1. Discuss the various animal imagery that functions throughout the novel: the ants, the scorpion, the hissing snakes, the schools of fish, the oysters, the dogs, and the pearl buyers as octopuses, etc. 2. Describe in detail Kino and Juana’s simple life before and after the discovery of the pearl. […]
Read more Study Help Essay QuestionsCritical Essays A General Critical Approach
As Steinbeck mentioned in his introduction to this novel, “If this story is a parable, perhaps everyone takes his own meaning from it and reads his own life into it.” Likewise, as was noted in the introduction to these Notes, there are many different critical approaches. The following interpretation is […]
Read more Critical Essays A General Critical ApproachCritical Essays Source of The Pearl
In his prose work The Sea of Cortez, a work which describes Steinbeck’s and Ed Rickett’s explorations in the Gulf of California, Steinbeck reports a story that he heard in the lower California Peninsula; it was reported as a true story occurring in “La Paz in recent years.” Steinbeck writes: […]
Read more Critical Essays Source of The PearlJohn Steinbeck Biography
John Steinbeck was the type of author who liked to know his material firsthand. He was not content to narrate a story which had no basis in fact. Thus, many of his works take place in California, where he lived, and they deal with subjects which he thoroughly understood. Within […]
Read more John Steinbeck BiographyCharacter Analysis The Doctor and the Priest
Both of these characters are so unsympathetically portrayed that they function only on a symbolic level. The doctor is the representative of another way of life — a way of life connected with the pearl buyers and with foreign elements. He has no redeeming qualities, and his actions show him […]
Read more Character Analysis The Doctor and the PriestCharacter Analysis Juana
Juana’s main function is that of Kino’s wife. As a member of a primitive race, the woman is the helpmate of the man. She prepares Kino’s breakfast for him while he sits outside the brush house, and she attends to Coyotito’s needs at the same time. She seems, at first, […]
Read more Character Analysis JuanaCharacter Analysis Kino
One of the great appeals of The Pearl lies in the beautiful and simplistic way that Kino is characterized. However sophisticated one might become, there is always something that one finds appealing in the “noble savage” or the “pristine innocence” of people like Kino, whose life is lived close to […]
Read more Character Analysis KinoCharacter Analysis Introduction
As noted in the “Life and Background” section at the beginning of these Notes, Steinbeck was always completely familiar with his subject matter, and as was pointed out, before he wrote The Grapes of Wrath, he went first to Oklahoma and lived and traveled with a family of “Okies” until […]
Read more Character Analysis IntroductionSummary and Analysis Chapter 6
Chapter 6 begins with Kino and his family making an exodus from his known world to enter a new, strange world where they do not know their way. They are leaving the safety and the assurance of one life because of Kino’s fierce desire to start a new life. The […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 6Summary and Analysis Chapter 5
This brief chapter piles one evil thing on top of another evil thing, and finally Kino is reduced to desperation. Significantly, everything evil that happens to him is directly related to the Pearl of the World, and Juana knows this. At the beginning of the chapter, she silently rises from […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 5