The Pearl

Throughout the novella, Steinbeck explores the various mechanisms and strategies Europeans colonists and their allies used to subjugate and exploit Indigenous people like Kino. Though colonial forces are not the only ones who seek to dispossess Kino of the pearl, they do pose one of the most serious threats.

Steinbeck presents religion as one such tool, though unlike some of the others, religion functions (in this setting) on a voluntary, persuasive basis. Among other things, Kino and Juana plan to marry in the Catholic Church and have Coyotito baptized with the money they expect from selling the pearl. They are not unique in their high regard for the Church, as discussions among their neighbors about what they would do with the pearl demonstrate: One man says that he would give the pearl to the Pope, while another says that he would buy Masses for the souls of his family for the next 1,000 years. Besides gathering money from its followers; the Church uses these characters’ faith and goodwill to make them submissive to colonial powers. When Kino and Juan Tomás discuss earlier attempts to sell pearls directly instead of to the pearl dealers, they recall the priest’s teaching that such behavior was “against religion” since it encouraged them “to leave their station” (50-51). In this way, the settlers use religion to create a pliable workforce they can easily exploit. Significantly, religion is the one form of oppression Kino does not recognize as such, showing its insidious nature.

A second form of oppression involves economic manipulation. This is accomplished by fixing the market for pearls so that there is only one buyer (though there are several pearl dealers in the office to maintain the illusion of competition), allowing the pearl dealers to pay much less than the pearls are worth. Kino and his peers sometimes sense that they are being cheated, but they have no reference point to recognize the extent to which their work is undervalued. Compounding the problem is the divers’ poverty, which traps them in a vicious cycle. Lacking the necessary funds to learn to read and write or educate their children, they remain at the mercy of the colonists, who can deceive them without threat of exposure, as when the doctor makes the dubious claim that scorpion poisoning sometimes worsens after apparently healing. As Kino reasons, “[H]e could not take the chance of pitting his certain ignorance against this man’s possible knowledge” (36). When Kino plans to send Coyotito to school, he is hoping to make him into an advocate who can identify and counter the colonists’ economic, legal, and other abuses.

When religious and economic manipulation fall short in efforts to take the pearl from Kino, his adversaries resort to a third mechanism: physical violence. On this front, the colonists maintain their advantage through the use of advanced weaponry. The narrator implies that the threat of physical violence supports everything else the colonists do from the moment they arrived in the Americas “with argument and authority and gunpowder to back up both” (51). In wishing to purchase a rifle with the proceeds from the sale of the pearl, Kino therefore does not simply seek a tool for hunting; he wants to even the odds, depriving the colonists of their technological advantage. Indeed, the success of Kino’s attack on the hunters at the novella’s climax hinges on the theft of the gun one of them carries, which Kino then uses to shoot another hunter. His victory is short-lived, however, as he soon realizes that his son, Coyotito, was killed and that no amount of additional violence can bring him back.

Kino’s failed attempts to turn the pearl to his advantage demonstrate the structural inequalities that reinforce and maintain the system of colonial oppression. As a parable, many of the same principles are applicable to other contexts, such as the American Dream. What sometimes seems to be a story of fate or luck, as Kino may interpret it, is in fact a story of human brutality.