quotes from the pearl by john steinbeck with page numbers

What is valuable to one man (the canoe to Kino) may not seem valuable to another. The Pearl reveals the slipperiness of value and evaluation: often, value is assessed by those who are already wealthy and powerful. Unlike the pearl, whose sole function is to be possessed and looked at and whose value is assigned (arbitrarily) by people in power, the canoe is valuable because of its functionality and tradition, and its association with the dignity of work. It seems, therefore, that Kino values things that can help him provide him for his family.

Kino’s canoe, on the other hand, is described as the “one thing of value he owned in the world.” Kino prizes his canoe not as a possession but as a “source of food,” a tool that allows him to fish and dive for pearls. As the narrator describes, a pearl forms by a natural “accident”: “a grain of sand could lie in the folds of muscle and irritate the flesh until in self-protection the flesh coated the grain with a layer of smooth cement.” Moreover, the determination of the pearl’s value has little to do with anything inherent to the object itself. That the pearl-dealers then so underestimate the price of the pearl reveals how distant the monetary worth of something can be from its perceived value, and how much value is determined by those in power. The value of the pearl, for example, requires reassessment throughout the novel: at the moment of its discovery, it seems to be worth Coyotito’s life. The value and evaluation of material entities is a central theme in The Pearl.

Quotes from the pearl by john steinbeck with page numbers