Steinbeck, John Ernst: The Pearl

Kino:

Kino is not confident with his life. All he wants is to give his wife a better life and that that his son learns to read and write. He doesn´t want his son, Coyotito, to grow up in a strow hut as a poor.

Juana:

Juana, the wife of Kino, is confident with her life. She prefers living in a small village and her wish is to have a nice family, a healthy son and a satisfiet husband, so she always helps Kino and stands by his side.

Juan Tomás:

He is Kino´s brother and helps him every time and they always stick together.

Kino, his wife Juana and their son Coyotito live togehter in a small village near the sea. They are poor and live in a small strow huts and Kino´s job is to search pearls in the sea.

One day Coyotito is stuck by a scorpion and gets very ill. So Kino and Juana decide to go to the doctor in the next bigger city. As they arrive there and as the doctor sees that they have no money he suddenly is not at home and can´t help the baby. Kino wants to give the doctor everything he has, but this isn´t enough. So they return home and Juana starts to suck out the poison as well as she can.

The next morning when Kino is in his canoe, looking for pearls, he sees something shining in the sea. He jumps into the water and finds the biggest pearl he has ever seen. The villagers say that this is the pearl of the world.

As the doctor hears of this event he visits Kino and Juana in the small village and gives Coyotito some pills, which saves his life.
The following day Kino goes with his colleagues to a pearl buyer, who should estimate his pearl. But no pearl buyer is willing to pay the real price and declerate the pearl as valueless. Kino doesn´t beleave this and wants to go the capitol to show his treasure other pearl buyers, because he thinks they cheat him. In the night before the departure the whole family is suddenly attacked by some dark ones and Kino has to kill one of them to save his life. The others burn the family´s house down and so they have to flee in the next evening. They arrive at a stone desert where Kino makes the story an end. He kills the dark ones, who are instructed by the pearl buyers to kill him and his family, after a terrible pursuit and after they have shot Coyotito.

When they come back to the village they go stright to the sea and Kino throws the devil, that´s how the pearl is called by Juana, back into the sea.

I like this book very much because it shows that being rich is not always the best thing in the world. Kino is in the beginning of the story a simple fisherman who, together with his family, is torn from his happy life, by finding a pearl and is thrown into a strange new world, in which right has been turned into wrong. In the story is shown, that wealth is often the root of evil.