefly forced to flee to Japan during an outbreak of violence between nationalist and communist forces in China; Buck’s time in Japan would contribute to her portrayal of Japanese culture and people in works like The Big Wave. In the 1930s, Buck became convinced that the Chinese people did not need the dominating influence of foreign missionaries. She eventually moved back to the US and divorced her husband, remarrying the same day. She always planned to return to China; however, the Communist Revolution of 1949 prevented her from doing so.
Over her long career, Buck wrote dozens of novels, nonfiction books, short stories, and children’s picture books. She is best known for The Good Earth, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, she became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, largely on the strength of her humane and sympathetic portrayals of Chinese peasant life, “which pave the way to a human sympathy passing over widely separated racial boundaries and for the studies of human ideals which are a great and living art of portraiture” (Hallström, Per. “Award Ceremony Speech.” Nobel Prize, 10 Dec. 1938).
Historical Context: Post-WWII Japan
The Big Wave is loosely set in postwar Japan, a period from 1945 to 1952 during which Japan was governed by an Allied occupation force under the command of American general Douglas MacArthur. This occupation was a direct result of Japan’s unconditional surrender to American forces in 1944 following the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The intention was to demilitarize and democratize Japan; as of 2024, Japan was still not permitted to have a full military.
Postwar occupation of Japan led to enormous and rapid change in the country, as the largely traditional culture gave way to modern Western institutions and models of governance. Initially, this was a time of abject poverty for much of the Japanese population. Immediately after the war, food and other commodities were strictly rationed. However, political reform led to social change. For instance, farmers who had long lived as tenants on borrowed land were now allowed to own land, leading to renewed prosperity. Other changes included an increase in labor employment, the rise of trade unions, education reform, and the institution of women’s suffrage in 1947. These large-scale social and political changes influenced shifts in the deeply patriarchal structures of Japanese society. However, these changes were slow to be felt in the rural communities, like the small fishing villages depicted in The Big Wave, which often maintained ancient cultural traditions.
Related Titles
By Pearl S. Buck
