The Pearl

You have a choice between receiving a pearl that has the potential of being sold for a lot of money, but also the potential to ruin your life or the choice of not getting the opportunity to get the pearl and the money, but the insurance of no change in your life. Which do you choose? The Pearl by John Steinbeck is a novella about how small choices can have big outcomes, some better than others. Several times in The Pearl, Kino has a choice of throwing the pearl away, and every time he keeps it, he gives up something else more important.

By keeping the pearl, Kino gave up his own, and his family’s privacy and old life. “The doctor looked surprised. ‘I had not heard of it. Do you keep this pearl in a safe place? Perhaps you would like me to put it in my safe?’" (Steinbeck 18). As soon as the doctor heard of the pearl, he was interested in where Kino kept it because he wanted the pearl so he could make money. The citizens of La Paz all knew of the great value the pearl possessed. This made Kino not the only one wanted to sell the pearl at a high price at a high price. The pearl brought a lot of bad attention to Kino changing the way Kino and his

“He saw a little glow ahead of him, and then without interval a tall flame leaped up in the dark with a crackling roar, and a tall edifice of fire lighted the pathway. Kino broke into a run; it was his brush house, he knew” (33). The majority of La Paz was desperate to have Kino’s pearl in their possession. They wanted it so badly that they were not even afraid of destroying Kino’s resources which could potentially kill him. Kino’s incentive of making his family’s future better was hurting his family more than it was helping. Kino was putting his family’s life at risk by keeping a small little pearl. Kino should have realized that the life of his baby and wife were way more important than a