The Pearl Study Guide
By
John Steinbeck
Brief
Biography of John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck grew up in and around Salinas, California.
Steinbeck's comfortable California upbringing instilled in him a love of nature
and the land, but also of the diverse ethnic and socioeconomic groups featured
throughout his fiction. He attended Stanford University, but never completed
his degree. Instead he moved to New York in 1925 to become a freelance writer.
He returned to California after that plan failed and earned his first real
recognition for Tortilla Flat (1935), a collection of stories
about peasant workers in Monterrey, California. He published many more novels
throughout his lifetime and today is best known for the novella Of Mice and Men (1937)
and the novel The Grapes of
Wrath (1939). He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962
and died six years later.
Historical
Context of The Pearl
In the early 1940’s, race riots were erupting in Los Angeles due
to the discrimination of Mexican and Mexican-American teenagers. In 1942, for
example, twenty-four Mexican gangs were tried in a murder case that lacked
evidence of their guilt. A year later, US Navy servicemen attacked a group of
Mexicans, but escaped any criminal charges while the Mexicans they attacked
were persecuted. This period of racial conflict was reminiscent of the
Spaniards’ colonization of parts of Mexico and their subjugation of native
Mexicans in the 16th century. The white oppression of Mexicans both
historically and in Steinbeck’s California, greatly informed his writing
of The Pearl.
The Pearl
Summary
The
Pearl takes
place in a small village on the outskirts of La Paz, California. It begins in
the brush house of Kino, Juana,
and their baby, Coyotito,
a family of Mexican Native Americans. In the midst of Kino and Juana’s morning
routine, Coyotito is stung by a scorpion that
has fallen into his hanging box.
Aware
of how poisonous the scorpion’s sting is, Juana orders that the doctor be
gotten and when the doctor refuses to come to them, insists they go to the
doctor themselves. Kino, Juana, Coyotito, and their neighbours proceed together
to the city. When the servant reports their arrival at his gate, the doctor,
lounging indulgently in bed, is insulted by the mere notion that he would “cure
insect bites for ‘little Indians’” without compensation. The servant informs
Kino that the doctor will not be able to see them and Kino punches the gate,
infuriated by the doctor’s evident discrimination.
Kino and Juana set off in their canoe to search for pearls. Kino dives down to the seafloor and finds one oyster lying alone, gleaming from within. Upon returning to the canoe, Kino opens this oyster last and finds within it the most perfect pearl in the world.
News
of Kino’s pearl spreads rapidly through the town, inspiring desire and envy in
everyone who hears of it. When Juan Tomas asks
Kino what he will do as a rich man, he responds that he and Juana will be
married in a church, that they will have new clothes, that he will have a
rifle, and that his son will receive an education.
The priest visits
the brush house to remind Kino and Juana to thank God. Then the doctor,
inspired by the news of the pearl, arrives in order to treat the baby. He
administers a first treatment and predicts that the poison will strike within
the hour. Within the hour, Coyotito indeed becomes ill and the doctor
administers a second treatment to cure him. Kino promises to pay the doctor
after selling the pearl, which the doctor feigns not to have heard about.
That
night, after dark, Kino hears noises in the house and manages to strike a thief
looking for the pearl with his knife, but is also struck in return. Juana begs,
to no avail, that they get rid of the pearl.
The
next day, Kino and Juana, followed by their neighbours, go to visit the pearl
dealers. The first dealer Kino visits assesses the pearl at a mere
1000 pesos, declaring it too big and clumsy to be worth anything more, though
it is clearly more valuable than he lets on. Kino accuses the dealer of
cheating him, so the dealer instructs Kino to ask around for other appraisals,
which are even worse than the first. Kino concludes that he’s been cheated and
decides to go to the capital for a better estimate.
That
night, Kino fights off another attacker. Juana tries to throw the pearl into
the ocean, but Kino follows her, rips the pearl away from her, and beats her to
the ground. Some minutes later, Juana rises to discover that Kino has been
attacked yet again, and, this time, has killed his attacker. Now that Kino is
guilty of murder, Kino and Juana truly must leave the town.
As
Kino approaches the canoe to prepare for their departure, he sees that someone
has made a hole in its bottom. Then, upon seeing that their house is engulfed
in flames, the family seeks refuge in Juan Tomas’s house. They flee north at
nighttime, pursued by trackers who have followed them from the
village.
The
family retreats into a cave on a mountainside, under which the trackers come to
rest at night. When it’s completely dark, Kino prepares to attack them but, as
he is about to, Coyotito lets out a cry, provoking one of the trackers to shoot
at what he assumes to be a coyote. Though Kino succeeds in killing the men,
Coyotito has already been shot dead.
Juana
and Kino, united and beleaguered, walk back to the village side-by-side with
Coyotito’s dead body in Juana’s shawl. Kino throws the pearl back into the sea.
The Pearl Prologue Summary
& Analysis
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Summary
A quoted passage frames The Pearl as
a story told again and again, and known by everyone in the town. It has
become a parable, with stark contrast between good and evil and no
in-between. Everyone that hears it considers the tale in relation to his or
her own life.
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Analysis
The prologue sets up the townspeople as the
collective narrator of the tale to come. It also establishes the story’s
universal nature, and thus invites every reader to find connections in it to
his or her own life.
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Chapter 1
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Summary
Kino awakes
in the early morning and looks around him to see his son still asleep in the
hanging box, and his wife lying next to him with her eyes open, as though
she’d been watching him as he slept.
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Analysis
In the very opening scene, we get a layout of the
family hut, and a sense of the caring relationship between Kino and Juana.
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He hears in his head the “Song of the Family,”
like the songs of his ancestors before him, and then steps outside of his
brush house to watch the sun rise. Juana, meanwhile, begins to make a fire in
the pit and to grind corn for morning corncakes.
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Juana and Kino begin what appears to be their
daily morning routine. Nature and Kino’s ancestors are introduced as
significant background characters.
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Kino watches a crowd of industrious ants and
coaxes a shy dog that has wandered over to their hut, as Juana makes the
cakes and sings to Coyotito. It is a morning like all others, safe and whole.
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The crowd of ants, quietly working together,
resemble Kino’s family and the town at large. A tone of safety, quiet,
gentleness, and mutual care is established.
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Breakfast sounds come from neighbouring huts. Two
roosters look to be about to fight.
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Kino and Juana’s routine is echoed by that of
their neighbours.
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Chapter 2
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The narrator describes the town, located on an
estuary. Canoes line the beach, constructed according to an old, secret
method. Sea animals and algae populate the floor of the ocean, and dogs stalk
its shore.
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Passages like this emphasize the town’s sense of
unity between past and present, between humans and nature, and between humans
and animals.
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An “uncertain air” hangs over the Gulf. Its
haziness, the narrator suggests, might account for the Gulf peoples’ trust in
imagination.
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The natural setting of the Gulf is an important
character throughout the novel. Here it’s suggested that it even has the
power to subtly determine the mindset of its residents.
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Kino
and Juana walk to the beach, in the direction of their canoe. Kino had
inherited the canoe from his father, who inherited it from his own father. It
keeps the family from starving, and is described as Kino’s only valuable
possession.
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The canoe, which is more valuable than it might
appear, foreshadows the arrival of another possession that turns out to be
less valuable than it appears.
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On
Kino’s blanket, Juana sets down Coyotito, who’s calmed but still swollen.
Juana treats his sting with seaweed, which is effective but not as
authoritative as a doctor’s treatment.
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That the doctor’s treatment is considered superior
for its “authority” reveals that Kino and Juana have become subtly dependent
upon and convinced by the powerful persons who oppress them.
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Chapter 3
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The narrator describes the town as a “colonial
animal”: it works as a unit, separate from all other towns, and circulates a
uniform emotion. News travels through the town at an inexplicably rapid pace.
It takes, therefore, no time at all for everyone in the town to learn that
Kino has found "the Pearl of the World."
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It has already become apparent that the town
functions as an intimate unit, but this passage foreshadows the downside of
this intimacy, which will become apparent in the rest of this chapter.
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When the doctor hears of Kino’s pearl, he openly
declares that Kino is his client and that he is treating Kino’s son. He then
luxuriates in dreams of Paris.
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The doctor cares not for the people that he
treats, but for their money. All he wants is more wealth and to return to
Paris.
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The beggars at the foot of the church are also
pleased by the news, hopeful for alms.
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While before they looked at Kino as a “poverty”
person, now the beggars see him otherwise. Everyone thinks of how they can
profit from Kino’s wealth.
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The pearl-dealers sit at their desks, waiting for
the pearls to come in. The dealers always assess at the lowest feasible price
before there is danger of the pearl-owner giving his treasure somewhere else
(once a fisherman, deterred by the low price, donated his pearls to the church).
While it appears that each buyer is working as an individual buyer, there is,
in fact, only one buyer who stages the dealers separately in order to create
the illusion of competition.
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The pearl dealers prevent anyone who isn’t already
wealthy or powerful from becoming wealthy or powerful. Their assessments have
nothing to do with the pearls themselves. The dealers therefore epitomize a
society in which those in power remain in power and deny anyone the
opportunity for social mobility.
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Chapter 4
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The narrator remarks on the marvel of the little
town’s interconnectedness, how it keeps track of everything within it. A
regular pattern has developed in the town, and whenever one person disturbs
this pattern, everyone hears about it. So, it’s quickly known by all that
Kino intends to sell his pearl.
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Kino has disturbed the natural flow of the town by
finding such an inordinate treasure. He becomes, therefore, the subject of
attention throughout the town.
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The pearl dealers have heard word of Kino’s
intention and they sit in their offices and fantasize. All under the control
of a single buyer, they all know ahead of time what they’ll offer and how
much they’ll bid. Though they will not earn more than their regular wages,
they are still excited for the pure thrill of the task of bidding down a
worthy seller.
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While Kino and Juana’s trip into the town is a
momentous, once-in-a-lifetime occasion, for the pearl dealers, it is their
day job, which they always go about in the same way, with no surprises, and
with the sole intention of cheating the seller.
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The air is yellow and thick, but through it, a
tall mountain two hundred miles away can be seen.
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In the midst of commerce and economic valuation,
nature beckons. The thick yellow air may symbolize the "pollution"
of the corruption of the town, while the mountain symbolizes Kino's hopes.
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The fishermen will not look for fish today. All
the neighbours talk of the pearl and what they would do if they’d found it.
Most of them fantasize about religious deeds and donations, and they hope
that the pearl will not do bad things to Kino and his family.
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The selling of the pearl is an event not only for
the family but for everyone in the town. It occupies everyone’s days and
thoughts. All the town people sense that the pearl might bring great joy, but
could also lead to great sadness.
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Chapter 5
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Kino awakes in the middle of the night to see
Juana arise from the bed mat, go over to the fireplace, pause by Coyotito,
and then exit through the door. Kino, enraged, quietly trails behind her.
When Juana hears him, she begins to run towards the water and lifts her arm
with the intention of throwing the pearl. Kino jumps on her, grabs the pearl
from her hand, and then hits her face and kicks her side.
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Juana, strong-willed, tries to take initiative and
get rid of the evil pearl. To preserve the pearl, Kino acts cruelly against
the person he loves the most, revealing the full extent to which the pearl
indiscriminately inspires greed and evil in those who encounter it.
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Kino hisses at his wife with bared teeth,
while Juana looks back with brave eyes. She is
familiar with and unafraid of Kino’s murderousness. Kino feels disgusted and
walks away, up the beach.
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The pearl has awoken a savage rage in Kino. Juana,
demonstrating the strength of the family bond, loves Kino in spite of his
rage. She recognizes his violence against her as part of his temperament and
accepts it.
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He stabs at something lurking and engages in a
fight with another body whose fingers search through his clothes for the
pearl. The pearl is forced from Kino’s hand and lands upon the ground.
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Everywhere Kino turns, another danger is lurking.
To protect the pearl, Kino has entered into an endless series of violent
defensive attacks.
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Juana, meanwhile, lifts herself up and reassures
herself that Kino is necessary for her survival. She acknowledges and
appreciates the differences between the values of man (strength, sacrifice)
and the values of woman (reason, caution) without entirely understanding
them.
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Juana transcends Kino’s immediate violence and
recognizes his importance to her, and the general importance of a man to a
woman. She recognizes and does not question the fact that she and Kino fall
into customary gender roles, with wife subservient to husband.
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Chapter 6
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In strong wind and under a black sky, Kino and
Juana begin to follow the sandy road that leads to Loreto, the home of a
statue of the Virgin. The wind, Kino hopes, will erase their tracks.
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Kino and Juana set out in the direction of the
statue of the Virgin, as though they are embarking on a religious pilgrimage,
when really they are escaping after an irreligious crime of killing (even if
in self-defense).
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Something ancient and animal awakens within Kino
and exhilarates him.
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Connecting with nature and with his ancestors reinvigorates
Kino.
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The moon rises and the wind has calmed. Without
the wind to erase their tracks, Kino tries to follow an existing wheel rut.
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Kino and Juana seek to cooperate with nature to
facilitate their invisibility.
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Coyotes and owls make their night noises. Evil
lurks about. Kino and Juana walk all night, and Kino hears the song of the
pearl and the song of the family.
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Evil noises haunt Kino and Juana, but now they are
the noises of nature, not of greedy humans. And Kino feels that he is acting
to protect his family and the hopes symbolized by the pearl.
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Character Analysis
Kino
A strong, young Native American, Kino is The Pearl’s
protagonist and the head of its central family. He lives with his wife, Juana,
and their son, Coyotito, in a brush house near the Gulf Sea. They lead a simple
and dignified life, and Kino works hard to keep his family nourished and
protected. In the beginning of the novel, Kino is deeply connected to the
culture of his ancestors—to their musical customs, their intimacy with nature,
and their veneration of the family structure. When he finds the pearl, however,
Kino develops grand ambitions and lofty aspirations, which distract him from
these traditional values and lead him to commit uncharacteristic acts of
violence in protection of the pearl—against his own wife as well as his greedy
neighbours and others. By the end of the novel, after his efforts to keep the
pearl have resulted in the disaster of Coyotito's death, Kino demonstrates a
renewed respect for his wife and a return to his initial values, particularly
when he allows Juana to walk by his side and then offers her the honour of
throwing the pearl into the ocean.
Juana
Like her husband, Kino, Juana is hard-working,
serious, and able to endure great physical and emotional strain. She nurses
Coyotito, builds fires for corncakes, prays in times of distress, and attempts
to heal her baby’s scorpion sting. Though she defers to her husband as a wife
is expected, Juana is also strong-willed, and it is she who insists that Coyotito
see the doctor. When she takes initiative and tries to get rid of the evil
pearl, however, Kino beats her into submission. Yet even Kino’s violence Juana
accepts rationally, reminding herself of the necessity of man for woman.
Coyotito
Perhaps the most important, though most silent,
character in the novel, Coyotito is Juana and Kino’s infant son. He is a naïve
instigator of action: in the beginning of the novel, he shakes the rope of his
hanging box, causing the scorpion to fall on his shoulder and sting him. It is
to pay for his treatment that Kino searches for the pearl, and in the end, his
cries awaken the trackers and cause them to shoot in his direction and kill
him.
The doctor
The doctor is the ultimate embodiment of evil and
greed in The Pearl. The opposite of what one would expect of a doctor, whose
job is to care for others, he is selfish, indulgent, and malevolent, and cares
only about his own wealth and pleasure. He lives alone (his wife is dead) and
lies in bed all day, eating candies and chocolate. When he is first asked to
care for Coyotito, he refuses and cruelly proclaims that he is not a
“veterinarian.” As soon as he hears of Kino’s pearl, however, he falsely claims
that he always intended to treat the baby. It is not clear, then, whether the
treatment he uses on Coyotito is effective, or if he just manipulates
Coyotito’s condition to worsen and then improve, making himself look good. All
he cares about is getting Kino’s pearl and it can be assumed, given that he
watches Kino’s eyes so closely to see if they indicate the pearl’s location,
that he is responsible for at least one of the violent nighttime theft attempts
in Kino's house.
The pearl-dealers
While the pearl-dealers appear to be individual
buyers, each providing estimates independently of one another, they are, in
fact, all operating under a single master buyer, who controls their bids and
wages. Unbeknownst to Kino’s family or his neighbours, before Kino comes in with
the pearl, the buyers have conspired to give him the lowest estimate possible.
Their underestimation infuriates Kino, making him feel powerless and cheated,
and forces him to go to the capital for a fairer assessment.
The neighbours
Kino and Juana’s neighbours often assemble as a
unified chorus or procession to follow and support the family. For the most
part, they unite only in times of particular excitement and, even then, their
primary function is to listen, observe, and spread news. Some townspeople,
however, after hearing of Kino’s pearl, peel away from the passive chorus of
villagers and turn against Kino, raiding his house, injuring him, and finally
lighting his house on fire. These attacks occur at night, when Kino cannot see
the faces of his attackers. So, while the neighbours present a unified front in
the daylight, at night they attempt to realize their individual desires, in the
privacy of darkness.
The trackers
These are the three men, two on foot and one on
horseback, who come from the town to capture Kino’s family and the pearl. In
defense, Kino kills the trackers while they are resting around a fire during the night.
Before he does, however, one of them mistakes Coyotito's cries for those of a
coyote, and shoots and kills him.
The priest
The priest plays an active colonizing role in La Paz
by spreading the Christian faith of the Europeans to the natives of the land.
While Kino and Juana are persuaded by his benevolence—they follow his advice
and repeat his sermons and prayers—he may not be as virtuous as they assume. It
seems at times, as when he reminds Kino and Juana to thank God for their
discovery, that he, too, is only interested in the wealth that their pearl
promises.
The Pearl Themes
Community:
Social
structures such as the family, village, and town, are central to The Pearl. The
central unit, for Kino and Juana, is the family. Their daily lives and routines
are organized around the family, and they make sacrifices for each other and
for their son, Coyotito.
Outside
the family’s hut is the village, which is small and generally comes together to
follow and support Kino and his family when they are in need. The “Pearl of the
World,” however, brings worldly concerns of wealth and self-advancement into
the village and town, and brings out the worst in the neighbours. It inspires
the individualistic greed of the neighbours who try to rob Kino’s home, and the
communal conspiring of the pearl dealers who attempt cheat Kino of his deserved
money. In the end, the one unit that remains united and strong and full of
mutual love, even after loss and injury, is the family: Kino, Juana, and their
dead son, Coyotito.
Good vs. Evil:
The plot of The Pearl is driven by a constant struggle between
the morally opposite forces of good and evil. Evil in The Pearl can appear in
both man (the doctor) and nature (the scorpion); both evil man (the doctor) and
good man (Kino); both ugly shape (the scorpion) and beautiful shape (the
pearl). While the scorpion’s evil takes the form of lethal poison, man’s evil
throughout the novel takes the form of overriding greed. The doctor, for
instance, is evil because he acts upon greed over human care and professional
responsibility. Similarly, the neighbours are evil when they act upon greed over
neighbourly respect, and Kino is evil when he acts upon greed over love for his
wife.
Evil in the novel is an omnipotent, destructive force. One must
either bear it (as in the case of the scorpion) or avoid it (as in the case of
the pearl), because to combat it only breeds more evil. When Kino tries to
fight off the thieves and protect the pearl, for instance, he ends up
committing acts of evil himself, on both the thieves and his wife. Kino does
destroy the evil-bearers that act to harm his family—he squashes the scorpion,
kills the trackers, throws the pearl into the ocean—but he only succeeds in
doing so after the evil has run its course and the poison has already seeped
in.
Race, Tradition, and
Oppression:
Kino and Juana’s racial heritage both provides them with the
grounding force of ritual and tradition and deprives them of power under the
reign of European colonizers. They continue to sing the songs they have
inherited from their ancestors, but they also continue to be oppressed as their
ancestors were, by white people like the doctor and by people with economic
influence like the pearl-dealers. Their oppression is brought increasingly to
light throughout The Pearl, as Kino attempts to cooperate with the people who
have the power (the money, the expertise) to help his son recover, but are the
very same people that traditionally oppress people of Kino’s race.
In the end, dealing in the world of White wealth and medicine
leaves Kino and Juana in a worse condition than they set out in: they end up
without a son, home, or canoe. By throwing the pearl back into the ocean, it
seems, Kino is attempting to free himself of the colonizers’ influence and
escape their system of evaluation, to return to his own set of traditions and
values. As readers, we might also take a step back and wonder whether Steinbeck
might himself be guilty of the kind of racial discrimination that Kino
attributes to the colonizers, in consistently describing him with animalistic
characteristics and by making generalizations about “his people.”
Value and Wealth:
The value and evaluation of material entities is a central theme
in The Pearl. The value of the pearl, for example, requires reassessment
throughout the novel: at the moment of its discovery, it seems to be worth
Coyotito’s life. That the pearl-dealers then, so underestimate the price of the
pearl reveals how distant the monetary worth of something can be from its
perceived value, and how much value is determined by those in power. Moreover,
the determination of the pearl’s value has little to do with anything inherent
to the object itself. As the narrator describes, a pearl forms by a natural
“accident”: “a grain of sand could lie in the folds of muscle and irritate the
flesh until in self-protection the flesh coated the grain with a layer of
smooth cement.”
Kino’s canoe, on the other hand, is described as the “one thing
of value he owned in the world.” Kino prizes his canoe not as a possession but
as a “source of food,” a tool that allows him to fish and dive for pearls. It
seems, therefore, that Kino values things that can help him provide for his
family. Unlike the pearl, whose sole function is to be possessed and looked at
and whose value is assigned (arbitrarily) by people in power, the canoe is
valuable because of its functionality and tradition, and its association with
the dignity of work.
The Pearl reveals the slipperiness of value and evaluation:
often, value is assessed by those who are already wealthy and powerful. What is
valuable to one man (the canoe to Kino) may not seem valuable to another.
Moreover, wealth in the novel is, in fact, not a source of well-being, but of
bad fortune or malicious greed. In the end, what remains of value to Kino and
Juana is immaterial and has no price: love and the family.
Nature:
Nature is a powerful force in The Pearl. Natural elements often
serve to instigate crucial plot-points. Sometimes they protect (as in the
plants that keep Juana and Kino temporarily hidden from the trackers) and feed
(as in the fire that cooks the corncakes); while at other times, they destroy
(as in the scorpion that poisons Coyotito and the fire that burns down Kino’s
house). And throughout the novel, Kino is described as being, like his
ancestors, intimately connected with nature. He is said to have “the deep
participation with all things, the gift he had from his people. He heard every
little sound of the gathering night, the sleepy complaint of settling birds…and
the simple hiss of distance.”
Though powerful, however, nature’s force is essentially neutral,
despite the meaning that mankind, here Kino and Juana, confer upon it. As
described above, the pearl in itself is worthless—a mere cement-wrapped grain
of sand—but, in the course of the novel, it represents for Kino and Juana first
prosperity and hope, and then evil and despair. In attributing the pearl such
meaning, Kino drifts away from his practice of “deep participation with all
things” and into a system of valuation that is not his own, and that ultimately
ends up backfiring. Finally, ridding himself of the pearl and all of the
significance it’s been overlaid with, Kino is free to return to his truly
meaningful, ancestral relationship with nature.
The Pearl
Symbols
The Pearl
The pearl is a complicated symbol. It highlights different
themes and gathers new meaning as the plot progresses. When Kino first opens
the oyster in which it lies, the pearl seems to signify that God is looking
favourably on Kino and Juana. It soon becomes clear, however, that finding the
pearl is not good fortune at all. Rather, it surfaces the evil and greedy
impulses of everyone that comes into contact with it and thus symbolizes the materialism
and selfishness of man’s desires. It represents, too, the arbitrariness of
value and the capacity of an economic system to prevent those who are powerless
from rising above their present state. Created by an accident with a grain of
sand, the pearl is assigned a price—the lowest price possible—by conspiring
pearl-dealers. Kino is cheated in this system because he is not powerful enough
(and is assumed to be too ignorant) to see through the scandal and fight it.
The Scorpion
The scorpion is a figure of pure evil, whose sole function in
the novel is to do harm to the most innocent and powerless character, Coyotito.
The scorpion symbolizes the evil that is found in nature, which is seemingly
arbitrary and unmotivated, in contrast to the evil that is found in mankind,
which is generally the result of selfish desire and greed.
Kino’s Canoe
Passed down through three generations, the canoe symbolizes for Kino the
tradition and culture of his ancestors. Its importance to him demonstrates how
much Kino values both his ancestry and the ability to provide for his family.
Full Book Quiz
1. Where is The Pearl set?
Spain
Mexico
Cuba
The
United States
2. What stings
Coyotito?
A
porcupine
A
hornet
A
scorpion
A
mosquito
3. With what does Kino
offer to pay the doctor?
Eight
small pearls
Five
pieces of gold bullion
Ten
weeks of hard labour
His
canoe
4. How does Kino react
when the doctor snubs him?
He
sulks
He
strikes the front gate with his fists, bloodying his knuckles
He
phones his lawyer
He
threatens the doctor with death
5. What does Juana use
as a poultice for Coyotito’s wound?
Dry
ice
Peppermint
Oatmeal
Seaweed
6. How did Kino acquire his canoe?
He
built it
He
exchanged pearls for it
He
inherited it
He
stole it
7. For what does Juana pray when she is in the canoe?
A
big pearl
Rain
Coyotito’s
health
Sinners
8. Which of the
following is not on the list of things Kino plans to buy with his newfound
wealth?
An
education for Coyotito
A
sailboat
A
rifle
A
proper marriage in a church
9. How does the doctor
treat Coyotito’s scorpion wound?
With
a capsule filled with powder
With
a strange purple liquid
By
administering a shot
By
wrapping it in seaweed
10. Where does Kino hide
the pearl during the night?
In
the doctor’s safe
In
his sock
Under
the potted plant by the toolbox
Beneath
his sleeping mat
11. What is the name of
the town where Kino first attempts to sell his pearl?
Santa
Lucia
La
Paz
Cadaques
Tegucigalpa
12. What is the first
pearl dealer’s nervous habit?
He
manipulates a coin in his hands
He
twiddles his thumbs
He
taps his foot
He
chain-smokes
13. What is the best
offer Kino gets for his pearl?
5,000 pesos
1,000 pesos
1,500 pesos
20 pounds sterling
14. What reason does the
dealer give for not liking Kino’s pearl?
It
is too large
It
smells funny
It
is actually made out of beeswax
It
is stolen
15. How does Kino decide
to make money when he realizes that the local pearl dealers are lowballing him?
By
panhandling and singing for money
By
stockpiling all the pearls of La Paz
By
traveling to the capital to sell his pearl
By
filing a lawsuit against the dealers according to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act
of 1890
16. What does Juana
propose to do with the pearl?
Have
it set in a silver necklace that she can wear on formal occasions
Throw
it back into the sea
Give
it to Coyotito
Sell
it to the highest bidder as soon as possible
17. How does Kino react
when Juana attempts to steal the pearl from him?
He
agrees with her that the pearl will only bring them evil
He
punches her in the head and then kicks her
He
leaves her for another woman
He
chases her down and persuades her to return the pearl to him
18. Why must Kino and
his family flee from their neighbourhood?
Because
Kino sets fire to a group of houses
Because
Kino steals a knife from his brother
Because
Kino makes advances on his brother’s wife
Because
Kino kills a man
19. Where do Kino and
Juana first take refuge after their house burns down?
In
a cave by the beach
In
their canoe
At
Juan Tomás’s house
In
the forest
20. Where do Kino and
Juana flee to escape the trackers?
Down
the river
Up
the mountain
Through
the vale
To
their underwater lair
21. What does Kino do to
conceal himself from the trackers?
He
dons camouflage
He
strips naked
He
cuts his hair
He
grows a moustache
22. For what do the
trackers mistake Coyotito’s cry?
A
coyote’s cry
An
owl’s screech
A
cat’s meow
A
bat’s shriek
23. How does Kino rid
himself of the trackers?
He
wrestles them into submission
He
outruns them
He
hides until they have lost his trail
He
kills them
24. How does Coyotito
die?
He
falls off a cliff
He
is shot
A
scorpion poisons him
He
starves
25. What does Kino do
with the pearl at the novella’s end?
He
donates it to charity
He
sells it to the highest bidder
He
buries it in his brother’s house
He
throws it back into the sea
Quick review questions
1.
Who are the three
important characters?
2.
Describe each
character using at least 2-3 details.
3.
What kind of
lifestyle do they have?
4.
What evidence of
belief in superstition can you find?
5.
With what event in Chapter One does the real action of the story begin?
6.
Describe how Kino's
life is symbolized in songs. What contrasting songs are symbolized at different
times?
7.
What is the
difference between the "city of grass huts" and the "city of
stone"? How are we made aware of the difference (quote)?
8.
In Chapter One, we
meet the doctor. Distinguish between three different characterizations of him.
9.
Use at least three
details about the town to make inferences about the lifestyle of the villagers.
Cite page numbers and say what is inferred.
10. What object of great value had
Kino's grandfather brought from Nayarit, and why was it so valuable?
11. How are pearls created by oysters?
(quote)
12. Describe, in detail, how Kino
searched for pearls?
13. Why do Kino's people sing songs?
14. After Kino finds the great pearl,
what happens to Coyotito?
15. In the selling of the pearl, what
disadvantages and advantages did Kino have?
16. To what does Steinbeck compare the
town?
17. The news of Kino's pearl spread
quickly across the town. What did each person think of when he heard it?
18. What would Kino do with his riches?
19. Why does the doctor come? What does
he do?
20. What bad thing happened to make
Juana want to throw away the pearl?
21. Explain the public attitude the
dealers had toward Kino and his "Pearl of the World."
22. What did the townspeople think Kino
should do with his "Pearl of the World?"
23. By the end of Chapter 4, what
decision had Kino reached concerning what to do with the pearl? Was he right or
wrong to do what he did?
24. With what important incident did Chapter 5 begin?
25. What incident in Chapter 5 put
peace behind Kino and Juana forever?
26. What additional event made it
impossible for Kino and Juana to remain in the village?
27. How did Kino and Juana spend their
last day in the village?
28. By the end of Chapter 5, the pearl
has become a moral issue to Kino. How does he express it? (Quote) How do you
explain it?
29. How does the author describe Kino
at the beginning of Chapter 6?
30. Chapter 6 might be subtitled
"the flight." Name 4 important incidents that happened.
31. Describe the return of the family
to the village.
32. What was Kino's final action?
33. Now that you have finished reading
the book, explain why the foreword (introduction) to this story might be a
parable?
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