Avail Yourself A Pérola Scripted By John Steinbeck Provided As Softcover

esa perla ha llegado a ser mi alma, dice Kino, Si me desprendo de ella, pierdo mi alma,

Qué hermoso libro, Una historia sencilla, narrada en forma clara, sin rodeos ni términos difíciles, Steinbeck logra atraparme siempre con sus libros, Al igual que como con "De Ratones y Hombres", "La Perla" nos muestra una historia en donde apreciamos la naturaleza humana al desnudo, las emociones a flor de piel en situaciones límites.

No he leído "Las Uvas de la Ira" ni "Al Este del Edén", pero siento que Steinbeck es poderoso en este tipo de novelas cortas.
En este libro todo gira alrededor de esa perla, cuya "canción", como él la denomina, comienza a infectar el alma de Kino.

Ese pescador afortunado afortunado por el descubrimiento de la gema que busca la felicidad a partir de él, Kino y Juana junto con Coyotito emprenden una travesía al estilo Sam y Frodo con una perla en vez de un anillo, pero no hacen faltainterminables páginas para describir la travesía, no hace falta describir enredos agotadores para lograr un efecto maravilloso en el lector.

Tan sólo un objeto, una perla, que nos pregunta a todos, al narrador, los personajes y al lector: tú, qué harías ante una oportunidad así
Para Kino es una bendición, para Juana, una maldición y para nosotros, los lectores, una maravillosa historia.
This is the first Steinbeck's book I've read, though it won't be the last, despite the horrible first impression, I hate everything in this book from it's anticlimactic writing to its incommodious characters, There is nothing worth praise in here, After I reached the end, I've been so angry and almost ready to punch something,

Poor lowclass man, living with his wife and their baby, finds a giant pearl, decides to sell it and then use the money to buy medicine for his child, who just got bitten by a scorpion.
The selling part didn't go well, shit gets real, people die without any real purpose and it all happens in aboutpages, In between, there are large amounts of racism, bigotry, and misogyny,

The reason bad things happen to this poor family is that they wanted a better life and the guy didn't want to let anyone stop him from getting it.
Basically, his wife is superstitious, tells him the pearl is evil, he doesn't listen, so tragedy happens, Steinbeck is actually telling us to be satisfied with what we are and not try seeking better options because we're inevitably going to fail in the end.
Also, he justifies when a husband beats his wife and she obediently suffers because HE'S A MAN AND HE KNOWS BEST, Maybe I should've tried more to read between lines but this was too much for me, Try and see it for yourself,

The narrator literally has no personality, so I don't know how I'm supposed to empathize with any of his struggles, He had some abrupt reactions, but when it comes to recognizable emotions he's pretty blank, I hate it when I can't connect to the main characters or ANY of the characters, And their difficulties were severe, Baseada num conto popular mexicano, "A Pérola" constitui uma inesquecível parábola poética sobre as grandezas e as misérias do mundo tão contraditório em que vivemos.
É, assim, a história comovente de uma pérola enorme, de como foi descoberta e de como se perdeu levando com ela os sonhos bons e maus que representava, mas é também a história de uma família e da solidariedade especial entre uma mulher, um pobre pescador índio e o filho de ambos.
For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more,

I love short Steinbeck novels, They tend towards brevity while being profuse in beauty, often written in idyllic tones that contrast with the darkness inside them, The Pearl is such a novel, a condensed tale warning against greed and materialism and a critical look at colonialism that is quite deeply moving.
When a poor pearl diver discovers a giant pearl, dubbed the Pearl of the World, he thinks his luck is about to change.
However, the innocence of his life becomes marred as finds that great wealth does not beget happiness but rather greed and sorrow as he must constantly defend his wealth.
It becomes a parable of sorts, one that reminds us how often our possessions come to possess us and not the other way around.


Luck, you see, brings bitter friends,

Originally began as a movie script, Steinbeck published this as a short story under the title The Pearl of the World inbefore expanding it to the novella length a few years later.
Perhaps from that, there is a cinematic quality to the narrative here that really pulls you along, Set on the coast of the Gulf of California, which Steinbeck would later write about in sitelinkThe Log from the Sea of Cortez detailing aexpedition with his friend, marine biologist Ed Ricketts who is the basis for Doc in sitelinkCannery Row, Steinbeck is at home in his themes of good natured people living in poverty and the gatekeeping of society that ensures they stay this way.
In many ways, The Pearl can be read as a parable of colonialism or how for the poor and colonized any attempt to rise above their status is swiftly, and often violently, dealt with.
When Kino has possession of the pearl and upward mobility, the plans and evils of men conspire to take it from him and we see how his poverty of spirit would be required for the wealth of materialism something later expanded upon in sitelinkThe Winter of Our Discontent.


If this story is a parable, perhaps everyone takes his own meaning from it and reads his own life into it.


This book has all the elements of a great tale, one that feels much older than it actually is, as if it has been a moral parable passed down for generations.
There is the whole man vs nature with the scorpion attack at the beginning, man vs man with the people coming to take the pearl away, and man vs himself as Kinos ambitions become an increased zeal to obtain wealth from the pearl.
Calling it the Pearl of the World initially seems a commentary on its great size, but as the story progresses we see how it is much more abstract than that and a commentary on the universal nature of greed and violence in the name of wealth.
Steinbeck does well to keep everything pointed and direct, but still vague enough to feel like a moral lesson that can be applied in many ways.
The ending leaves much open and I sort of love that,

This is a nice little book, rather devastating as short Steinbecks tend to be, but quite powerful and beautiful all the same.
I read this originally back as a high school freshman and this is a good one for a classroom,

./ من اروع ما فرأت هل كانت اللؤلؤة تحمل اغنية الشيطان كما عبر عنها المؤلف.
الفقير الصياد الباحث عن الآليء الذي لا يملك علاج ابنه يعثر على لؤلؤة وجد فيها فرصته وفرصة ابنه في حياة حريمه وأهمها التعليم وإعلان زواجه في الكنيسة.
فجأة زاره القس والطبيب الذي رفض علاج ابنه تغيرت نظرة الناس له.
وأكنه من الهنود سكان المكسيك الأصليين الذين منذ ٤٠٠ عاما تعودوا على الطاعه فهذا هو نظام الحياة وتآمروا عليه بسعر اللؤلؤة ولكنه تمرد وأعلن هدم الطاعه.
أراد ان يتشبث بحقك في حياة كريمة رغم محاولة زوجته التخلص منها بعد محاولات لسرقتها ودفاع مستميت من زوجها.
صراع انساني داخلي عميق بين التطلع للمستقبل الغامض او الرضى والقناعة بحياته البسيطة.
ما عجبني في الرواية ان المؤلف يقوم بوصف دقيق للأماكن والجو السائد كإنه يعد مسرحا وعليك الانتظار لتشاهد الحدث الكبير
اعتقد انها تستحق اكثر من ٥ نجمات. John Steinbeck is as diverse as his literature, Nonetheless, there is a common denominator in the American author's charming writing: the story is always rooted in the orality of the tales and legends that the ancients transmit over time to new generations so that they never forget they came.
Here he is inspired by a traditional Mexican story,
This little parable can be read in one go, as the writing is rich and limpid, The themes dear to the author and familiar to many of these novels are still omnipresent,
Steinbeck portrays misery to raise awareness of unhappy lives, but above all, he denounces pearl fishers' living conditions, exploited and enslaved by the merchants of precious stones.

He denounces protests repeatedly against the social divide and the painful and hopeless misery it generates,
What brings life to life are dreams and flourishing imagination, But the goals of the poor are systematically trampled on by the most powerful,
Despite a realistic but very pessimistic vision of society, all of Steinbeck's finesse illuminates The Pearl, whose melancholic music had permanently embedded in my memory.
This is a deceptively simple Mexican fable, It's written by Steinbeck, so of course, it's written beautifully, The story is pretty straightforwardpoor, uneducated peasant finds monster pearl and now has everything previously denied to him within his grasp, Or does he

SPOILERS AHEAD

Kino is happy despite his poverty and his low position on the social scale.
He and the other natives in his village are under the control of the wealthy Spanish people who have taken up residence in the nicer part of town.
The wealthy Spanish people live comfortably in their brick and plaster houses, exercising an iron control over the laws and economics of the town, while Kino and his ilk live in brush huts.
Kino, however, is happily married to Juana, and they are both content in their relationship and with their beloved firstborn son, Coyotito, The serpent enters their tropical Eden in the form of a scorpion that stings the babya possible death sentence, When the Spanish doctor refuses to treat him because of their poverty, Kino goes pearldiving, laboring under tremendous emotional agony, He finds a large, obviously old oyster, and it yields a magnificent pearlthe pearl of the world, It is at this moment, when Fate drops a fortune into Kino's hands, that his real troubles begin,

Okay, so as we follow Kino through the increasing complexity of the problems that develop as a result of his ownership of this pearl, many issues are raised.
What, exactly, is Steinbeck saying The old adage, "Be careful what you wish for," comes to mind, and is certainly apropos, I have read that some see this as a critique of capitalism and the American Dream, Certainly Kino seems to have achieved the American Dream when that pearl drops into his hand, But that dream, his good fortune, is ruthlessly hunted and destroyed, piece by piece, by faceless individuals who could be anyonehis friends, his neighbors, or the greedy members of the wealthy community.
So Steinbeck could be saying that the American Dream is a myth, that the system is stacked against those who need it the most.
What about capitalism Under the principles of capitalism, Kino should have been rewarded for bringing such a rare, desirable object into the marketplace.
Instead, it is treated with contempt by those who should have been most interested in acquiring it, In reality, true capitalism was never really at play, There was no competition the market was controlled by one person, So is Steinbeck saying that capitalism, too, is a myth That human corruption will always interfere with the free and unimpeded flow of the marketplace

Greed is condemned in all forms, and everyone seems to feel it.
After the news of Kino's find circulates, various people all start calculating how his profits can personally affect them, The doctor belatedly hurries to the side of the baby, eager to charge exorbitant fees for his assistance the priest begins to mull pressuring Kino to donate to the church for repairs and even the town beggars begin to anticipate Kino's generosity to them.
But is Kino guilty of greed, as well Is he reaching for too much, demanding too much, of life He is certainly punished for attempting to have more.


I teach my students that in order to determine the themes of a text, you look at what happens to the main characters.
By any interpretation, the themes of this story are bleak, Either Kino allows the pearl to give him delusions of grandeur that cause him to attempt to fly too close to the sun, and, like Icarus, tumble to his doom, or Kino is an example of how

a poor, uneducated person has no chance of prevailing against the system and bettering his life in any way.
Not only will he not be permitted to move up, but he will be severely punished for the attempt,

I personally believe it is the latter theme that is best supported by the text, but I don't believe it is a true statement about the condition of the American Dream in our country today.
While breaking free of poverty is difficult to do and is a complex issue, I do not believe that people attempting to do so are faced with certain defeat, as Kino was.
There are people who accomplish it, so it is doable,

Steinbeck, like Charles Dickens, used his writing to fight fiercely for the rights of the poor and downtrodden, and I think that the enduring nature of their works are a testament to how very effective they were.
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