Analysis and Reflection of The Pearl" is by John Steinbeck

The Pearl

By John Steinbeck

name of the book that I chose is "The Pearl" is by John Steinbeck. The genre of the book is fiction and it has 87 pages.

The book is about a Mexican pearl diver named Kino with a wife named Juana and a baby named Coyotito. The family lives in a poor Mexican city named La Paz, the city is by the gulf so there are many fishermen and pearl divers. The city has a poor side where all of the poor people live and a rich side with beautiful houses, and a doctor who only helps the rich who can pay him, an other setting is the gulf which is where he finds his precious pearl. In the sorry the baby Coyotito gets stung by a scorpion but the doctor wont care for him since the family is poor. While out pearl diving Kino finds a huge pearl that they call "The Pearl of the World". In the pearl he sees his rich future, him getting married, his son grows up in school reading books. When he goes to sell the pearl none of the pearl dealers want it since its just to big and can't be used to make anything. The pearl brings great misfortune to the family, a man attacks Kino, Kino kills the man and decides to move up north to sell the pearl. On the way north the family is hunted down by three hunters seeking out the pearl. The hunters kill the baby but are then kill ed by Kino. Kino and his wife walk back to their village and throw the pearl back into the ocean where it belongs.

My favorite character in the book is Kino, Kino is a strong able bodied man still very young with his first newborn. In the beginning he is a family man all he cares about is protecting and providing for his family, he even hears what he calls the family song in his head. As the story moves on he finds the pearl and starts to hear the song of ...

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...never tell where it was going or what was about to happen. I liked the similes and metaphors in this book and there were quite a lot of them. "He hissed at her like a snake", "Kino was as cold as steel", "Coyotito was reading a book as large as a house, with letters as big as dogs, and the words galloped and played on the book", He was an animal now, for hiding, for attacking, and he lived only to preserve himself and his family". Steinbeck has great similes and metaphors in almost every page. He also has some good imagery, "The dawn came quickly now, a wash, a glow, a lightness, and then an explosion of fire as the sun arose out of the gulf". I could picture this in my head as I read the book. "They saw the flames tall and furious, they saw the roof fall and watched the fire die down as quickly as a twig fire dies". The book is just oozing with literary elements.