The Pearl

“If this story is a parable, perhaps everyone takes his own meaning from it and reads his own life into it.”

The narrator invites readers to view the tale of the pearl as a parable, which is a story that carries a symbolic message or meaning. As this passage suggests, interpretations may vary from reader to reader. However, the implication is that regardless of the story’s specific historical setting, it carries themes universal to human experience.

“It was a morning like other mornings and yet perfect among mornings.”

The story opens on a typical morning as Kino and Juana prepare for the day ahead. At this point, Kino and Juana live in a state of happiness but also of innocence or naiveté since they fail to fully value their simple lifestyle. They gain experience through the challenges associated with the pearl. That experience ironically increases their appreciation for their prior simple life, even as it slips away from them.

“Kino had often wondered at the iron in his patient, fragile wife. She, who was obedient and respectful and cheerful and patient, she could arch her back in child pain with hardly a cry. She could stand fatigue and hunger almost better than Kino himself. In the canoe she was like a strong man.”

Kino and Juana’s relationship generally adheres to traditional gender norms, including the expectation that Juana obey Kino. Despite this, Kino recognizes that Juana is in many respects wiser and stronger. Kino’s stubbornness in keeping the pearl despite Juana’s warnings demonstrates the weakness of his headstrong approach.

“This doctor was of a race which for nearly four hundred years had beaten and starved and robbed and despised Kino’s race, and frightened it too, so that the indigene came humbly to the door. And as always when he came near to one of this race, Kino felt weak and afraid and angry at the same time.”

As Kino approaches the doctor’s house, he is mindful of centuries of racial oppression by European colonists. This passage shows the way that macro developments in human history manifest in personal situations, but it also reveals Kino and the doctor as symbols of those larger developments. Kino’s mixed fear and anger mirror his dilemma in dealing with the pearl: He can angrily resist others’ efforts to take or profit from it, or he can fearfully submit and allow himself to be cheated.

“The uncertain air that magnified some things and blotted out others hung over the whole Gulf so that all sights were unreal and vision could not be trusted; so that sea and land had the sharp clarities and the vagueness of a dream. Thus it might be that the people of the Gulf trust things of the spirit and things of the imagination, but they do not trust their eyes to show them distance or clear outline or any optical exactness.”

The narrator presents the natural setting as fraught with illusion and ambiguity, which leads its residents to trust their feelings and beliefs more than their senses. This gap in perception recurs in Kino’s attempts to derive value from the pearl. He imagines himself benefitting from the sale of the pearl even as it becomes increasingly clear that external factors will not allow him to do so.

“She gathered some brown seaweed and made a flat damp poultice of it, […] which was as good a remedy as any and probably better than the doctor could have done. But the remedy lacked his authority because it was simple and didn’t cost anything.”

Juana’s treatment of Coyotito’s wound involves sucking the poison out and then applying seaweed, as indicated here. Her efforts work well, but she considers them insufficient, showing that she has internalized a belief in the European settlers’ cultural superiority, at least in some respects. She also considers the fact that her treatments cost nothing evidence of their inferiority, showing money’s function not only as a purchasing agent but also as an indicator, and driver, of perceived value.

“But the pearls were accidents, and the finding of one was luck, a little pat on the back by God or the gods or both.”

After explaining how pearls form through natural processes, the narrator attributes their finding to luck, which is linked to divine favor. The ambivalence about whether “God or the gods” is responsible for fixing luck reveals the duality of Kino’s thinking. Whereas European settlers preach about a single, Christian God, Kino’s people inherit a tradition of multiple gods. Kino draws from both cultures in forming his own conclusions.

“The essence of pearl mixed with essence of men and a curious dark residue was precipitated. Every man suddenly became related to Kino’s pearl, and Kino’s pearl went into the dreams, the speculations, the schemes, the plans, the futures, the wishes, the needs, the lusts, the hungers, of everyone, and only one person stood in the way and that was Kino, so that he became curiously every man’s enemy.”

The pearl is an inherently harmless, if charming, object. However, as an item of great value in the community of La Paz, it becomes the focal point of widespread greed and ambition. The result is a frenzy of deceit and violence, with Kino at the center. Stylistically, the long list in the second sentence of this quote emphasizes the many facets of the pearl’s allure.

“My son will read and open the books, and my son will write and will know writing. And my son will make numbers, and these things will make us free because he will know—he will know and through him we will know.”

Kino recognizes his lack of formal education as a barrier to escaping a life of exploitation. His wish for Coyotito to receive an education thus has implications beyond Coyotito’s individual welfare, extending to Kino’s family, friends, and neighbors as well. Kino’s failure to secure Coyotito’s future despite his discovery of the pearl highlights just how insurmountable those barriers are.

“He was trapped as his people were always trapped, and would be until, as he had said, they could be sure that the things in the books were really in the books.”

When Kino interacts with the European settlers who live in La Paz, he is forced to accept their authority on various issues, particularly when they cite the written word. Literacy is a privilege reserved for the elite, and illiteracy reinforces imbalanced power relationships. The potential for deceit to further exacerbate those imbalances is evident here, as Kino wonders whether he is being lied to.

“‘This thing is evil,’ she cried harshly. ‘This pearl is like a sin! It will destroy us,’ and her voice rose shrilly. ‘Throw it away, Kino. Let us break it between stones. Let us bury it and forget the place. Let us throw it back to the sea. It has brought evil. Kino, my husband, it will destroy us.’”

Juana encourages Kino to dispose of the pearl on multiple occasions. Her warnings prove prophetic, as the pearl robs them of Coyotito and the peaceful life they enjoyed together. Juana’s use of anaphora (starting several consecutive sentences with “Let us”) adds rhythm and emphasis to her appeal.

“All of the neighbors hoped that sudden wealth would not turn Kino’s head, would not make a rich man of him, would not graft onto him the evil limbs of greed and hatred and coldness.”

Kino’s neighbors, who are used to the rich people in the city cheating and ignoring them, wonder if wealth will have the same corrupting influence on Kino. Though Kino never obtains wealth from the pearl, the mere possibility of wealth drives a wedge between him and others, making him suspicious and angry. The reference to limbs as emblematic of greed foreshadows the way Kino uses his limbs to attack others as they try to take the pearl from him.

“And the Father made it clear that each man and woman is like a soldier sent by God to guard some part of the castle of the Universe. And some are in the ramparts and some far deep in the darkness of the walls. But each one must remain faithful to his post and must not go running about, else the castle is in danger from the assaults of Hell.”

Kino and Juan Tomás recall the priest’s use of this simile to imply that they should not seek to change their social or economic positions in life. This reveals the colonists’ use of religion as a means of dominating and controlling Indigenous peoples. Rather than recognizing the colonists as oppressors, people like Kino and Juana instead direct their fear towards the ambiguous “assaults of Hell.”

“And in the four hundred years Kino’s people had learned only one defense—a slight slitting of the eyes and a slight tightening of the lips and a retirement. Nothing could break down this wall, and they could remain whole within the wall.”

Kino and his people have no real answer to the advanced weaponry of the European colonists. Instead of building walls of brick and mortar, they construct mental and emotional defenses. The goal seems to be to maintain dignity and a sense of self regardless of the colonists’ abuses.

“We do know that we are cheated from birth to the overcharge on our coffins. But we survive. You have defied not the pearl buyers, but the whole structure, the whole way of life, and I am afraid for you.”

After Kino refuses the pearl dealer’s offer, Juan Tomás warns that retaliation is sure to follow. His reference to the “whole structure” suggests that the obstacles Kino faces are systemic. Were Kino to succeed, his efforts could disrupt the system, allowing others to follow in his footsteps. Thus, those in positions of power and privilege, from the doctor to the priest to the pearl buyers, unite to oppose or manipulate him.

“He had said, ‘I am a man,’ and that meant certain things to Juana. It meant that Kino would drive his strength against a mountain and plunge his strength against the sea. Juana, in her woman’s soul, knew that the mountain would stand while the man broke himself; that the sea would surge while the man drowned in it. And yet it was this thing that made him a man, half insane and half god, and Juana had need of a man; she could not live without a man.”

Juana and Kino think of their relationship as a mutually complementary one, with each embodying traits traditionally associated with femininity or masculinity, respectively. This accounts, as least in part, for their different reactions to the dilemmas that the discovery of the pearl poses. Juana considers Kino’s willingness to persevere in a lost cause as an element of his masculinity.

“The killing of a man was not so evil as the killing of a boat. For a boat does not have sons, and a boat cannot protect itself, and a wounded boat does not heal. There was sorrow in Kino’s rage, but this last thing had tightened him beyond breaking. He was an animal now.”

To Kino, the discovery that his boat was vandalized is a turning point. In committing such a (to Kino) unfathomable evil, Kino’s adversaries unintentionally push Kino to a new level of desperation and anger. The passage charts his development in terms of his degeneration from man to animal, as if his corruption by the pearl undercuts civilization itself.

“I do not know. It is all darkness—all darkness and shape of darkness.”

When Kino kills someone in defense of the pearl, he is unable to identify the individual by name or any other quality. His assailants throughout are described in similarly vague terms. The implication is that the pearl alters Kino’s perception of others, dehumanizing them, just as he is dehumanized in their eyes.

“The pearl has become my soul. […] If I give it up I shall lose my soul.”

By the time Juan Tomás joins Juana in counseling Kino to dispose of the pearl, it is too late. Kino feels that his soul is inextricably linked to the pearl, which lies at the center of all his plans and desires. His insistence that losing the pearl will cost him his soul, however, turns out to be a dangerous delusion. Instead, it is his effort to protect the pearl at all costs that leaves him broken and empty.

“He looked in to the pearl to find his vision. ‘When we sell it at last, I will have a rifle,’ he said, and he looked in to the shining surface for his rifle, but he saw only a huddled dark body on the ground with shining blood dripping from its throat. And he said quickly, ‘We will be married in a great church.’ And in the pearl he saw Juana with her beaten face crawling home through the night. ‘Our son must learn to read,’ he said frantically. And there in the pearl Coyotito’s face, thick and feverish from the medicine.”

Kino’s relationship with the pearl has some of the hallmarks of a Faustian bargain or a deal with the devil (indeed, Juan Tomás insists elsewhere that the pearl has a devil in it). The harder he tries to use the pearl to benefit himself and his family, the larger the toll it takes. Morally, he is compromised, as he kills someone, turns against Juana, and puts Coyotito at risk.

“Everyone in La Paz remembers the return of the family; there may be some old ones who saw it, but those whose fathers and whose grandfathers told it to them remember it nevertheless. It is an event that happened to everyone.”

The story of the pearl is so deeply entrenched in the town’s cultural memory that everyone feels as if they were there, even though it is doubtful that anyone who witnessed the original events is still alive. In all likelihood, the original episode, if indeed it occurred, differed substantially from the story as passed from generation to generation. The fact that the story continues to have such an immediate impact suggests that it serves some important purpose to the people of La Paz.

“The people say that the two seemed to be removed from human experience; that they had gone through pain and had come out on the other side; that there was almost a magical protection about them.”

At the point of their return, the change in Juana and Kino becomes apparent. Their passage through pain moves them from a state of innocence to experience. Their knowledge comes at a heavy price, but their story lives on as folklore—an attempt to transmit some of that hard-won knowledge.

“In Kino’s ears the Song of the Family was as fierce as a cry. He was immune and terrible, and his song had become a battle cry.”

Whereas the Song of the Family and the Song of the Pearl intertwined at earlier points, in the novella’s conclusion, the former wins over the latter. The transformation of the Song of the Family into a “battle cry” indicates that Kino has, at last, recognized the pearl as an enemy. Exactly what he is now “immune” to is unspecified, but the implication is that Kino’s entire perception and system of values has changed or deepened somehow.