Kino's Confrontational Nature

Generally, husbands and wives make decisions together. In the novella The Pearl, by John Steinbeck, however, this is not the case. The protagonist, Kino has more say in the decisions for his family than his wife, Juana. Their child, Coyotito gets stung by a scorpion, so Kino decides to take measures to ensure his son’s safety. On his journey, Kino and Juana come across big dangers and troubles which leads to destruction in their family. Although Kino tries to be brave and help his son, his failure to listen to others and his confrontational nature, leads him to do the complete opposite of what he intended. Throughout the novella, Kino is a very brave person. Kino is fearless when he decides to go pearl diving which is extremely dangerous. He did this so that he can get a pearl which could genuinely help his son get better since the pearl is valuable and could
Kino is confrontational when he gets a bad offer for his pearl. “Kino’s face grew dark and dangerous. ‘It is worth fifty thousand,’ he said, ‘You know it. You want to cheat me”” (Steinbeck 50). This shows that Kino is argumentative because when he didn’t get the offer that he wanted, he dealt with the situation in an aggressive way. He did this by basically screaming at the pearl buyer to try and get his way. Another time Kino expressed this trait was when the doctor said that he would not treat his son Coyotito. Kino punched the doctor’s gate in anger. “Then, without warning, he struck the gate a crushing blow with his fist,” (Steinbeck 12). This quote demonstrates that Kino is confrontational because when the doctor’s servant said that the doctor was unable to help Kino’s son, kino dealt with it in a aggressive way by punching the gate instead of dealing with it better. This hostile nature continues to worsen as the story continues, and as a result, Kino’s son doesn’t get help from his