Think About This

If someone could give you any sum of money, how much would you ask for?

What if there was a hidden price for that sum of money, would you still ask for it?

La Paz in Baja California Sur, Mexico

The Pericú and The Guaycura - The Indigenous Peoples of Baja California Sur

The traditional indigenous peoples of the Baja California Sur were the Pericú and the Guaycura.  Both groups were extinct by the 1800s because of contact with the Spanish colonizers (1553) and later the Catholic Church (first with the influence of the Jesuits and then the Franciscans) which brought disease, resettlement and labour.

Kino, Juana and the other villagers are descendants of the last indigenous survivors.  Their traditional way of life was destroyed by these colonizers.  How does this help you understand the following passages from The Pearl?

"Kino heard the little splash of morning waves on the beach. It was very good- Kino closed his eyes again to listen to his music. Perhaps he alone did this and perhaps all of his people did it. His people had once been great makers of songs so that everything they saw or thought or did or heard became a song. That was very long ago. The songs remained; Kino knew them, but no new songs were added. That does not mean that there were no personal songs. In Kino's head there was a song now, clear and soft, and if he had been able to speak of it, he would have called it the Song of the Family."

"Light filtered down through the water to the bed where the frilly pearl oysters lay fastened to the rubbly bottom, a bottom strewn with shells  of broken, opened oysters. This was the bed that had raised the King of  Spain to be a great power in Europe in past years, had helped to pay for his wars, and had decorated the churches for his soul's sake."

"Kino stood in the door, filling it, and hatred raged and flamed in back of his eyes, and fear too, for the hundreds of years of subjugation were cut deep in him"

Which Cover Interests You?

The Pearl by John Steinbeck

A PDF of John Steinbeck's The Pearl is located in our Google Classroom.  You can read this edition of John Steinbeck's The Pearl directly from your Chrome browser.

Links for the audiobook chapters are located below as well as in the Google Classroom.

Reading Schedule

We will read 1 chapter together per class.  I will use the text and the audiobook at the same time.

There are 2 ways for you to do this:

1. You can read ahead and then take notes on the parts I talk about.

2. Read with us as I go through the chapter, taking notes when I stop to talk about a section.

The Pearl - Audiobook

These are the links to an audiobook version of The Pearl.  Please listen to the text as you read if it helps.

The Pearl Reading Questions

Answer these questions in your notebook.  You need textual support (a quote with a page number) for your answer to be complete.  The quotes from your answers will also be helpful when you write your essay for this unit.  Please reread Writing an Answer and Common Signal Phrases to make sure you are writing complete answers.  Your hand written answers will be evaluated (K).

I also added optional vocabulary lists.  Look up the definition to words you don't know before you read the chapter.  If as you read the chapter, you come across a new word, add it to your list.

You will be handing in some of your answers in class, quizzed on the vocabulary and write an essay for this unit.

Writing an Answer

When you write an answer, you can start by restating the question.

Sample question:

How is atmosphere created in chapter 1 of The Pearl?

Sample answer:

In chapter 1 of The Pearl, atmosphere is created by all the dark imagery.  The narrator describes, "Kino awakened in the near dark. The stars still shone and the day had drawn only a pale wash of light in the lower sky to the east" (Steinbeck 1).

• Write your thought in a complete sentence.

• Find a quote from the novel.

• Write down the page number.

• You need to introduce your quote.  Some examples are: Steinbeck writes, Steinbeck states, The narrator states, The narrator describes, or if it is a character indicate the character and the mood.  Common signal phrases are listed in this note in the Writing section of the website.

• Put a citation after your quote.  Note that the period GOES AFTER THE CITATION.

• Notice that the answer sentence and the proof sentence FOLLOW EACH OTHER.  DO NOT PUT THEM ON SEPARATE LINES.

Chapter 1

Questions

Please answer the following questions in complete original sentences.  Use a quote to support your ideas.  These questions will be checked for completion.  Answers that are illegible, incomplete or plagiarised will not be accepted.

1. What is a parable? Why do you think Steinbeck uses this word? This question does not require a quote.

2. What do the names of the characters suggest about where this story takes place? This question does not require a quote.

3. Who appears to be the protagonist in this story

4. Who would you guess the antagonists will be? How can you tell?

5. Why do the townspeople follow Kino?

6. Why did the doctor refuse to treat Coyotito?

7. What does that tell you about the doctor’s personality?

8. What conflicts are revealed in the first chapter?

9. What is “The Song of the Family”?

10. What is “The Song of Evil”? When did it first appear?

Notes and Quotes

"And, as with all retold tales that are in people's hearts, there are only good and bad things and black and white things and good and evil things and no in-between anywhere."

"His people had once been great makers of songs so that everything they saw or thought or did or heard became a song. That was very long ago. The songs remained; Kino knew them, but no new songs were added."

"Juana went to the fire pit and uncovered a coal and fanned it alive while she broke little pieces of brush over it ...  Behind him Juanas fire leaped into flame and threw spears of light through the chinks of the brush-house wall and threw a wavering square of light out the door ... Kino squatted by the fire pit and rolled a hot corn-cake and dipped it in sauce and ate it. And he drank a little pulque and that was breakfast. That was the only breakfast he had ever known outside of feast days"

"Kino heard the creak of the rope when Juana took Coyotito out of his hanging box and cleaned him and hammocked him in her shawl in a loop"

"Under her breath Juana repeated an ancient magic to guard against such evil, and on top of that she muttered a Hail Mary between clenched teeth. But Kino was in motion. His body glided quietly across the room, noiselessly and smoothly. His hands were in front of him, palms down, and his eyes were on the scorpion."

"But Juana had the baby in her arms now. She found the puncture with redness starting from it already. She put her lips down over the puncture and sucked hard and spat and sucked again while Coyotito screamed. Kino hovered; he was helpless, he was in the way."

"She looked up at him, her eyes as cold as the eyes of a lioness. This was Juana's first baby - this was nearly everything there was in Juana's world. And Kino saw her determination and the music of the family sounded in his head with a steely tone."

"They came to the place where the brush houses stopped and the city of stone and plaster began, the city of harsh outer walls and inner cool gardens where a little water played and the bougainvillaea crusted the walls with purple and brick-red and white. They heard from the secret gardens the singing of caged birds and heard the splash of cooling water on hot flagstones."

"They could hear the splashing water and the singing of caged birds and the sweep of the long brooms on the flagstones. And they could smell the frying of good bacon from the doctor's house."

"Kino hesitated a moment. This doctor was not of his people. 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. Rage and terror went together. He could kill the doctor more easily than he could talk to him, for all of the doctor's race spoke to all of Kino's race as though they were simple animals."

Vocabulary - Look up the definition of these words:

• covey

• feinted

• scandal

• bougainvillaea

• lymphatic

• indigene

• detachment

• consolation

• avarice

• pulque

• suppliant

• ulcers

• Are there any other words you looked up?

Chapter 2

Questions

Please answer the following questions in complete original sentences.  Use a quote to support your ideas.  These questions will be checked for completion.  Answers that are illegible, incomplete or plagiarised will not be accepted.

1. Why do you think that Steinbeck includes the first section about life in the Gulf waters?

2. The canoe is mentioned quite often in Chapter 2. What do you think it symbolizes?

3. What is the main event in the chapter?

4. Everything goes well on the water. What do you think Steinbeck is trying to tell you?

5. What new ‘song’ is introduced?

6. Compare Kino's reaction to the doctor in Chapter 1 to Juana’s actions in the canoe. What is Steinbeck suggesting about the role of women in their Indigenous culture?

7. For what does Juana pray? Do you think this is odd?

Notes and Quotes

"Canoes preserved for generations by a hard shell-like waterproof plaster whose making was a secret of the fishing people ... and to Kino's canoe, which was the one thing of value he owned in the world. It was very old. Kino's grandfather had brought it from Nayarit, and he had given it to Kino's father, and so it had come to Kino. It was at once property and source of food, for a man with a boat can guarantee a woman that she will eat something. It is the bulwark against starvation. And every year Kino refinished his canoe with the hard shell-like plaster by the secret method that had also come to him from his father. Now he came to the canoe and touched the bow tenderly as he always did."

"The brown algae waved in the gentle currents and the green eel grass swayed and little sea horses clung to its stems. Spotted botete, the poison fish, lay on the bottom in the eel-grass beds, and the bright-coloured swimming crabs scampered over them."

"Although the morning was young, the hazy mirage was up. 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."

"She gathered some brown seaweed and made a flat damp poultice of it, and this she applied to the baby's swollen shoulder, 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. The stomach cramps had not come to Coyotito. Perhaps Juana had sucked out the poison in time, but she had not sucked out her worry over her first-born. She had not prayed directly for the recovery of the baby - she had prayed that they might find a pearl with which to hire the doctor to cure the baby, for the minds of people are as unsubstantial as the mirage of the Gulf."

"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."

Vocabulary - Look up the definition of these words:

• algae

• bulwark

• lateen

• telescopically

• estuary

• gloating

• incandescence

• mangrove

• poultice

• undulating

• Are there any other words you looked up?

Chapter 3

Questions

Please answer the following questions in complete original sentences.  Use a quote to support your ideas.  These questions will be checked for completion.  Answers that are illegible, incomplete or plagiarised will not be accepted.

1. To what does Steinbeck compare the town? Why do you think he makes this comparison?

2. The news of Kino’s pearl spreads quickly. Describe the reaction of 3 people.

   1. Reaction 1

   2. Reaction 2

   3. Reaction 3

3. What would Kino do with his riches?

4. Why does the doctor come? What does he do?

5. What makes Juana want to throw away the pearl?

6. Why does Kino become, “every man’s enemy”?

7. How does Steinbeck compare the news of the pearl to the poisonous sting of the scorpion?

8. What literary device does Steinbeck use to emphasize the townspeople’s desire for the pearl?

9. Why do you think Kino hears, “the music of evil”?

10. How does Kino feel trapped by his own ignorance?

Notes and Quotes

"It came to the priest walking in his garden ... a poor man who is suddenly lucky."

"For there were not many buyers really - there was only one"

"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 poison sacs of the town began to manufacture venom, and the town swelled and puffed with the pressure of it."

"All of these things Kino saw in the lucent pearl"

"For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more."

"For the evil song was in his ears, shrilling against the music of the pearl."

"His people brought him a little supper of chocolate and sweet cakes and fruit, and he stared at the food discontentedly."

"Out in the estuary a tight-woven school of small fishes glittered and broke water to escape a school of great fishes that drove in to eat them. And in the houses the people could hear the swish of the small ones and the bouncing splash of the great ones as the slaughter went on. The dampness arose out of the Gulf and was deposited on bushes and cacti and on little trees in salty drops. And the night mice crept about on the ground and the little night hawks hunted them silently."

Vocabulary - Look up the definition of these words:

• dissembling

• transfigured

• cozened

• lucent

• consecrated

• furtive

• judicious

• subjugation

• almsgiver

• distillate

• precipitated

• disparagement

• benediction

• Are there any other words you looked up?

Chapter 4

Questions

Please answer the following questions in complete original sentences.  Use a quote to support your ideas.  These questions will be checked for completion.  Answers that are illegible, incomplete or plagiarised will not be accepted.

1. In the description of the pearl buyers, what do we find out about the market in Kino's village?

2. What happened when Kino went to sell his pearl?

3. Juan Tomas says to Kino, "You have defied not the pearl buyers, but the whole structure, the whole way of life. I am afraid for you." What does he mean? This question does not require a quote.

4. In earlier times, how did the pearl divers try to get a better price for their pearls and what happened to their effort?

5. How does Steinbeck reinforce the evil of the pearl buyer?

6. How does Steinbeck show us that the pearl buyer is impressed by the size and beauty of the pearl?

7. What might lead Kino and his brother to believe the priest? What might lead them to be suspicious of this comment?

8. Again at the end of the chapter, Juana wants to throw away the pearl because it is evil. What evil thing happened?

9. Steinbeck writes, “[Kino] had lost one world and had not gained another.” Explain what is meant. This question does not require a quote.

Notes and Quotes

"'And so they got such a man,' said Juan Tomás, 'and they pooled the pearls, and they started him off. And he was never heard of again and the pearls were lost. Then they got another man, and they started him off, and he was never heard of again. And so they gave the whole thing up and went back to the old way.'"

"It was against religion, and the Father made that very clear. The loss of the pearl was a punishment visited on those who tried to leave their station."

"His door stood open to the morning, and he hummed under his breath while his right hand practiced legerdemain. He rolled a coin back and forth over his knuckles and made it appear and disappear, made it spin and sparkle"

"But the buyer's eyes had become as steady and cruel and unwinking as a hawk's eyes, while the rest of his face smiled in greeting."

"The coin stumbled over a knuckle and slipped silently into the dealer's lap. And the fingers behind the desk curled into a fist."

"They did not know, it seemed a fine pearl to them, but they had never seen such a pearl before, and surely the dealers knew more about the value of pearls than they. 'And mark this,' they said. 'Those dealers did not discuss these things. Each of the three knew the pearl was valueless.' 'But suppose they had arranged it before?' 'If that is so, then all of us have been cheated all of our lives.'"

Vocabulary - Look up the definition of these words:

• appraiser

• contemptuous

• countenanced

• crafty

• freshet

• legerdemain

• lethargy

• tules

• Are there any other words you looked up?

Chapter 5

Questions

Please answer the following questions in complete original sentences.  Use a quote to support your ideas.  These questions will be checked for completion.  Answers that are illegible, incomplete or plagiarised will not be accepted.

1. Where did Juana go early in the morning?

2. What did Kino do when he figured out where she went?

3. After finding the pearl on the sand, Juana has a second opportunity to throw away the pearl. Why does Juana not get rid of it? What has changed about:

   1. the way Juana refers to the pearl?

   2. Juana’s and Kino’s relationship?

4. What happened to Kino up the beach through the brushline on the path?

5. What happened to their hut while they were away?

6. Why did they leave the village?

7. What is Juan Thomas’ opinion of the pearl at this point?

Notes and Quotes

"This was an evil beyond thinking. 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, for hiding, for attacking, and he lived only to preserve himself and his family."

"Every escape is cut off."

Vocabulary - Look up the definition of these words:

• edifice

• exhilaration

• leprosy

• skirled

• stifling

• Are there any other words you looked up?

Chapter 6

Questions

Please answer the following questions in complete original sentences.  Use a quote to support your ideas.  These questions will be checked for completion.  Answers that are illegible, incomplete or plagiarised will not be accepted.

1. What "songs" does Kino hear on the first part of their journey?

2. What made the music of the pearl become "sinister in his ears, . . . interwoven with the music of evil?"

3. How are the mountain pools places of both life and death for the animals in the area?

4. What happens to Coyotito?

5. What happens to the trackers?

6. What happens to Kino and Juana?

7. What symbolic action do Kino and Juana take at the end of the story?

8. In Chapter 1, when Kino first looks closely at the pearl, he sees a church wedding for Juana and himself. At the end of the novel, what does he see in the pearl?

Notes and Quotes

"Some ancient thing stirred in Kino. Through his fear of dark and the devils that haunt the night, there came a rush of exhilaration; some animal thing was moving in him so that he was cautious and wary and dangerous; some ancient thing out of the past of his people was alive in him. The wind was at his back and the stars guided him."

"He looked into his pearl to find his vision. "When we sell it at last, I will have a rifle," he said, and he looked into 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."

"The little pools were places of life because of the water, and places of killing because of the water, too."

"Kino had a rifle across his arm and Juana carried her shawl like a sack over her shoulder."

"And the pearl was ugly; it was gray, like a malignant growth."

Vocabulary - Look up the definition of these words:

• escarpment

• monolithic

• cleft

• petulant

• germane

• apprehensively

• monotonously

• resinous

• sentinel

• intercession

• malignant

• outcroppings

• threshed

• Are there any other words you looked up?

The Pearl - Essay Assignment

The ending of John Steinbeck’s The Pearl has many interpretations.  Write an original 5 part formal essay in MLA format which answers one of the following prompts:

1. If you assume that Kino throws the pearl back because he feels guilty, what is the lesson that this "parable" is teaching?  What does the pearl symbolize?

2. If you assume that Kino throws the pearl back out of rage and frustration, what is the lesson to be learned?  What does the pearl symbolize?

3. Steinbeck is often associated with a movement in writing called “naturalism.” Naturalist writers believe that man does not have free will; rather, man's fate is determined by large social and economic forces he cannot control. If that is the case, what is the lesson to be learned?

4. In the introduction lesson, we talked about the themes of good and evil, the natural world and the world of man, sacrifice and spirituality.  Explain how the pearl is a symbol which reinforces one of the listed themes.

We will be following a writing process in class.  No PEDs allowed, excluding ARD accommodations.  Please make notes of the following days:

• At the end of class during Lesson 9, your hand written intro paragraph is due.  It will be evaluated (T) and returned to you the next day.

• At the end of class during Lesson 11, your hand written body 1 and body 2 paragraphs are due.  They will be evaluated (T) and returned to you the next day.

• Our calendar has the due date for the final typed essay.  It will be evaluated with C & A.  K and T marks come from your chapter questions, and intro thesis, body 1 & body 2 quotes and analysis respectively.

The Writing page has notes and a planner for essay writing.  The rubric for this assignment is located below.  Please see the calendar for deadlines.  Print your essay at home or in the library and submit it at the beginning of class on the due date.