The Pearl

by John Steinbeck

(New York: Penguin, 1992)

Paperback, 90 Pages, Fiction

ISBN: 9780140177374, US$8.00

ABCD Rating: DITCH

When the news of Kino’s great find—the “Pearl of the World”—spreads through the small town, no one suspects its power to deceive, to corrupt, to destroy.

From the Cover: Like his father and grandfather before him, Kino is a poor diver, gathering pearls from the Gulf that once brought great wealth to the Kings of Spain and now provide Kino, Juana, and their infant son with meager subsistence. Then, on a day like any other, Kino emerges from the sea with a pearl as large as a sea gull’s egg, as “perfect as the moon.” With the pearl comes hope, the promise of comfort and of security. … A classic simplicity, based on a Mexican folk tale, The Pearl explores the secrets of man’s nature, the darkest depths of evil, and the luminous possibilities of love.

My Review: I first read this novel in—I think—the sixth grade (it was sometime in middle school at any rate) and I remember hating it at that time. It was just so bleak and depressing. Now, I find myself in the position of having had to read The Pearl again for my Eminent Authors: Steinbeck class and, in all honesty, I can’t say that my position on the book has changed much.

I still find this to be a bleak and depressing novel that I just can’t bring myself to like, and it is doubly so now that I am a father, given how Steinbeck ends this allegory … it is an ending that really cut me to the quick and overshadowed a lot of the reading experience for me. (Those of you who have read The Pearl know what I am talking about, and for those of you who haven’t, as miffed as I am at the ending, I can’t bring myself to spoil it for you.)

I am sure that there is much to be said about this book; after all it is an allegorical tale regarding the inherent darkness that resides in the human soul, and how quickly a good man can descend into greed and corruption. Someone in my class insists that the villain in the piece is not Kino, nor the Doctor, nor anyone else. He insists that the true villain of Steinbeck’s novel is US. It is the reader. We are the mob, he said, and the mob is us. If this is true, than Steinbeck’s view of humanity is not much different than the idea that you can keep crabs in a shallow holding tank because if any one crab gets too high up or starts to escape, the other crabs will pull him back down. That is the message of The Pearl then, at least how I read it: that one should not try to get above one’s station in life, because those around you will pull you back down to reality with devastating effectiveness.

Like I said, I don’t see much of redemption and belief in humanity in the book, and I can’t in good conscience recommend The Pearl to anyone.