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Themes found in the pearl by John Steinbeck
Stylistic devices in the pearl by John Steinbeck
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The Pearl by John Steinbeck
The Pearl, by John Steinbeck, is a classic tale. It is a heavily emotion based book about a man and his fight for his family. Greed, evil, culture, luck, anger, death, happiness, and mystery are all key aspects to this novel. Steinbeck’s way of writing pulls the reader into what seems to be another world.
Kino and Juana’s baby, Coyotito, is stung by a scorpion. The doctor would not come and cure him, because he knew that the family did not have very much money. Kino and Juana decide to take the baby to the doctor, along with some of their neighbors. When they get there, the doctor doesn’t want to treat the child because he is a poor indian boy. Kino realizes that he has to find something of value to be able to pay for Coyotito’s treatment.
While oystering, Kino finds a gigantic pearl. Upon hearing about this great find, the doctor decides to heal the child. Kino becomes greedy, and wants to see how much money he can get for the pearl. Juana thinks that the pearl is evil, and she does not want to have anything to do with it. He decides to sell the pearl for 50,000 pesos, but his highest offer was only 1,500 pesos. He decides to go to the capitol to see if he can get a higher bid. The pearl only brings him unhappiness. On his way to the capitol, evil men try to steal his pearl. When they do not succeed, they destroy his canoe, and burn down his house.
Kino starts to realize that money cannot buy happiness, but by then it is too late. He is forced to take his family into hiding. They were followed by trackers, and Kino is forced to kill one of them. Kino and his family hide in a cave. He goes outside to attack the men that are still there, and one of the men ends up shooting Coyotito. Kino has to go back to town with his grieving wife, and without his son. When Kino and Juana are going to throw the pearl into the Gulf, they look into it. In it they see Coyotito, and the evil that killed him. Then they cast the pearl out into the water.
...hes her in the face and kicks her. He is disgusted with her. He then turns and leaves. Kino makes his way up the beach as a group of men assault him. Kino struggles to get away and while doing so he stabs one of the men and kills him. Juana finally gets on her feet and begins to make her way home. She sees Kino lying on the group hurt with another man dead next to him. She hauls the dead man into the brush and tends to Kino. She says they must run away immediately because of what a terrible crime Kino committed. Kino refuses at first, but then agrees. Juana runs back to the house grabs Coyotito, while Kino goes to the beach once again to prepare his boat, but realizes that the group of men made a hole in it. He becomes full of rage and kicks at the water. He then tells Juana what happened and they decide to hide at Juan Tomas’s house for a while.
Kino found one of the most valuable and precious pearls in the world and being convinced of its worth was not going to be cheated by only minimally upgrading his condition of life. Instead he wanted to break the fixed life and role that he and his family had and always would live. Kino refuses the maximum offer of fifteen hundred pesos that would easily ease his and his family’s pain and suffering for the coming months. Kino is then determined to trek to the capital to find a fair and just offer. Kino continues determined through the mountains after an attempt at the pearl, his canoe destroyed and his hut set a blaze. Continuing to put his family’s life on the line. It eventually takes the death of his beloved son Coyotito to make him realize he needs to stop being so greedy, no matter how hard he tries and to shut his mouth and know his role.
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.
In the novel, the main character, Kino, goes out to find a pearl in hopes of getting money to pay the doctor to treat Coyotito, his son, who has been bitten by a scorpion. Kino discovers the biggest pearl anyone has ever seen, and believes the pearl will bring nothing but good for him and his family. The pearl does change the lives of Kino, his wife Juana, and Coyotito, but not in the way he had hoped. When the people in La Paz find out about Kino’s pearl, he is visited by a greedy priest and doctor, the deceitful pearl buyers try to scam him into selling it to them for less than it’s worth, and the pearl was almost stolen twice. Kino kills the second thief in self-defense...
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
They both rely on someone else for help. George orders Lennie to "Hide in the brush .... come for you."(of mice and men.30) Lennie is like a baby, he needs to be taken care of, in even the most basic ways. Coyotito is managed by Kino and Juana. When Coyotitio got stung by a scorpion, he wails out in pain. Juana tells Kino, "Go get the doctor."(the pearl.7) Coyotito can't take care of himself, he relies on his parents for assistance. Lennie is like Coyotito in the way, that they rely on others. After Lennie met George at the bush, George "pulled the trigger."(of mice and men.106) George killed Lennie because, he no longer wanted, to get in trouble. Kino heard a "hysterical cry from the little cave ... the cry of [Coyotito's] death"(the pearl.87) Kino was anguished when he lost his son. He lost his real hope, his son. The pearl was what lead, to the death of his beloved son. The pearl represented his greed, his desire, his dark side. When he thought he could beat fate, fate triumphed and made him experience agony. Greed led to the demise of both
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
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.
If you were given a million dollars, what would you do? Spend it in a short amount of time? Or save it responsibly for the future? Many would say the latter, confident that they will accomplish that. But for a few, it doesn’t turn out that way. In the book, The Pearl, a family, Kino, Juana and their child, Coyotito, go through various hardships after they have found a pearl, eventually losing everything they had loved. With three examples from the novel, I will explain what the pearl in the book symbolizes.
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...
The Pearl by John Steinbeck is a classic novella. Steinbeck is a classic author that also wrote The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. “This long story (or short novel) follows five momentous days in the life of an Indian pearl diver living in La Paz, a small port on the Gulf of California,” (Gunn 1) . Kino is the pearl diver, and his son, Coyotito, gets stung by a scorpion, but the doctor will not see him because of race and status. That is until Kino goes pearl diving and finds a pearl the size of a gull’s egg. After that everything changes for Kino, his family, and the whole village. This novella is set up a lot like a parable in which it is an earthly story with an heavenly meaning. This story has many symbols that point to the overlying
Kino lives in the shore with his family, he was a fisherman. When the morning comes he can hear the song of the family which includes the sounds of waves and animals that surrounded them. Juana his wife had a song too, an ancient song that had only three notes and yet endless variety of interval. One day their baby , Coyotito got stung by an scorpion a deadly poisonous, tiny creature the couple was panicked and didn’t know what to do. Their neighbors help them to get to a doctor but it seems that the doctor was very mean to poor people. There is this other song too which is the song of enemy, they heard it when they have a problems. There is this beggars actually, four of them in front of the church who knew everything in the town. They were students of expressions of young as they went into confession. When they got into the house of the doctor Kino hesitated a moment because this doctor was not of his people. The gate was closed a little and the servant refused to speak in the old language. They never got to speak to the doctor with Kino’s anger. He struck the gate a crushing blow with his fist.
As the story unfolds, evil enters into the lives of Kino, his wife, and his son. In chapter one, the evil that enters the family first is the scorpion. The scorpion enters the home of Kino and stings Kino’s baby, Coyotito. After Coyotito was stung, another evil soon came along. This evil was the doctor. When Kino and his wife, Juana, bring Coyotito to the doctor, the doctor refuses to help because they had little to no money.
pearl is so big that it has no value. Kino has to hide the pearl, but while he sleeps a thief tries to steal it. The doctor who would not treat Coyotito's scorpion bite when they had no money now comes to them offering the best medical care he can provide.As the story of Kino's situation unfolds, Kino is forced to kill three men, and worst of all, Kino accidentally shoots Coyotito in the head while he is trying to shoot his pursuers. Finally, at Juana's urging, Kino throws the pearl back into the sea. He has made nothing from his fin...