In John Steinbeck’s classic novella The Pearl, Kino is faced with hard decisions about a pearl he found while pearl diving, and is put to the ultimate test-- Kino has high hopes for the pearl but he has to figure out how to use it for good, instead of using it for bad. One lesson the story suggests is that greed can corrupt people, and from people’s greed comes actions that can’t be taken back and ends up hurting people in the process. In the beginning of the novella Coyotito is stung by a scorpion. The doctor in the book is greedy and wants the pearl all to himself, so he makes Coyotito worse by giving him poisoned powder. The narrator explains how the doctor poisons the baby, “Then from his bag he took a little bottle of white powder and a capsule of gelatin. He filled the capsule with powder and closed it, and then around the first capsule fitted a second capsule and closed it. Then he worked very deftly” (31). Here the doctor is putting poison in a capsule to make Coyotito …show more content…
The narrator tells us how brutally Kino treats Juana during her bold decision, “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. In the pale light, he could see the little waves break over her, and her skirt floated about and clung to her legs as the water receded. Kino looked down at her and his teeth were bared. He hissed at her like a snake, and Jauna stared at him with wide unfrightened eyes, like a sheep before the butcher” (59). Here Kino is brutally beating Juana because of his greed for the pearl. The line from the book shows just how far Kino is willing to go to save the pearl because of his greed. Kino is unable to realize he is putting his family in