The Pearl Tragic Events

The Pearl by John Steinbeck, is about a man named Kino and his family. Kino has a son and a wife. Toward the beginning of the story Kino’s child is stung by a scorpion; Kino and his wife rush him to the nearest doctor, but the doctor refuses to help. Kino’s family is very poor and the doctor wanted to be compensated for his help. Kino has very little money so he cannot pay the doctor. After this Kino goes diving for pearls. On one of these dives he finds a very large and aesthetically pleasing pearl. Kino and his wife believe that they are lucky, but this thought changes when a string of unfortunate events occur; they then realize how the pearl is bringing trouble to them. Finding the great Pearl was not a stroke of good luck for Kino.
The pearl brings several tragic events into Kino’s life. The first event to occur is when an affiliate of a doctor invaded Kino’s house. The man injured Kino and tried to steal the pearl. “He felt cloth, struck at it with his knife and missed, and struck again and felt his knife go through cloth, and then his head crashed with lightning and exploded with pain” (37). Kino is awake and he feels the cloth of the intruder. Kino struck the man with his knife; he then saw the head of the man strike the ground.
Many of these conflicts are because people want Kino’s pearl for their own benefit. For example, most of the people in Kino’s town would have never respected him or his family. Even people such as priests wouldn’t have visited Kino before he found the pearl. “The priest said, “It is pleasant to see that your first thoughts are good thoughts. God bless you, my children.”” (28). The excerpt supports the argument because the priest would not have visited Kino before, and he especially wouldn’t have said what he did. This is an example of how the pearl is making people care about Kino more, not necessarily in a good way, but they value his