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The literary theme of loss
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The Pearl Is Not What It Seems One day the poor fisherman, Kino, found “ the greatest pearl in the world”, that was perfect as the moon (Steinbeck 10). Consequently, this results in a big conflict that takes place throughout the entire story. In the novella, The Pearl, by John Steinbeck, Kino and Juana’s baby Coyotito, sadly gets stung by a scorpion. Later on, in La Paz, Kino and Juana try to find a doctor to cure Coyotito and get him back to normal to live their natural lifestyle again. Unfortunately, Kino doesn’t have enough money to pay the doctor so Kino goes out to find the pearl that changes his life. Steinbeck skillfully uses the pearl as a symbol to illustrate the emotions of hope, despair, and defiance of the character Kino.
Steinbeck skillfully uses the pearl as a symbol to illustrate hope. When Kino cannot get the help he needed,
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At the same time, Kino’s neighbors are trying to steal his pearl, Kino is growing hatred to people around him. When Juana is trying to help Kino with his cut, he says he’s ok with “his eyes and voice were hard and cold” ( 20 ). Kino has never showed anger towards her as he was caring towards her and the baby. Juana senses the pearl is changing him. Shortly, after Juana sees changes in Kino she starts talking about the pearl. Juana confronts Kino saying “This thing [pearl] is evil, this pearl is like a sin” ( 20 ). In the end, Kino’s mind has been set as he wants to do something about the pearl. He just can’t throw it away. At the same time, Juana still tries to convince him about throwing the pearl away. Juana tries to make Kino change his mind so she says “It will destroy us all” ( 20 ). Sadly, talking about their child did not scare or change his mind at all as he already thinks Coyotito’s future will be better if they keep it and sell it later. As a whole, the pearl changes Kino deeply, he doesn’t listen to his wife and takes control of her with
I must convince Kino to go home and dispose of the pearl because it has negatively changed his personality, and has put our family in grave danger. “Kino, look at what the pearl has done to us! Don’t you think it’s time to give up?” I asked, as I held Coyotito softly in my arms. “I am a man,” Kino replied in an exhausted tone.
Kino, the main character in “The Pearl”, starts off by being a loving, helpful companion to his lover Juana. The two are so connected they barely feel the need to talk to each other. Their life is almost perfect, until a scorpion stings their baby, Coyotito. Because the couple has very little money, the doctor will not cure Coyotito and says, “have I nothing
“Her arm was up to throw when he leaped at her and caught her arm and wrenched the pearl from her. He struck her in the face… He heard the rush, got his knife out and lunged at one dark figure and felt his knife go home,”pg 59. In the previous quote, Kino’s wife Juana steals the pearl and tries to throw it into the ocean but is beaten and punished by Kino. Soon after this two mysterious figures try to steal the pearl from Kino and he violently stabs one of them. The only reason that this happens is because humans love attention, and if somebody has something that you do not have you want it. Juana wishes that Kino would quit worrying about the pearl so much, and focus more on his family. This pushes her to try to steal the pearl and return it back to its rightful home. Whereas, the unknown figures are jealous of Kino’s pearl and they wish that they had it for themselves, this is why they try murdering Kino, and stealing the pearl. This is not the only instinct shown through this quote though, humans are very protective of there stuff and often times violence can ensue if people try stealing what is rightfully yours. Kino is very protective of his pearl and when everybody tries taking it from him he becomes violent and chaos comes soon after. Being protective is why you have to teach babies how to share, and why many wars break out.
When Juana wanted to destroy the pearl, Kino beat her unmercifully: He struck her in the face and she fell among the boulders, and he kicked her in the side...He hissed at her like a snake and she stared at him with wide unfrightened eyes, like a sheep before a butcher. (742) Juana saw through the outer beauty of the pearl and knew it would destroy them, but Kino's vision was blurred by the possible prosperity the pearl brought. The malignant evil then spread to a secret cult known only as the trackers. This corrupt band of ruffians attacked and destroyed Kino's life. The very night that the trackers learned of Kino's pearl, they tried to steal it. The next night, Kino was attacked twice, which resulted in Kino committing murder. After the final struggle of the night, Juana went back to their home to find more baneful members of the heartless cult rampaging through their belongings to find the pearl. The end result was Kino and Juana's house going up in flames. The trackers then committed the cardinal sin, they destroyed Kino's canoe: This was an evil beyond thinking.
At first, the pearl symbolized aa amazing providence. With the discovery of the great pearl, Kino began to have hope for Coyotito’s future and thought of the different possibilities that lead before him. However, as the town found out about ‘“the Pearl of the World”’(Steinbeck, 1947, p. 23), it began to have an injurious effect into Kino’s simplistic life (SparkNotes Editors, 2002). Juana and Kino’s brother began to seek the pearl as a threat rather than a blessing as the pearl began to symbolize and associate more materialistic desires. With Kino’s desire to acquire wealth from the pearl, he altered from a happy and content father into a savage criminal. By Kino’s demonstration of the destruction of innocence from greed and desire, the pearl soon became a symbol of human destruction. Kino’s gluttony shortly leads him to violently mistreat his wife and also to the death of his only son, Coyotito (SparkNotes Editors, 2002). SparkNotes Editors (2002) believed that his greed ultimately isolated Kino from his cultural customs and society. Overall, according to Wheeler (2008), the parable’s moral lesson was that “money cannot buy
And in the pearl he saw Juana with her beaten face crawling home through the night... And there in the pearl Coyotito’s face, thick and feverish from the medicine” (69). When Kino looks into the pearl, he hopes to see a rifle and other things he wants, but he only sees the body of a man he killed, the body of Juana who he had beaten, and Coyotito, who was sick. All of these bad things that happened to Kino happened because of the pearl and what it brought. Before the pearl, Kino would never kill a man.
He is driven by greed, so much so that he could even see dreams form in the pearl. Kino is the head of a modest household and until he finds the pearl he lives a satisfied life with all he needs for his family to be happy. As soon as Kino finds the pearl he starts to want possessions he never wanted before. He dreams of education for Coyotito, marrying Juana in a Catholic church, purchasing new clothing for his family, and getting a harpoon and a rifle for himself. “It was the rifle that broke down the barriers . . . for it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more” (Steinbeck 32). Located within a small poverty-stricken community, a pearl diver named Kino finds “the Pearl of the World” and becomes suddenly rich, he begins to want items that he thought were impossible before. As Kino thinks more and more of what the pearl can do for him, he starts to think that it will raise his social status as well. This is only the beginning of Kino’s greediness, for the more he gets, the more he will want, and this begins to dehumanize him. Kino focuses on the wealth of the pearl and causes him to change his values about life. In the beginning, Kino is only focused on his family, once Kino finds the pearl he becomes more focused on the pearl, rather than his family. Kino cares a lot more about losing the pearl rather than something bad happening to his loved
Readers can tell from the statement that many of the people Kino encounters after finding the pearl become bitter “friends”. At this point, Kino and Juana begin to realize that the pearl is bringing bad luck upon them. They are taken advantage of by the doctor and he decides to visit them after knowing they have the pearl. “This pearl is like a sin”(56). Juana begins to realize the pearl is bringing them bad luck, but Kino still trusts that it’s a gift. Readers can also assume that people are trying to take the pearl when Kino is suddenly attacked during the night. “Blood oozed down from his scalp and there was a long…”(56). Readers can now confirm that the pearl has changed and now represents evil. The pearl also begins to destroy Kino and Juana’s relationship as they have different opinions on what to do with the pearl. After Kino wakes up and follows Juana when she wakes up and walks out, readers know he has started to lose full trust in her. “He rolled up to his feet and followed her silently as she had gone” (58). Through the symbolism of the pearl and what it brings upon Kino and Juana, the author emphasizes how the pearl is not what it first appears to be, which was
For example, when Juana argues with Kino about the pearl, she tells Kino, “The pearl is like a sin” (38). The pearl is compared to a sin using a simile and reveals how Juana truly feels about the pearl as it connotes evil, envy, and greed. This supports the fact that the pearl converts Kino and that it isn’t benevolent. In addition, when Juan Tomas tells Kino to leave the pearl, Kino tells Juan, “The pearl has become my soul” (67). Kino is shown to have an obsession with the pearl and that it controls him. His commitment to the pearl connotes obsession, delusion, and compulsion. The pearl and it’s hold on Kino is why he is dehumanized as the book progresses
Juana had argued with Kino countless of times about the pearl. She knew in her heart that the pearl was gonna cause trouble for them. Kino’s misguidedness meant that he was about to do something so idiotic that he will regret for the rest of his life. She ran to the beach ready to vanquish the pearl from her family, but Kino wasn’t about to allow that. He was behind Juana the entire time like a shadow.
Kino, Juana, and Coyotito go back to the beach and row out to an oyster bed, where he begins to search for the pearl. As Kino continues to search, Juana takes things into her own hands after being refused by the doctor and sucks the poison out of Coyotito and then puts seaweed on the wound, unknowingly healing him. Meanwhile Kino gathers several small oysters but suddenly comes across a particularly large oyster. He picks the oyster up and returns to the surface. When Kino opens the oyster he discovers the pearl. Word that the pearl has been discovered travel through the town quickly. People in the town became jealous of Kino and his family which eventually leads to a great deal of harm.
After Kino found his great pearl bad things started happening, Kino and Juana's lives were in trouble. Two men notified in the book as the "dark ones" tried to steal the pearl, luckily Kino had been prepared and got rid of the enemies but that was not the end of the misery. Coyotito got very sick and the Doctor had deliberately made things worse. When it was time to sell the pearl, the buyers offered prices that Kino thought were too low. Kino was angry with the pearl buyers for what they had said. "I will not make an offer at all. I do not want it. This is not a pearl - it is a monstrosity." Kino got angry and decided he wanted to go elsewhere and find a buyer for the pe...
Kino becomes a human with evil animal-like features, “Kino looked down at her and his teeth were bared. He hissed at her like a snake,” (59). Steinbeck also illustrates Kino as an animal, “He was an animal now, for hiding, for attacking, and he lived only to preserve himself,” (62). One of the worst things that Kino had done whilst the Pearl was in his possession was beat his wife, Juana, “He struck her in the face with his clenched fist and she fell among the boulders, and he kicked her in the side,” (59). Kino transforms into a cruel man with twisted intentions from this point until the end of the
This leads to change and, eventually, downfall. Before he finds the pearl, Kino “was a well-liked man” (43), and adored by all of his neighbors. Everyone looked up to his kindness and sympathy, but when he finds the Pearl, he changes. The pearl takes control over him, and he becomes too obsessed with getting his money. He loses his many things over it: “now it is my misfortune and my life and I will keep it” (66). The neighbors even suspect, “‘what a pity it would be if the pearl should destroy them all.’” (43) For example, KIno loses his family when he tries to protect the pearl and defies the pearl buying system, and when he mishandles Juana. Loisng his canoe symbolizes thi sloss of his family. He also loses his sanity. he beats Juana and kills four men. He “‘killed a man’” (61) and joins in many fights. For greed, he turns down the salesman`s offer for the pearl and ends with nothing left. Kino has the chance to take the money offered to him and be done, but he is greedy and he wants more. Then, at the end of the book, Kino throws the pearl into the sea, and with it, all the money he could possibly gain. He also lets the doctor treat Coyotito, even with his doubts, and now can not pay him because the pearl is his payment method, which is now gone. He thinks his money is secure, and in his mind, he is a rich man. This is not necessarily true, as readers learn, and because he was so secure, he must now pay for unnecessary
When Kino finds the pearl he is shocked. " It was as large as a seagull's egg. It was the greatest pearl in the world" (Steinbeck 19).Kino and Juana revel in the excitement thatsurrounds Kino's finding the pearl, but their happiness soon turns to distrust. The pearl buyers, whoKino has to sell the pearls to in order to make a profit, try to cheat him. They tell him that the