The Pearl

In the short novella The Pearl written by John Steinbeck, Kino and his family who were not so wealthy were blessed with a great valuable pearl. Which brought lots and lots of happiness to Kino at the start but this happiness slowly starts to change into dissatisfaction for Kino and his town's people throughout the book. Kino faced many difficult situations because of the pearl and even his closest friends became his enemies. They were selfish and inconsiderate of what was happening. One lesson this story puts forward is that materialism and greed left unchecked can lead to immoral behavior, such as violence. From the very beginning of the book you can see that when Kino finds the pearl his townspeople are jealous of him. This starts to get more and more violent throughout the book. For example on page 23 the author says “ Every Man suddenly become related to Kino's pearl, and Kino's pearl went into the dreams, the speculations…” This demonstrated greed and separation from his town members. It shows how his town members are looking down at

The doctor then said in curiosity “You have a pearl? A good pearl?” When the doctor knew about the pearl just about the same time everybody else did but he asked anyway to make it seem like he wasn't aware. This shows that doctor is selfish and greedy because the one and only reason he even bothered to come to Kino's house was to ask about the pearl. This refers back to the moral of the story “ materialism and greed left unchecked can lead to immoral behavior, such as violence.” Since the doctor had done something so immoral by poisoning the baby just to cure him for it to seem like he helped where in reality he just put the baby in more danger and tried to fool Kino for his