Ruku In Nectar In A Sieve example essay topic

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 Nathans 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 sons 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 th 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 Nathans 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.