The Pearl

The Pearl

1945 • 90 pages

Ratings228

Average rating3.4

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Read this one in high school. Fantastic commentary on greed.

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Well! This was good and depressing!

The moral of the story is that if you have something good everyone will be jealous of you and try to rob/kill/destroy you and/or everything you love. But Steinbeck is still great, so.

CW: infant death

January 6, 2025

A strong 4. Having just read East of Eden, I needed me some more Steinbeck. The introduction to the books says he wrote this to play out like a film and it absolutely does. Speaking of the into, if your copy has it, wait to read it until after you finish. It gives basically the whole book away.

September 25, 2024

What a story of humanity and how we treat each other.
Hope, faith, greed.
Eye-opening, with the capacity to change the reader and have an impact, if the reader is open to such things.

August 30, 2022

Simple but beautiful fable.

May 26, 2017
March 5, 2017

I've always loved Steinbeck's writing, and this is no exception. I don't think the pearl is evil, I think people are evil, and the more power they have the more likely they will behave in an evil matter. The evil manifests in keeping poor people poor, by swindling them by using their lack of power.

February 26, 2017

A sudden windfall
just what the doctor ordered
well, he's not sick now.

January 17, 2017

I had no expectations going into this story. I listed to the audio book version read by Hector Elizondo and think that he did a fantastic job. The writing was good and the story surprised me by how dark it went. Highly recommend!

July 29, 2016
mross
Michael RossSupporter
October 30, 2014

Beautifully written, brief and powerful, this book should be a must-read for any aspiring writer. Steinbeck can bring characters to life like few other authors.

October 19, 2014



This re telling was sad but inspiring.

December 7, 2012

Another fantastic tale from John Steinbeck. His descriptions of the environment that Kino and Juana live in are incredible - and haunting too.

June 14, 2009