The Pearl Novel: How Greed Can Deteriorate a Person

Greed can bring out the worst in people. It can turn people into monsters: Greed is the emotion of people being jealous. An example is when people want money; the greed will take over until they cannot take it anymore. They might go and possibly kill the innocent people just so they can get what they want. That is greed and selfishness. Just like in the novel The Pearl by John Steinbeck shows greed in so many different ways. Such as Kino finding “the Pearl of the World” (35).

He then turns into one of the biggest greed monsters ever. He lives in a village with his wife, Juana, and son, Coyotito. He is happy and he is happy being a fisherman. They live in the poor part of the village due to the color of their skin. John Steinbeck shows how greed can go from bad to worse through the character of Kino.

When Kino finds the pearl things just start going bad from bad to worse.

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Kino needs the pearl because a scorpion stings Coyotito. This makes Juana want to go to the Doctor, and this causes Kino to seek the pearl. All the village people know the doctor would not come but Juana says, “Then we’ll go to him.”(7). Once the pearl is found and the doctor hears about it he goes to see Kino. Claims to help Coyotito but really poisons him. He only poisons him so he can have money from the pearl. This just shows how he would do anything to get money.

He is that greedy. He ends up going back to help Coyotito and gives him the antidote. Hearing about the pearl, The priest also shows up and talks to Kino about what he is going to do with the money and talks Kino into getting married and getting Coyotito brought into the church, he only does that because he wants money for the church. If he really wanted to have Kino and Juana become married, he would have visited before he found the pearl. Kino is naïve; he does not see that all The Doctor and The Priest want is money. The pearl is slowly blinding Kino. Kino is overcome by greed he just wants, wants, and wants. Kino is slowly losing everything that made him so happy at first.

Later in the story, Kino has become completely blinded by the greed the pearl has caused him. Kino has now lost everything that has made him happy; he is so over come with greed that he beats Juana when she tries to get rid of it. The only reason she attempts to get rid of it, is that she sees the change in him. Now Kino has decided it is time to sell the pearl. He goes to find the pearl buyer who he finds in a dark room flipping a coin between his fingers “He rolled a coin back fan forth over his knuckles and made it appear and dissapear, made it spin and sparkle.the coin winked into sight and as quickly slipped out of sight, and the man did not even watch his own performance.”(48). This quote is significant because it shows the pearl buyer is sneaky by nature Kino does not even realize how sneaky he is. The buyer did not offer him enough money. Kino is so greedy he would not settle for anything less then what he thought it should be. The pearl buyer told Kino that the pearl was worthless but Kino realizes it is not since everyone wants the pearl. The priest gives his yearly sermon about if one is born poor then they cannot work hard to get rich. If one born poor then the person is poor for life. To them that is how it was because they could not read so they had to believe what the priest said. This shows greed because he would not give this sermon yearly if he did not think it was important, and he would not give this sermon if he thought poor people could get rich because it would take away from his money and he is very greedy. Greed has slowly over come everyone in the village, especially the rich part of town.

Since Kino is greedy and the pearl buyer did not offer him enough money, Kino decided to go to the capitol to sell the pearl. Therefore, he wants to get a fair price on it. On their way to the capitol, they begin to get tracked. The trackers followed them everywhere they went and Kino say to Juana “You will put the little one in more danger if you go with me.”(77 ). They hike up into mountains, trying to get away from the trackers Kino realizes what he must do to keep him and his family alive. He has finally realized what the pearl has done to him. Kino knows he must kill the trackers. He once again is overcome by greed, gets the strength within himself to go kill the trackers, so he climbs down the mountain and pounces when the hunter shoot his gun. He does not realize it then but the hunter killed the baby. Kino ends up killing all of the trackers and begins to realize how the pearl has hurt him.

John Steinbeck shows how greed can deteriorate through out Kinos’character in so many ways. Greed can seriously make you lose sight of everything that one had once had or loved and people get what they wanted and in the people become so disappointed. John Steinbeck wrote a very interesting book that has many examples of greed and how greed takes over people’s lives. Greed really does do a person bad. It turns people into monsters, another example of greed is sometimes someone gets something that someone wants and it drives them crazy enough that eventually they feel like they have to take it because they wanted it so they take it without them knowing and then do not tell anyone that it was taken. Greed is a very common emotion for people to feel everyone feels it so people know how it feels. Everyone has some kind of experience with the feeling of greed, in some form, and knows how it feels.

Works cited

1. Steinbeck, J. (1947). The Pearl. Viking Press.
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3. Demott, R. (1977). Of Men and Their Making: The Non-Fiction of John Steinbeck. Michigan Quarterly Review, 16(4), 311-328.
4. DeMott, R. (1995). John Steinbeck and the Critics. University of New Mexico Press.
5. Gregg, R. (2014). Steinbeck's "The Pearl" and the American Dream. American Literary Realism, 46(2), 123-135.
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10. Parini, J. (1995). John Steinbeck: A Biography. Macmillan.