Compiled by: Wilhelm P.

Hango <Extreme Tutorial Centre>

SHORT ANSWER GUIDE QUESTIONS- The Pearl

# Chapter 1

1. What in general happens in the first chapter?

- In the town of La Paz, lived Kino, Juana and their infant son, Coyotito, live in a modest brush
house by the sea. One fine morning, a scorpion stung Coyotito. Hoping to protect their son,
Kino and Juana rush him to the doctor in town. However, the doctor turned away them
because they are poor natives who cannot pay enough.

2. Notice that the townspeople follow Kino. What does tell you?

- The neighbours are curious and as well interested in Kino’s situation.

3. Why did the doctor refuse to treat Coyotito?

- The doctor refuses to treat Coyotito because Kino and Juana are poor and they didn’t
have enough money to pay him, but instead offering him eight pearls.

4. What does that tell you about the doctor’s personality?

- From the story, the doctor represents the colonial attitudes that oppress Kino’s people,
because he symbolizes the arrogance, greed, and condescension towards the native. He has
no interest in Kino’s people, but rather to make money in his human values.

5. What are the conflicts in the story so far?

- The conflicts strikes when Kino and Juana are trying to ask help from the doctor, but
he refuses to help, due to Kino is poor and doesn’t have enough money to pay.

6. What is the Song of the Family?

- Throughout the novel, Kino has a particularly powerful feelings or instinct that he
hears a song in his head that correspond to that feeling. The Song of the Family
represents when he is happy with his family that made him felt warmth and secured
with his family behind him.

7. What is the Song of Evil? When does it first appear?

- The Song of Evil is the music of enemy of any foe of the family, a savage, dangerous,
malice and dishonesty that Kino senses in Chapter 1.

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# Chapter 2

1. Why did Steinbeck include the first section about the life in the Gulf waters?

- Steinbeck included the idea about the life in Gulf waters, because to make us
understand and know better about the people in village and how they reacted.

2. The canoe is mentioned quite often. Is it a symbol for something?

- The canoe was one thing of value that Kino owned in the world. It is a canoe that Kino’s
father grandfather bought it from Nayarit and passed down to his father and him. It
symbolizes the source of food, for a man with a boat guarantee a woman that she will eat
something as well as it symbolizes their ways of life.

3. What is the main event of this chapter?

- One fine morning, Kino and Juana slid off the shore to finds pearls. After a while that they’re
settled at the sea, Kino sees one huge oyster, slightly opened, along on an overhang. Then by
a heavy rhythm, he opens it. It turned out to be the greatest pearl in the world, perfect as a
moon, large as a sea-gull’s egg that it captured the light and refined.

4. Do you think it is coincidence that everything goes well on the water, or Steinbeck is trying
to show something?

- Steinbeck is trying to show destruction will begin once Kino finds that pearl. Steinbeck is
putting the action of the story into full motion, in a sense with the discovery of that pearl.

5. To what new Song are we introduced?

-The new song that we were introduced was the Song of the Pearl That Might Be, for every
shell thrown in the basket might contain a pearl and Song of the Undersea that shows
indicates a melody of the pearl.

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# Chapter 3

1. To what does Steinbeck compare the town?

- He compares the town as a colonial animal, because a town has a nervous system and a
head, shoulders and feet. A town is a thing separate from all other towns, so that there are
no two towns alike and it has a whole emotion. While, the news seems to travel through a
town so fast, which Steinbeck compares it with women and small children where the news
travel faster than women can call it over the fences or move faster small boys can scramble
and dart to tell it.

2. The news of Kino’s pearl spread quickly across town. What did each person think of when
he heard it?

-The news of Kino’s pearl travels fast across town. Unfortunately, everyone is self-preserving:
the priest hears about the pearl and thinks about repairing the church, the shopkeepers think
about the clothes they could sell to Kino and as well as the doctor who knew that Kino was
his client before, thinking about Paris and a bottle of wine.

3. What would Kino do with his riches?

- He says that he’s going to marry Juana in the church- dressed in new white clothes and
wear new shoes. He’s going to buy a new harpoon of iron with a ring in the end of the shaft
and buy a rifle. Not only, he wants Coyotito to go to school and get educated.

4. Why does the doctor come? What does he do?

- The doctor came because he sees that Kino has found the Pearl of the World that he could
really make use of the pearl such as thinking about Paris and a fine dining. When the doctor
arrived at the brush house, he counters and lies to Kino and Juana about Coyotito’s condition
by giving Coyotito a mysterious capsule that contains poison and then give an antidote to
cure, so that he would be able to ask Kino about keeping the pearl.

5. What bad thing happened to make Juana want to throw away the pearl?

- Juana sees that the pearl is like a evil plague that it will bring no good to the their family,
but will destroy their entire family such as Coyotito getting worse and Kino being attacked.
Not only, it will make everyone self-preserving and selfish towards each other.

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# Chapter 4

1. In the description of the pearl buyers, what do we find about the market in Kino’s village?

-The market is a self-regulating system and free market capitalism that proved too costly for
the merchants that they can agree on a price that is below the pearl’s actual value. The pearl
buyers get together and set a low price of the pearl and saying that the pearl is too big and
wasn’t valuable, so that they could cheat Kino.

2. What happened when Kino went to sell his pearl?

-The pearl buyer told Kino that the pearl is too big and odd, but it’s not a valuable pearl. The
main buyer offered Kino 1,000 pesos. When Kino disagreed, three other buyers were brought
in; each one said it was of little value. It is made obvious to the Kino that the buyers had
arranged their prices earlier and they were about to cheat off Kino. Then, Kino says he will go
to the capital instead of dealing with these buyers.

3. Juan Tomas says to Kino, “You have defied not the pearl buyers, but the whole structure,
the whole way of life. I am afraid for you.” What does he mean?

- No one of the village men had ever gone against the buyers. No one had "taken on city hall,"
so-to-speak. It was not Kino's place to try to do better. He was just a lowly village man; that
was his station in life. Now, he was trying to improve his station and would have to have a
major conflict in order to do so. Juan Tomas thinks this goes against the laws of nature and
that bad things happen when you go against the laws of nature. As I heard it put once, "Little
fish don't eat big fish."

4. Again at the end of the chapter, Juana wants to throw away the pearl because it is evil.
What evil thing happened?

- At night when Kino sits awake to protect his pearl, suddenly he senses an evil presence. He
rises and search for the knife and moves toward the doorway. From darkness, a man assaults
him and he was bloodied and cut with his clothes torn and lay down half conscious. Without
waiting, Juana helps Kino cleans his wounds and begs him in desperation to throw the evil
pearl, but Kino insisted.

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# Chapter 5

1. Where did Juana go early in the morning?

-Early morning, Juana quietly sneaks out to the shore and tries to throw the pearl into the
sea.

2. What did Kino do when he figured out where she went?

- When Kino awakes and barely saw Juana’s shadow, he follows her towards the shore.
When he saw Juana with the pearl, he grabs the pearl away from her and punches her in the
face and kicks her in the side. With rage and anger, he hisses and left without caring.

3. What happened to Kino up the beach through the brush line on the path?

- Kino was assaulted by a group of men whom Juana refers them as “ the dark ones” or the
trackers. They attacked him aggressively. Then Kino drives his knife into one of them.

4. What happened to their hut while they were away?

- As Kino arrives in the neighborhood with anger that someone has punched a large hole in
his canoe, he notices flames and realizes that his house is burning down.

5. Why did they leave the village?

- Kino, Juana, along with Coyotito must leave village to the north is because; Kino committed
a crime of killing a man that he was trying to defend himself and the search party will come
search for him eventually, because the authorities won’t believe nor help him anyhow.

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# Chapter 6

1. What “songs” does Kino hear on the first part of their journey?

- Kino heard the music of the pearl in his head and the quiet melody of the family underlay it.

2. What made their music of the pearl become “sinister in his ears.. interwoven with the
music of evil”?

-The music of the pearl had become sinister in Kino’s ears when Kino brought out the pearl
and try to find his vision. When he glazes the pearl, he thinks of having a rifle, but what he
saw was only a huddled dark body on the ground with shining blood dripping from its throat.
He then thinks of getting married in the church, but it the pearl, he saw Juana with her
beaten face crawling home through the night. Kino lasts to imagine Coyotito going to school,
and there in the pearl shows Coyotito’s face, thick and feverish from the medicine.

3. What happens to Coyotito?

-At the middle of the night when Kino is trying to kill the trackers, suddenly, Coyotito cries out
that accidentally wakes one of the sleeping trackers. At first, they thought it could be the cry
of the coyote, however, the watchmen shoots in the direction of the cry, which the bullet hits
and kills Coyotito.

4. What happens to the trackers?

- Kino confronts the trackers, stabbing the watchmen and seizing the rifle. Knocking one of
the other men out with a fierce blow and he watches as the last man attempts to move up
the cliff. When the man tries to move, then Kino kills him with a shot between his eyes.

5. What happens to Kino and Juana?

- After mourning the death of Coyotito, the next day Kino and Juana walk along the village of
La Paz dazedly and wordlessly, carrying Coyotito’s corpse in a sack slung over her shoulder.
Then, they decided to throw away the pearl.

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6. What do they do with the pearl?

- By the edge of the estuary with no words left out, Kino stops and pulls the pearl of out his
pocket, stares carefully with a flood of evil memories that destroys him and his family. He
holds the pearl out in front of him and decided to throw it away into the sea.

7. What does the return of Kino and Juana and their throwing away the pearl means
symbolically?

- It means that Kino finally sees how the pearl had devastated him and his family. He finally
realizes what Juana had been telling him for the whole time, that he refuses to listen. At last,
he decided to throw away the pearl to as well to throw away all the darkness and the song of
evil from his life. It also symbolizes in Kino’s and Juana’s situation that their brightest days are
behind them, and a dark patch of their own making lies ahead.