About The Pearl

Yesterday night, after a dinner of wine and what my husband calls 'retrofitted' pasta, I picked up the slim volume of John Steinbeck's novel, The Pearl. On the firt few pages, the family of Kino, his wife Juana, and their son Coyotito are waking up in the morning and getting up from bed. It is a perfect day, a day similar to any other day when Kino eats the corn cake breakfast his wife makes in their traditional fireplace.

The entire scenario is so pristine, untouched, that it is a little out of the way when I get to know that they live in a brush house, away from the concrete and plaster houses on the other side of the land, and light a brush fire to cook their meal. There is a world of difference between these two segments of society. They are poor.

A sudden development brings their poverty into full focus. A scorpion bites the beloved child on his hammock. The mother Juana wants the doctor to come and look at the child, but she is informed by the neighbours that the doctor would not come to cure the child living in these houses.

Hence the march of the entire crowd to the doctor, who lives in a palatial house. The mony minded doctor refuses to examine the wounded child. He is also unable to find any value in the rough pearls that Kino offers instead of money.

What happens next, I'm eager to know. Would have to be patient.