The Pearl Quote Analysis

“ The acquisition of wealth is a work of great labor; its possession, a source of continual fear; its loss, of excessive grief.” This quote can apply in our lives and even some books we read like The Pearl. In the book, The Pearl, the wealth of Kino and his family is the pearl they find. It’s possession caused them great fear and labor from the beginning of the book, and it caused them grief towards the end. This quote applies to all parts of the book, and we will examine into all of the chapters to take a closer look.

“The acquisition of wealth is a work of great labor.” The first part of this quote unquestionably applies to The Pearl. In The Pearl, Kino has a hard time to keep the pearl in his possession. The pearl is his wealth and people

This part of the quote applies to The Pearl without doubt. In the beginning of The Pearl, we see Juana being afraid of having this pearl in possession. She thinks it’s a curse! “ Let us throw it back into the sea. It has brought evil. Kino, my husband, it will destroy us.’ And in the firelight her lips and her eyes were alive with her fear. ( Page 38)” Along with the labor of keeping it in possession, it has caused fear in Juana’s mind when the first robber sneaks into their house and tries to steal their pearl from them. She repeats these words over and over to Kino when someone tried to rob their house again (Page 56-57). With this continual fear and worry in Juana’s mind, she is restless and wants to do something about it, and that is exactly what she did. Juana decided to take matters into her own hand and throw the pearl away herself (Page 58). Then Kino does a horrendous thing. He fights her for the pearl! “...she heard him coming and she broke into run. Her arm was up to throw when he leaped at her and caught her arm and wrenched the pearl from her. He struck her in the face with his clenched fist and she fell among the boulders, and he kicked her in the side.(Page 58-59)” We can also see through what she did that along with the great fear, the pearl has caused great pain. After this intense fight, Kino goes

Its loss, of excessive grief.” When you lose something you love and cherish, it can cause great sadness inside of you or perhaps to others around you. Here, we can see this final part of the quote applying to the end of The Pearl. Near the end of The Pearl, we see the true colors of the characters. We see Kino and his family running away from his community because his house was in ruins because of someone burning it down, and also because he killed a person (Page 59,63). They run to the forest, but unfortunately trackers are also right behind their trail. They tried to cover their trail up on their way up in the forest, but that will not be enough to keep them away. Kino comes up with an idea to have them not behind the family’s trail for good. The idea was to kill them with their own rifle by jumping them. Kino follows through with his idea, but he leaves Juana and baby Coyotito behind in a cave and goes after these trackers. At first, before Kino even jumps them, the trackers shoot their rifles up the mountain as they heard a wailing sound and expected it to be a coyote. Kino makes a move and kills the trackers. What we all end up finding out is the trackers’ gunshot was at the cave. It hit Coyotito and killed him. The work, the fear, and the pain made them realize the pearl did not mean anything but evil. Kino and Juana went back into town with sorrow and made their way back to the Gulf. Kino, with great despair, throws “The Pearl of the World” into the waters