“The Pearl” by John Steinbeck

This is the 6th Steinbeck story I’ve read in the last few weeks and the one that I liked the least.

Steinbeck tells the tale of a young family of native fishermen who live on the Baja Peninsula. Kino and his family are happy and content, without a care in the world. They live as his people have lived for generations, they are pearl divers. They don’t make much money off of it, but they do make a living. And that’s all Kino and his wife, Juana, need.

Until their son Coyotito is bitten by a scorpion. They need to find someway to get him treatment and, miraculously, Kino finds it. He dives with his family in the boat and find what he calls, “The Pearl of the World”. Everyone believes that all their problems are now solved.

But instead of finding salvation Kino has only found doom.

I’m not going on with any more details, I don’t want to give out too many spoilers for a book published nearly 80 years ago. It is considered one of his best works and has been studied in middle and high schools all over the world. Even so, I did not care for it.

All it does is prove that if you are ignorant and poor all you, and your children, will ever be is ignorant and poor. Even if you have great fortune, and win the lottery, let’s say, you will be cheated and it will be taken away from you.

We didn’t study this in my school. I never studied it with a teacher or got to discuss it in class. Maybe I am wrong. Steinbeck was a well known pro-labor man and considered a socialist by society. Maybe I am missing his point.

I don’t NEED a happy ending. I knew that there would be no dreams fulfilled, I knew that Coyotito would not get to go to the school his father dreamed of. But the degree of loss that this family suffers has no soothing. There will always be a bitter hole that will never be filled.

Even if you don’t always like what you read, read every day, and read something you enjoy.