Journal of  Ravishankar University  Vol. 01 No. A  (Science) 1988   pp.107-110  ISSN  0970 5910

Politics And Humanism In Pearl S. Buck's Command The Morning

H V Deshpande

Ajara Mahavidyalaya, Ajara, Kolhapur 416505

MS received : 29 March 88

Abstract: Pearl S. Buck always  examines  human relationships  in the context of cultural encounter between  two or more different peoples in her novels. Since politics is a major Social institution that  shapes and moulds  human behaviour,  it  has always been a significant component  of her novels. Politics is not an exotic phenomenon or a convenient background   for a story in her novels, it is her serious   concern, Eugene Burdick's  remark, in this context,  is highly significant as it reveals her political awareness which is one of the basic elements  that have shaped her novelistic vision. Burdick says : To the political extremist, she is subversive just  because she has been so prescient on Asian affairs. Her sense of Asian politics and society results in such accurate predictions that it is,.by the logic of the extremist, a clear cut evidence of her advocacy of what has happened 1. Her Satan Never Sleeps, The Living Reed and Command the Morning illustrate this view clearly alongwith her autobiography My Several worlds.Command the Morning  is a story of the Manhattan Project The novel  covers  a period of five years (194-45) during  the  creation,  perfection  and use of the atomic bomb. The scene shifts from the University of Chicago to Oak Ridge, and then to Los Alamos,  until the explosion  in the New Desert takes place and at the end the setting is extended  to Japan after the atomic disaster in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As it has always been her practice  to prepare herself with all the facts and figures of the historical  event before  writing a novel on the subject Pearl Buck has undertaken a great deal of research work for this novel also. In this context, Paul Doyle remarks: Pearl Buck. fascinared by the questions which atomic. science raised, traveled to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. to Los Alamos, New Mexico and to similar atomic centers in the United States in order to learn more about the development and discoveries of modem physics. was especially interested in interviewing scientists themselves and in obtaining  their views  on the  bomb  and on the problems  stemming   from nuclear science. As she has herself  mentioned in a note at the beginning of the noyel, the sequence,of events in the creation  of the bomb is ttue, but characters used to tell  the story are fictional.  In this novel America is always at the foreground  and other countries like Britain  France  Germany Russia. Italy and especially Japan and India are at the background, and thus the setting of the novel becomes World-wide.On the surface level,  the political conflict  in the novel  is between  America  and Japan;  however,  the main theme of the novel is revealed in the encounter between  politics

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