Book Review #2 - The Pearl, by John Steinbeck

Summary

This book tells the story of a young Mexican-Indian Kino, his wife, Juana, and their son, Coyotito. The story starts when Coyotito was stung by a scorpion. Then, Kino and Juana took him to a doctor who lived in the city and he refused to see and treat him. So, Kino and his family returned home.

In the following day, Kino dived in the sea and collected a huge pearl. With that pearl, Kino could be a rich man and he thought he could use that to pay his wedding, to buy a rifle and to allow Coyotito to go to school. The news that he had that pearl spread fast and everybody knew it very quickly.

When the doctor heard the news that the man whose son he had refused to treat had found a big pearl, he went to Kino’s house to treat Coyotito, hoping to get the pearl as a payment but Kino said he would pay the following day when he exchanged his pearl into cash.

As he said to the doctor, Kino went to the city to exchange the pearl. As he was an Indian, the pearl buyer tried to trick him by buying the pearl for almost nothing but Kino understood it and he went away without exchanging the pearl.

In that night, a person tried to steal the pearl but Kino killed him and then he and his family fled to the mountains. Their problems had not finished there because there were more three men who tracked them to get the pearl. When those men were near to Kino, one of them fled and the others were killed by Kino, but they had killed Coyotito.

After that, Kino and Juana returned to the place where they lived and they threw the pearl again into the sea and then the story ends.

Comment

I liked this book because the way that Steinbeck writes is very easy to understand and because the criticism that this story conceals in it is amazing and make us think about many things.

One of those things are that the Mexican citizens always tried to trick the Indians and that they could do everything to them without any problem. Other thing is that a modest man who finds a valuable thing can’t make his dreams true because the other people will not allow him to accomplish it because of their envy. Contrary to what the book said, the pearl was not the evil thing. The evil came from the people who were envy, the pearl was only the thing that awoke the envy inside everyone.