Midterm Study Guide The Pearl (this is only meant to help you do not rely solely on these pages) PLOT Initial Situation: A scorpion stings Kino s son and the doctor refuses to treat him. OK, we ll admit that this sounds like conflict. And in a way, yes, it is conflict it s just not the conflict of the novel. Instead, it sets up the circumstances in which the real conflict Kino s discovery of the pearl occurs. Because of the scorpion sting, that event is couched in urgency and desperation the conditions set by our initial situation. The doctor being a jerk sets up some of the themes and tension of the novel, as well as establishing what is essentially the initial situation of Kino s emotional state (namely, gate-punching anger). Conflict: Kino finds the Maserati of all pearls. You d think this would be the climax, but the discovery of the pearl instead throws a giant wrench into Kino s life. He can now dream big which is great but everyone in his town is also dreaming big which is not so great. The townspeople are all ready to do anything to get their hands on the pearl, which spells C-O-N-F-L-I-C-T to us. Complication: The pearl-buyers try to scam Kino; he is then driven out of town after unknown attackers destroy his boat and burn his house. That went downhill fast. What should have been a joyous, celebratory time is quickly corrupted by greed and evil. Climax: Trackers follow Kino and Kino brings them down. As climactic as watching Kino triumph over the trackers is, it s a bittersweet moment. He doesn t have a house or a canoe, and he s on the run. As much as we may cheer for his attack moves, and as much as we identify this as the climax of the novel, it s definitely tinged with some darker undertones. Suspense: Kino hears a "cry of death" from the cave. Steinbeck doesn t explain what this "cry of death" means, which means that he leaves us in suspense until the Denouement: Kino and Juana return to La Paz. Coyotito is dead. Now that we know that the "cry of death" from the cave was Juana mourning for the death of Coyotito, the suspense is over. Conclusion: Kino chucks the pearl into the ocean.
Kino and Juana come to a tacit agreement (well, Kino is finally convinced) that the pearl is evil. He throws it out of their lives and we assume they go back to being poor, minus a canoe, house, and their son. CHARACTER Kino isn t very complicated. He loves his family, he dives for pearls, and he s obsessed with being a man. That s pretty much it. But while Kino never deviates from his masculine role, he does stop being entirely human. What we mean is, he gets less like a human and more like an animal. So what do you make of this? On the one hand, we can t really expect much more of the guy; he s out in the wilderness, his life is threatened, and his family is in danger. He has to get animalistic if he wants to survive. On the other hand, he murders three men (in addition to earlier the one in the village) without giving it a second thought. Does the novel seem to condemn his actions or excuse them? Let s take a look at this super interesting line from Chapter Three: "It is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have." Man is made superior to animals by his ability to seek a better life. OK.except Kino becomes an animal after he starts looking to climb the ladder of success. So what s up with that? Kino is more human, more civilized by his dreaming. Just like the pearl, dreams aren t bad per se it s society that screws them up. Society takes Kino and, for all his dreaming, beats him back into the ground back into the status of an animal. He is left with no choice but to respond with the only weapons he has: instinct, physicality, and violence. Kino Timeline and Summary: Kino wakes up "in the near dark." He looks over and sees that his wife Juana is awake. She serves him breakfast, and the Song of the Family plays happily in his ears. Kino spots a scorpion hanging over his son Coyotito s cradle, and BAM! the Song of the Family turns into the Song of Evil. Kino moves to grab the scorpion, but before he can kill it, the scorpion falls into Coyotito s cradle and stings him. Juana wants a doctor, so Kino brings his wife and child to the doctor s house. The doctor refuses to see them. Kino hits the door in outrage and injures his hand. Later, Kino goes pearl-diving in the hopes of finding a valuable pearl. He finds a mega-valuable pearl.
Immediately he dreams of marrying Juana properly in a church, paying for Coyotito s education, and buying a rifle. Word spreads throughout town of Kino s find; the doctor gets wind of it and suddenly really, really wants to treat the poor Indian baby. Kino hides the pearl under his bed. That night, he is awakened by an intruder, who hits Kino on the head before fleeing. Juana nurses Kino and tells him that the pearl is evil, evil, evil. No it s not, says Kino. The next day, Kino goes to sell the pearl. Unfortunately for him, the pearl buyers are all colluding with each other. No one offers him more than a third of the pearl s real value. Angry, Kino decides to forget the pearl buyers and go straight to the capital. Juana again tells him to get rid of the pearl. Kino tells her repeatedly: Listen to me. I am a man. In the middle of the night, Kino wakes up to find Juana about two seconds away from throwing away the pearl. Kino grabs it and beats his wife for a bit before turning back to the house. An intruder promptly attacks Kino. And then Kino s house starts burning. Kino kills his attacker. The couple realizes they need to get out of town immediately. Two problems: 1) Kino s canoe is broken, which depresses Kino to no end, and 2) there are three trackers hunting them down. Luckily, Kino s brother is willing to take them in, and the family leaves the following night. After some time fleeing, Kino decides to head for the mountains. He also tries to separate from Juana and Coyotito, but Juana says, "No." Exhausted after all this running away, the family finally rests in some caves above a stream. The trackers, just as tired, decide to rest at the stream. Kino decides it s time to take the trackers out and heads down to the stream. Kino is about to attack when Coyotito cries out and one of the men shoots in that direction. Kino attacks. And wins. He now has a rifle. But he no longer has a son. Coyotito was killed by the tracker. Back in La Paz, Kino offers the pearl to Juana, but she refuses. Kino flings the pearl into the ocean. Kino is the protagonist of the novella. Kino is a dignified, hardworking, impoverished native who works as a pearl diver. He is a simple man who lives in a brush house with his wife, Juana, and their infant son, Coyotito, both of whom he loves very much. After Kino finds a great pearl, he becomes increasingly ambitious and desperate in his mission to break free of the oppression of his colonial society. Ultimately, Kino s material ambition drives him to a state of animalistic violence, and his life is reduced to a basic fight for survival.
Kino is an extremely simple character, motivated by basic drives: his love for his family, loyalty to the traditions of his village and his people, and frustration at his people s oppression at the hands of their European colonizers. Kino also possesses a quick mind and a strong work ethic, and he feels a close, pure kinship with the natural world, the source of his livelihood. At the beginning of the novella, Kino is essentially content with his life. However, two seemingly chance occurrences Coyotito s scorpion sting and Kino s discovery of the pearl open Kino s eyes to a larger world. As Kino begins to covet material wealth and education for his son, his simple existence becomes increasingly complicated by greed, conflict, and violence. The basic trajectory of Kino s character is a gradual decline from a state of innocence to a state of corruption and disillusionment. The forces propelling this decline are ambition and greed. At the end of the novella, Kino s tranquil relationship with nature has been perverted and reversed, a change signified by the fact that Kino finds the sounds of the animals at night threatening rather than reassuring. Because The Pearl is a parable, Kino s character can be interpreted in many ways. It can be seen as a critique of colonial politics, an exploration of how good motives can bring a person to a bad end, or even an attack on the idea of the American dream. But on the most basic level, Kino represents the dangers of ambition and greed. Kino s ruin, caused by his lust for the pearl, illustrates the extent to which ambition and greed poison and jeopardize every aspect of a human s familial, cultural, and personal well-being. THEME Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. Greed as a Destructive Force Steinbeck paints an incredibly simplistic portrait of greed in The Pearl. It is always evil, it always corrupts, and it brings nothing but suffering. All competition in this novel is unhealthy, and everyone is motivated by self-interest, not concern for others. Much of The Pearl is about pursuing wealth and the dangers that such an endeavor brings. Because wealth is so highly valued (for no good reason, the novella argues), men make extraordinary sacrifices in its name. Such blind, irrational values can only bring destruction in this text. As Kino seeks to gain wealth and status through the pearl, he transforms from a happy, contented father to a savage criminal, demonstrating the way ambition and greed destroy innocence. Kino s desire to acquire wealth perverts the pearl s natural beauty and good luck, transforming it from a symbol of hope to a symbol of human destruction. Furthermore, Kino s greed leads him to behave violently toward his wife; it also leads to his son s death and ultimately to Kino s detachment from his cultural tradition and his society. Kino s people seem poised for a similar destruction, as the materialism inherent in colonial capitalism implants a love of profit into the simple piety of the native people.
The Roles of Fate and Agency in Shaping Human Life The Pearl portrays two contrasting forces that shape human life and determine individual destiny. The novella depicts a world in which, for the most part, humans shape their own destinies. They provide for themselves, follow their own desires, and make their own plans. At the same time, forces beyond human control, such as chance, accident, and the gods, can sweep in at any moment and, for good or ill, completely change the course of an individual s life. If fate is best represented in the novella by the open sea where pearl divers plunge beneath the waves hoping for divine blessings, human agency is best represented by the village of La Paz, where myriad human desires, plans, and motives come together to form civilization. Kino and Juana s lives change irreparably the moment the scorpion, a symbol of malignant fate, bites their child. Their lives then change irreparably again the moment Kino finds the pearl, a symbol of beneficent fate. Nevertheless, it is not fate but human agency, in the form of greed, ambition, and violence, that facilitates the novella s disastrous final outcome, as Kino s greed and the greed of others lead to a series of conflicts over the pearl. Kino finds himself caught between the forces of fate and the forces of human society, between the destiny handed him by fate and the destiny he seeks to create himself. In viewing The Pearl as a parable, good and evil can be seen in very absolute terms. The family is good; greed is evil. Love is good; destruction is evil. Oppressive colonization, corrupt capitalism, and racism all go on the "evil" list, which we have to say is a tad longer than the "good" one. In this novel, the only thing that stands outside the clear evil vs. good dichotomy is the pearl itself it simply reflects what is around it. That the pearl ends up reflecting evil is an indication of The Pearl s grim view of the world. Colonial Society s Oppression of Native Cultures Corrupted power features in The Pearl as the nasty reality of colonial domination and oppression. The Mexican natives of La Paz live on the outskirts of a town of colonizing Europeans, greedy men who keep the natives in poverty and ignorance. Many of the sorrows of this tragic tale stem from attempts on the part of the powerful to take advantage of the weak. The doctor who refuses to save Coyotito s life at the beginning of the novel because Kino lacks the money to pay him represents colonial arrogance and oppression. Snide and condescending, the doctor displays an appallingly limited and self-centered mind-set that is made frightening by his unshakable belief in his own cultural superiority over Kino, and by the power that he holds to save or destroy lives. Steinbeck implicitly accuses the doctor s entire colonial society of such destructive arrogance, greed, and ambition. The European colonizers that govern Kino and the native people are shown to bring about the destruction of the native society s innocence, piety, and purity. Family Family is idealized in The Pearl it is "warmth [ ], safety [ ], the Whole." Main character Kino protects his family above all else, even the self, and he does so with an almost animalistic fervor. Family is closely tied to gender roles in this text, since the duties of mother and father, husband and wife are an important part of identity.
Symbols Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts. The Pearl The pearl is a BIG deal. At first it s the apex of Kino s dreams and desires, and the next minute it s a harbinger of bad, wicked things. Juana calls it "evil," "a sin" that "will destroy" them. Kino s brother Juan thinks "the devil" is in it. But to agree with the assessment that the pearl is evil would be to miss the bigger picture. If the pearl itself is the problem, we can t really critique the motives and behavior of the characters in the novella. We walk away from the parable with the lesson that um really big pearls are evil? Not so much. Did you notice how the pearl has a strangely reflective quality? Regardless of whether or not this is realistic, it certainly has something to do with the pearl as a symbol. And it helps us see that the pearl itself isn t the source of evil. Men look at the pearl and see what they want to see: Kino sees a wedding, education for his son, a rifle. The doctor sees himself moving back to Paris and eating in fancy restaurants. The priest sees additions for his church. The point is that people make the pearl into what they want it to be. It follows then that if the pearl is evil, it is because people have made it evil. They have corrupted with greed what should have been a beautiful, elegant means for a better future. In other words, pearls don t kill people, people kill people. Of course, the tragedy of The Pearl is that no one realizes this. Even the wisest, most pensive characters Juan Tomás and Juana, the two "guides" for Kino mistake the evils of people as the flaws of the pearl. If you look at it this way, the novel s ending is doubly dismal: Kino has lost everything and yet learned nothing from it. He somehow thinks that by chucking the pearl to the bottom of the ocean, the problems of man will disappear. As readers of the parable, we must not make the same mistake as Kino. Because The Pearl is a parable, the meaning of the pearl itself the novella s central symbol is never explicitly defined. Nevertheless, though the nature of the pearl s symbolism is left to each reader s interpretation, this symbolism seems to shift over the course of the work. At first, the pearl represents a stroke of divine providence. Kino s people have a prophecy about a great Pearl That Might Be, a perfect pearl that exists as a perfect possibility. Kino and Juana s discovery of the pearl seems to fulfill this prophecy, and it fills them with hope for Coyotito s future and for the possibility of a life free from the shackles of colonial oppression. The discovery of the pearl seems a happy accident, one that counterbalances the tragic accident of Coyotito s scorpion sting. Once the town finds out about the pearl, however, the object begins to make everyone who beholds it, including Kino, greedy. The neighbors call it the Pearl of the World, and while that
title originally seems to refer to the pearl s great size and beauty, it also underscores the fact that having the pearl brings the outside world s destructive influence into Kino s simple life. As the dealers begin lowballing him, Kino ceases to view the pearl with optimistic delight and instead focuses on its sale with determined ambition. The pearl s association with good fortune and hope weakens, and the pearl becomes associated more strongly with human plans and desires. Juana and Juan Tomás begin to view the pearl as a threat rather than a blessing. The pearl elicits more and more greed on Kino s part, as he begins to devote all his energies and possessions to protecting it (recalling the biblical parable of the pearl of great price). It thus comes to symbolize the destructive nature of materialism. The implication is that Kino s acquisition of material wealth isn t enough to save him from the colonists oppression, even though such wealth is the foundation of the colonists capitalist system. In fact, Kino s shift in focus from his spiritual well-being to his material status seems to represent the colonists ultimate triumph. The way the pearl is depicted through the course of the novella mirrors the changes that Kino himself undergoes. At first, the pearl is a simple and beautiful object of nature. Once it becomes entangled with notions of material value, however, it becomes destructive and dangerous. The pearl is an object of natural beauty and goodness that draws out the evil inherent in mankind. The Scorpion The Pearl begins with a defenseless baby getting stung irrationally by a poisonous scorpion. Symbolic? Let s start with "defenseless baby." This arbitrary act of destruction ends up mirroring Kino s tragic tale, which means Kino is on par with the innocent babe. The colonizing Europeans have intentionally kept Kino and the other natives in ignorance. Chapter Three even tells us that the doctor considers them children and treats them that way. If Kino is helpless to struggle against the injustice done to him, it is in part because of this ignorance: he doesn t know how much the pearl should be worth, he doesn t know that the doctor scammed him, that the priest is just as self-serving. He may have inclinations, but he s still taking shots in the dark. In the same way, Coyotito is at the mercy of the scorpion. Moving on from "defenseless baby." Next up, "stung irrationally." That Coyotito is poisoned is arbitrary. It is senseless, and it reflects a complete lack of divine justice in the universe. The gods are clearly not looking out anyone (just as Kino notes "the detachment of God" while watching an ant get buried alive in the sand). In this way, the finding of the pearl is equally arbitrary, as is Coyotito s eventual death. Next in our symbolic trio is "a poisonous scorpion." The whole scorpion bit comes not-so-subtly back up in the following passage from Chapter Three: "The news stirred up something infinitely black and evil in the town; the black distillate was like the scorpion, or like hunger in the smell of food, or like loneliness when love is withheld. The poison sacs of the town began to manufacture venom, and the town swelled and puffed with the pressure of it." Well, take a look at that. Steinbeck doesn t leave much to the imagination the townspeople
threaten Kino the same way the scorpion threatened his baby. Additionally, it seems like all the men including Kino quickly degenerate into animals, reduced by their greed and jealousy to their most base, primitive forms. The scorpion that stings Coyotito in Chapter 1 symbolizes a seemingly arbitrary evil that, because it has nothing to do with human agency, must come from the gods. Biblically, the scorpion generally represents the destruction of innocence, and the fact that Coyotito is a baby compounds the Christian symbolism of the event. Coyotito is touched by evil, and this natural destruction of innocence repeats itself in the novella in the destruction of Kino s innocence by his ambition and greed and in the destruction of the natives traditional, natural way of life by the colonists. Kino s Canoe A means of making a living both pearls and food that has been passed down for generations, the canoe that Kino uses represents his link to cultural tradition. This culture is deeply spiritual, so it is significant that Kino uses the canoe to find the pearl, which is provided by a divine power that has nothing to do with human agency. It is also significant that Kino s possession of the pearl leads directly to the canoe s destruction, in Chapter 5, an event that symbolizes Kino s devastating decision to break with his cultural heritage because he wishes to pursue material gain. Possible Essay Topics Could The Pearl have ended any other way? Was it wise of Kino to throw the pearl back into the sea, or should he have searched for another option? One important element of The Pearl is the contrast between fate and human agency, between the destiny that is made for us and the destiny that we make ourselves. How do these forces interact in Kino's story and which one is more responsible for the destruction of Kino's life? Why are the pearl buyers referred to as "fatherly" and "benevolent"? How does this contradict their real motives? A symbol can change its meaning during the course of a story. How does the pearl change its meaning during the course of this novella? Trace Kino s development from man to animal to machine. Then, explain what he is at the end of the novel (man, animal, or machine) when he drew back his arm and flung the pearl with all his might back into the sea. What drives Kino? Is it family, greed, pride, or fear? Make a case for one answer and provide references from the novel to support your position. Compare the doctor and Kino. In what ways are they similar; in what ways are they different?
The acquisition of wealth is a work of great labor; its possession, a source of continual fear; its loss, of excessive grief. Discuss how each part of this three-part quotation taken from Latin applies (or does not apply) to The Pearl.