The Pearl

The Pearl is a short novella by John Steinbeck, first published in 1947, based on a Mexican folk tale Steinbeck had heard during a research trip to the Sea of Cortez years earlier. The book is one of his most widely taught works in American high schools, partly because of its compact length and partly because the parable structure makes the moral questions easier to discuss in a classroom setting.

The story is simple. Kino is a poor pearl diver living with his wife Juana and their infant son Coyotito in a small Mexican village. When Coyotito is stung by a scorpion, the local doctor refuses to treat him because Kino has no money. The next day, diving for pearls, Kino finds the pearl of the world, an oyster pearl of impossible size that he is sure will buy his family everything they need. But the news of the find spreads quickly, and the pearl turns out to attract violence and greed from every direction. The novella moves toward a tragic conclusion that lands with the inevitability of Greek myth.

Steinbeck wrote The Pearl in the parable register, with stripped down prose and characters who are as much representative figures as individuals. The pearl itself is a moral object, what it offers and what it costs are inseparable, and the book has been read as a critique of capitalism, a meditation on colonial exploitation, a parable about greed, and a study of the corruption of innocence depending on which classroom is doing the discussing. All of these readings are supported by the text and Steinbeck clearly intended the book to carry that kind of interpretive weight.

For readers approaching Steinbeck for the first time, The Pearl is a manageable introduction. For students returning to it as adults, the parable still works, even if the simplicities feel different at twenty than they did at fifteen.