The Pearl by John Steinbeck

The Pearl is one of John Steinbeck's shortest books and I have to say not one of his best. Frankly not one of the girls in our club had one good thing to say about it. Although I think that is was very interesting about the music in the book. The main character Kino talks about having music in his blood.

The book first starts out with him hearing music and thinking about music. But not as a musician; no more as someone who's whole life just is music. There is a song he hears when he finds something. There is a song of the pearl. There is even a time when hearing a song in his head warns him of danger.

The rest of the book shows all the problems that occur after Kino finds a "pearl of great price". Greedy traders who try to cheat Kino out of a good deal, a wicked doctor who charges his patients so much that they can't even afford to see him, and a tragic ending where we see that not all books have a happy ending and sometimes even the most innocent get hurt unjustly.

All of the girls agreed that the trouble with the book was the message it was portraying. Mr. Steinbeck made everyone in the village where Kino lived believe that the pearl was the cause for all his trouble. When really it was the greed in the village that was causing the problems.

Even though no one liked the book...(not even me the writer of this review), I think it showed us something about the world. We might not appreciate it now, but I think as we get older we will see more of the problems that we saw in this book.

Now that I think of it, maybe it wasn't the authors fault for writing something that didn't portray the morals we believe in. Maybe we were just so used to the classics, and the "Happily Ever After's" that we forgot that fictional books, doesn't always mean fairy tales. After all, he was just writing about the world, the world who blames their problems on other people, things, and circumstances, or in this case a pearl.

In the end to just get rid of the one thing that might have made things better for you if you just had just removed yourself from the presence of the people who were bringing you down. But lucky for us, we get second chances to recognize where we went wrong and (if we can), but if we can't, at least we'll know what to do next time. We aren't condemed by our author as Kino was...on the contrary, He is the one who gives us the second, third, 100th chances that we need.

Thank you for reading.



Written & Submitted by: Tiffani-Joi