The Pearl

Article written by Israel Njoku

Degree in M.C.M with focus on Literature from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

‘The Pearl‘ is a 1947 novelette authored by an amazing American writer by the name of John Steinbeck. It is the fabulous story of a pearl diver named Kino. Kino is a poor pearl fisherman whose son gets bit by a scorpion and requires medical treatment. The local doctor refuses to treat the boy because the father has no means to pay for the treatment, but also because the doctor has a tribal bias against Kino’s kind. He gets lucky in one of his fishing ventures and catches an oyster that bore an invaluable pearl. But the pearl, instead of bringing the hoped-for fortune it might have ordinarily symbolized, becomes the factor of tribulation in Kino’s life.

Key Facts about ‘The Pearl‘

• Title: ‘The Pearl‘
• Author: John Steinbeck
• Language: English
• Genre: Allegorical Novella
• Publication Year: 1947
• Setting: A Nineteenth-Century Mexican Small Town
• Climax: Kino’s attack on his trackers
• Protagonist: Kino

John Steinbeck and ‘The Pearl‘

John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California, United States, on 27 February 1902. He had German, English, and Irish roots. His father was a county treasurer, while his mother was a school teacher. They were of the Episcopal Church before Steinbeck eventually became agnostic. He lived in a small rural valley some 25 miles from the Pacific Coast, both valley and coast later becoming the setting of some of his finest fiction.

He attended Salinas High School, graduating in 1919. Then he went to study English literature at Stanford University, where he dropped out without a degree in 1925. He moved to New York City and started doing odd jobs while attempting to write. The writing attempt did not yield any publication at this time. It was in 1929 that his first novel, ‘Cup of Gold,’ was published. Then he produced three other shorter pieces between 1930 and 1933. But he was to achieve his first critical success in 1935 with his comic novel ‘Tortilla Flat,’ which won the California Commonwealth Club’s, Gold Medal.

Other titles followed from this point on, including ‘Cannery Row,’ ‘East of Eden,’ ‘The Red Pony,’ ‘Of Mice and Men,’ and the Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’ The last is commonly considered his masterpiece, securing a place for itself in the American literary canon and selling about 14 million copies in the first 75 years of its publication. He had a brilliant writing career, during which he authored over 30 books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He also co-authored a book with his friend Edward Ricketts. In 1962 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature ‘for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception.’

He is said to have landed the inspiration for ‘The Pearl‘ from hearing a certain Mexican folktale. This was during a visit in 1940 to La Paz, Baja California Sur, which was supposed to be a pearl-rich region of Mexico. Indeed the book is sometimes read and interpreted as a parable.

Steinbeck started the book off originally as a movie script. This was in 1944. But it eventually got first published as a short story by the title of ‘The Pearl of the World.’ He then later extrapolated the short story into a novella in 1947 which was released under the title of ‘The Pearl.’ It was published by Viking Press. While he was working on this elongated version which was to eventually come out as the novella ‘The Pearl,’ he was regularly going to Mexico. This was because, at the time, the initial film version, which he co-authored with Jack Wagner, was being filmed in Mexico.

The story of ‘The Pearl‘ is fairly simple, at least at the surface level. And yet it is so powerfully crafted that the possibilities of interpretation and appreciation are simply boundless. The author was exhaustively familiar with his material, and for that reason, he was able to evoke that sense of primordial chaos that man mostly unwittingly triggers whenever he is constrained to upset the natural order of things, such as harvesting a pearl from its natural locus.

Books Related to ‘The Pearl‘

There are books in the literary canon which share more or less the same broad preoccupations as John Steinbeck’s ‘The Pearl.‘ Some of these include ‘The Old Man and Sea’ by Ernest Hemmingway, ‘The Call of the Wild‘ by Jack London, ‘The Stranger‘ by Albert Camus, ‘Ethan Frome‘ by Edith Wharton, ‘The Crucible‘ by Arthur Miller, ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ by Leo Tolstoy, and Franz Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis.‘

The Lasting Impact of ‘The Pearl’

Owing to its universal appeal, given that it is couched in one of the oldest forms of storytelling known to man, namely the folktale, ‘The Pearl,’ has had a considerable impact since its release. A film version of it was already on in Mexico by the time it was being elaborated into a novelette. Another film adaption of it was released in 1947 by RKO as part of a co-promotion exercise for the book. In 2001 it was also loosely adapted into a film by the director Alfredo Zacharias. This adaption was again directly released to video in 2005.