The Pearl Glistened in the Darkness

Last night I turned the last page of the 90-page short novel by John Steinbeck. And here is the feedback. I've been a fan od Steinbeck ever since I read his Grapes of Wrath a few years ago. And now, after The Pearl, my commitment to remaining Steinbeck's fan has become deeper. From here, there is nowhere to go but be his fan forever.

The Pearl is a very short story about Kino, his wife Juana and their son Coyotito. But it is not the length that matters. The power with which their story has been narrated will leave a permanent mark.

It is a simple story about love and greed, poverty and hunger, hardship and social segregation, power and economics. Due to poverty, lack of education and the spectre of hunger, a pearl diver, Kino, when he hunts the largest pearl in the world, wants to sell it in the local market. But he is not offered a good price for it. Meanwhile, the news of the pearl spreads, and people want to steal it or forcibly take it away from him that night. Someone even burns his brush house in greed.

Kino decides to leave his village and go to the city to sell it. He's also haunted by the fear of being stalked for the pearl, which he hibes in his person carefully. His wife throughtout gives him company and accepts whatever decision he takes.

In the long journey to the city, the family faces immense hardship. The baby boy, who has been previously stung by a scorpion and has been treated by the doctor, also faces this arduous day. Then Kino and Juana sees three people on thebeach hunting for them. They hide with the baby, try to walk away into a secret cave.

The only way now for Kino to save themselves from the three men catching them and forcing the pearl out of them was to kill them, which he planned to do with the rifle the men were carrying. So, when the sun set, before the moon rose, he waited to jump on the men and wrestle their rifle out of them.

He was able to kill two of them in a mental state that was possessed, and the third ran away. But then, in the scuffle, he also ends up killing his own son.

Later, Kino and Juana returns to the village, but they were the saddest couple, carrying the dead body of their baby boy. Juana had always said that the unnatural pearl was evil and had asked Kino to throw it into the sea, but he never listened to her. Now that the baby was dead, he listened to her. But it was too late.

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.