"The Pearl" by John Steinbeck. About the book and the use of symbolism.

Authors often write about how they are feeling, or try to send messages through their writing. Although on occasion it is very obvious, sometimes it isn't and their thoughts are just guessed at. The writer's use symbols to stand for what they are really feeling or thinking, that's to leave some of the story to the reader's own mind. In John Steinbeck's, The Pearl a pearl was one of the major symbols used in the book.

In The Pearl one of the main characters in the book is Kino, a poor pearl diver who tries to support his family and wants to send his son to a good school so that he could learn how to read. His son became sick one day, and he went diver and he found a pearl. A very large pearl called "The Pearl of the World". The pearl represents evil and corruption.

Ocean Pearl

UK Edition of The Pearl

Grave site of John Steinbeck and family

The pearl brings nothing but despair to Kino's family. People tried to kill them, cheat them out of the money they deserved, and their own townspeople tried to steal the pearl from him. Also the pearl caused his son's death, when people shot into the cave they were hiding in, it also killed a lot of strangers because Kino killed them when they were trying to kill his family and get the pearl. All the pearl did was cause people to go more money hungry then they were already. Without the existence of the pearl, the townspeople wouldn't try to kill Kino's family and burn his house down. This is an important symbol because it represents human nature is always the way it is, but it changes when jealousy sets in. With no pearl, no one would want it, and everyone would live, albeit not to happy, but they...