My position will be my argument of while The Pearl literally dramatizes the plight of a man who is caught between the material world and the spiritual world, the novel insists upon a more symbolic reading, too.
Perhaps the most outspoken critic of The Pearl has been Warren French, who criticized author John Steinbeck for using a traditional tale (the legend of the Indian boy who accidentally finds a large pearl) to make his “cautionary points” about the dangers of materialism. According to French, Kino’s struggles would be more meaningful to readers of the Woman’s Home Companion, where the story was first published, than to Mexican listeners of the original folk tale. French’s criticisms are only partially valid.
Kino’s discovery that the economic value of the pearl is controlled by a few powerful men can be read as a critique of a capitalistic economic system that embraces material values. Naively, Kino believes that he will be a rich man because he has discovered the “Pearl of the World.” He plans to finance a church wedding, to purchase clothes, a rifle, and an education for Coyotito. Yet, when he tries to sell his pearl in La Paz, he receives an offer of only 1,500 pesos. So Kino sets out for the capital in order to find traders who will pay him the full value of the pearl. By challenging the status quo in La Paz, he sets off a chain reaction of events that will force him to reevaluate what he defines to be “valuable.”
Juana is less naive about the value of the pearl than Kino is, at least initially. She is quick to grasp that the pearl, if given more value than, say, human relationships, can bring both greed and misery. “This thing is evil,” she cries. “This pearl is like a sin! It will destroy us. Throw it away, Kino.” Kino refuses to throw away the pearl, because he wants to use the pearl to purchase social status and freedom from oppression for his family and community.
The novel also contrasts the value of the pearl with the value of Kino’s family, specifically of Coyotito. The narrator says that for Kino and Juana, the morning that Kino will sell his pearl is “comparable only to the day when the baby had been born.” Because the statement follows a paragraph foreshadowing that the pearl will destroy the family, because the reader is likely to believe that there is no greater moment than the birth of a child to a father, the narrator’s observation seems ironic. How can one compare the monetary value of the pearl with the value of one’s family? It is no coincidence that Coyotito sacrifices his life when Kino insists upon keeping the pearl. Coyotito’s sacrifice (death) provides further evidence that French is right. Steinbeck is critiquing materialism and its values.
After Kino has killed a man and the family has been forced to flee, Juana says, “Perhaps the dealers were right and the pearl has no value. Perhaps this has all been an illusion.” On a material level, she may be conceding that the pearl really does not have any monetary value. On a spiritual level (if one defines spirit to be a human being’s essence), Juana may be suggesting that, even if the pearl’s monetary value is 50,000 pesos, it is still of no value to the family, which craves spirit, not matter. Juana’s questioning of the value of the pearl mirrors the questioning of the value of the pearl that occurs throughout the novel. Again, this is consistent with a reading of the story as a critique of materialism.
When Juana suggests the pearl may have no value, Kino replies, “They would not have tried to steal it if it had been valueless.” In this ironic moment, both the narrator and readers will see that Kino’s logic is flawed. He is assuming that thieves steal valuable things, which may or may not be true, and which is only relevant if someone is willing to pay the thieves for their stolen items. Kino must become more sophisticated, more aware of the evil that man is capable of, more aware of the forces that render him and his family helpless.
Again, Kino’s naive nature provides support for French’s criticism that the novel makes “cautionary” points that are more meaningful to readers in the United States than in Mexico. Contemporary readers in industrial societies are probably more likely to see the irony in Kino’s logic than readers from less-industrialized countries. Contemporary readers who have a basic understanding of economic principles are also more likely to see that Kino’s major conflict is whether or not he will accept or reject the social, economic, (and by extension, materialistic) values that currently determine his choices in life.
However, at this point, the novel begins to resist French’s literal reading. By not recognizing the impact of the forces of capitalism upon their lives, by not recognizing their own powers, Kino and Juana unwittingly bring about their own downfall. They lose their home and their canoe. They are forced to flee La Paz, to leave behind their families and friends.
The lessons that Kino and Juana will learn now take the form of an allegorical journey. (An allegory is a story in which the objects, people, or actions represent a meaning that can be found outside of the story.) Because Kino and Juana have not recognized their own power (they have, for example, relinquished their own very capable authority as healers to the less capable doctor), because they have not shown an awareness of the material values and powers that are dominating their lives, they are thrust into a dark (and very symbolic) night in order to be educated.
The responses of readers to the symbolism of Kino’s and Juana’s journey and to the symbolism of Kino’s and Juana’s education will take a variety of forms. The suggestive symbols in the novel, particularly the symbols of the pearl and of the journey, ask readers to move beyond French’s tidy interpretation of the novel into a more psychological and fluid realm.
Not surprisingly many critics do view the return of the pearl to the ocean at novel’s end to be a rejection of the material world in favor of the spiritual world. However, this interpretation largely ignores the symbolism of the pearl, which is linked in many ways throughout the story to Kino. Most strikingly, the pearl has, as Kino tells his brother, Juan Tomas, become his soul. “If I give it [the pearl] up I shall lose my soul,” he says.
To follow the logic of this symbolism, when Kino rids himself of the pearl, he is ridding himself of his soul. How will readers respond to this?
Kino’s definition of the soul is “not the usual religious definition of ‘soul,’ but human consciousness and potential, those qualities that cause man to separate himself from the rest of nature.” When Kino renounces the pearl, he therefore “refuses the option of attaining his soul (a distinct identity) preferring to undefine himself thus going back to the blameless bosom of Nature in a quasi-animal existence.” Other interpretations are possible, even suggested. The novel gives readers room to decide for themselves.
Jungian critics (followers of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung), with their interest in archetypes (images that occur in the unconscious minds of all humans) offer a satisfying complement to French’s interpretation of the novel. Because the Jungians believe in the notion of “universal” symbols, and because they find these symbols in The Pearl, they equate Kino’s family’s journey with the symbolic journey of the soul. More specifically, they suggest that both Juana and Kino undergo initiations into adulthood, and that these initiations would be recognizable, as symbols, to cultures in Mexico, in the United States, and in many other countries.
As Deborah Barker points out, Joseph Campbell has documented that the archetypal hero’s journey often takes the familiar pattern of departure, initiation, and then return. The initiation may involve a symbolic death, which then requires a symbolic rebirth. In the context of The Pearl, the loss of his son, home, and canoe would symbolize Kino’s death, while the return of the pearl to the bottom of the sea would symbolize rebirth. This pattern of departure, initiation (symbolic death, symbolic rebirth), and return recurs throughout stories around the world.
According to Barker, Juana’s initiation is a little different from Kino’s. Juana undergoes a “rite of disenchantment” through her journey. At the start of the story, says Barker, Juana appears as a “submissive figure trailing after her husband with a devotion nearly dog-like.” At the conclusion of the story, Juana has been elevated to a status equal to Kino’s as the two return to town “side by side.” In other words, Juana, as archetype, leaves La Paz as a young girl, is initiated into the “disenchantments” of womanhood, and then becomes a woman transformed. Barker reads Juana’s journey primarily as a soulful one, in keeping with the notion that the meaning of the story is not solely thematic, but can be found in its images and in the patterns of its images. Again, these images recur in other stories throughout the world, thus Barker would probably disagree with French’s suggestion that the novel holds localized appeal to readers of the Woman’s Home Companion.
Another Jungian approach to The Pearl reads the characters in the story as symbolizing different aspects of the human psyche. Jung was concerned not just with archetypes, but with the ongoing struggle between the conscious and the unconscious. To a Jungian psychologist, harmony is achieved only when one is able to successfully confront the reality of one’s unconscious.
Joseph Timmerman provides an example of a Jungian interpretation of the novel that is concerned with the ongoing struggle between the conscious and the unconscious. Timmerman reads Kino’s journey as a confrontation with his own shadow (the part of his unconscious that is socially unacceptable, his darker side.) In order for Kino to access his shadow self, he must listen to the female part of his unconscious (known as his anima). Juana, who is portrayed as intuitive and wise, symbolizes Kino’s anima. Juana (Kino’s anima) helps Kino to express his unconscious desires, as when she forces him to, in Timmerman’s words, “brave the civilized world of the doctor.” As the novel progresses, she becomes Kino’s “guiding power,” as his anima would.
Keeping the novel’s rich symbolism in mind (from this very brief discussion), one is perhaps better prepared to appreciate the themes in the novel without feeling bound by them. A thematic analysis reveals that the novel does dramatize man’s struggle to know what to value, a struggle that is complicated by his trapped position between the material and the spiritual world. While this reading is consistent with the reading that Steinbeck is critiquing materialism, it cannot be taken as the “definitive” interpretation of the novel. The novel contains another symbolic level that will resonate within each reader’s unconscious.
When Steinbeck wrote in his preface, “If this story is a parable [an allegory that makes a moral point], perhaps everyone takes his own meaning from it and reads his own life into it,” he was not making an idle suggestion. Meaning in The Pearl, as some of the psychoanalytical readings have already demonstrated, extends far beyond the realm of a materialist critique.
