Overcomin Adversity (pearl Buck)
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Throughout the course of our lives, we all must fight adversity in one form or the other. It is through inner strength and perseverance that we conquer our greatest fears, struggles, and afflictions as a means of reaching some catharsis. Pearl Buck wrote, “Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and thats where you renew your springs that never dry up.” (Buck, 1954, p. 119) Pearl Buck was no stranger to adversity, and she endured many hardships throughout her life, including a tragical marriage that led to divorce as well as constant relocation. I share these traumatic upheavals with Buck, and although Im aware that I repress many of my somber memories, I sympathize with the grueling rigors that she had to endure to create a happy and rewarding existence. William James would have definitely referred to both of us as being of the “twice-born” variety of tortured souls.
Buck met her first husband, John Lossing Buck, while attending Cornell University, and the two were married May 13th, 1917. The had a daughter that they named Carol, but Carol was born with phenylketonuria, a genetic disorder that if not treated properly, can lead to brain damage, and progressive mental retardation. Due to the severity of the disease, the Bucks decided to institutionalize Carol at a specialized clinic in New Jersey, but this decision took a heavy emotional toll on Pearl, and produced in her the feeling of a divided self, as she knew as painful as it was, it was the purest form of altruism. (
Like Buck, I have recently had to endure a divorce. After ten years of marriage, I felt as though I was trapped in a relationship and life that had stagnated. Working a menial job, with no chance of furthering my education, I wanted to leave the remote part of New Hampshire where we lived, but my wife didnt. Furthermore, it was my one desire to return to college, an idea that she scoffed at, and called a “waste of time.” I felt that I was squandering my life, talents, and future by not pursuing my dreams. On this topic Buck wrote, “Stories were full of hearts broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream – whatever that dream might be.” My dreams were being suppressed, so I returned to school part-time, and commuted nearly four hours from home to do so while simultaneously working in excess of fifty hours a week. I discovered that my wife was romantically involved with someone else, and had been since I returned to college. When I confronted her she said “that I had made my choice when I chose school over her.” I left that day, and was divorced three months later, and for the first time in a long time, I felt hope, and freedom from her control.
Although Buck was born in West Virginia, she and her parents moved to China when she was very young. Chinese was her primary language, and her secondary language, English, was taught to her at home by her parents and a tutor. Throughout her life she relocated many times, both within China as well as between the United States and China. Relocation can be difficult, especially as a child, as it not easy for children to assimilate themselves to the societal norms of an entirely different culture.
I too have moved frequently throughout my life. In fact, by the time I began kindergarten, I had already relocated nine times. My mother got pregnant with me when she was a senior in high school; she was seventeen, and my grandfather did not approve of the pregnancy because traditional values, coupled with ancient morality, clearly dictated the