Kino bristles at the necessity of the doctor visit, as the doctor was “of a race which for nearly four hundred years had beaten and starved and robbed and despised Kino’s race…Kino felt weak and afraid and angry at the same time. In town, we witness the contempt between the two classes. When Kino and Juana take the baby into town to see the doctor, Steinbeck solidifies Kino’s low socio-economic status through the eyes of “the beggars from the front of the church who were great experts in financial analysis, looked quickly at Juana’s old blue skirt, saw the tears in her shawl, appraised the green ribbon on her braids, read the age of Kino’s blanket and the thousand washings of his clothes, and set them down as poverty people” (Steinbeck 5). Why should he, when he had more than he could do to take care of the rich people who lived in the stone and plaster houses of the town?” (Steinbeck 4).

Money or more specifically lack thereof, restricts every movement that Kino and his wife make.Ī scorpion stings Coyotito at the story’s outset, and immediately we learn that “the doctor never came to the cluster of brush homes.

It is a poor world bereft of culture, wherein the other fisherman and their wives eke out a living, and even though his “people had once been great makers of songs,” as a result of the conquest, “no new songs were added” (Steinbeck 1). In The Pearl, Steinbeck describes the world that Kino, Juana and Coyotito inhabit almost exclusively in economic and colonial terms. Degrading Consequences of Poverty in The Pearl In essence, it appears that the moral lesson of The Pearl is for a non-European to accept his social station, or else. When read as a parable however, The Pearl definitely teaches the evils of greed, with a subtle yet unmistakable hint of classism. This disclaimer suggests an attempt by Steinbeck to distance himself from the traditional purpose of the parable, to instruct or demonstrate a moral or religious lesson. Steinbeck describes the story as a parable in the introduction, albeit in a decidedly non-committal manner: “If this story is a parable, perhaps everyone takes his own meaning from it and reads his own life into it” (Steinbeck 1). Though the pearl initially symbolizes a way to help his family, Kino soon develops intense greed in his quest to sell it, and pays for his avarice with the life of his young son. Kino adopts desperate lengths to use the pearl to leverage himself, his wife Juana, and their son Coyotito out of a life mired in servitude and want.

The black pearl steinbeck