John Steinbeck Oppression

Wealth can allow people to have many good things in life, however, can also be very destructive if it is abused. Symbolism, imagery, and the characters show how wealth can either be helpful or devastating to people's lives. After the priest discovers Kino's new treasure, the pearl, he talks to him and says that he should donate money to the church to praise God or the Gods on his finding. The priest examined Kino and said, "It has come to me that thou hast found a great fortune, a great pearl." Kino then opened his hand and held it out, and the priest gasped a little at the size and beauty of the pearl. And then he said," I hope thou wilt remember to give thanks, my son, to Him who has given thee this treasure, and to pray for guidance in the future (Steinbeck 24-25). Each man sees in the pearl what they could do if they had the chance to discover the "Pearl of the World." The pearl's immediate and lasting effect on Kino is causing him to dream of better things for himself and his family. Although the pearl attracts intruders and pursuers, Kino determines that his family will rise above it. Most importantly, he expects his son, Coyotito to be at the same education level as the White Europeans. The story characterizes the sympathetic characters, Kino and Juana, as well as the unsympathetic character, the doctor. In the novella, Steinbeck shows that wealth can have

Kino has been ambushed during the night and has killed someone. Juan Tomas recommends him to get rid of it because it has caused a lot of trouble. “"I was attacked in the dark," said Kino. "And in the fight I have killed a man." "Who?", asked Juan Tomás quickly. "I do not know. It is all darkness – all darkness and shape of darkness." "It is the pearl," said Juan Tomás. "There is a devil in this pearl. You should have sold it and passed on the devil. Perhaps you can still sell it and buy peace for yourself."” (Steinbeck 64) Yet, Kino’s actions still don’t convince him to take Juan Tomas’s advice, as a result Kino faces the biggest tragedy he has experienced which is losing his son, Coyotito.

First, Kino’s call to adventure with Coyotito being savagely stung by a scorpion and Kino having to find money for the doctor to pay for Coyotito’s medical treatment, second,Kino’s allies that will be by his side no matter what and lastly the examples of how Kino is truly a tragic hero. In John Steinbeck's novella, The Pearl the text gives many hints and clues that the novel follows the pattern of a Hero's Journey. This essay will cover the 3 main aspects of Kino's Journey which eventually leads to his ultimate sacrifice. My claim is significant and relevant to The Pearl because without the three main aspects to Kino’s Journey, the novel would not be the award winning, captivating book that it

“It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.” John Steinbeck said this of all humankind. He thought highly of us as a species, just as Dr. Stockmann did in Henrik Ibsen’s play Enemy of the People. Both men had problems in their societies, Stockmann in his town and Steinbeck in America, and both believed that humans were capable of seeing the problem and fixing it. The rest of the population did not see this as the case. They believed he was an enemy of the people and a threat to their way of life. Because of how Steinbeck expressed his views, people felt threatened by what he wrote and they called him a threat to

Helen Keller, an American author and political activist, reveals the connections between individual responsibilities to society by declaring, “Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each others welfare, social justice can never be attained.” In the novel Of Mice and Men, the author, John Steinbeck, conveys the idea that one’s responsibilities cannot be avoided because they will just reappear in the future. Steinbeck expresses that the completion of important tasks and jobs will benefit most people in the long run. Throughout the story, George is given the duty to take care of Lennie and prevent him from making critical mistakes. Without George’s guidance, Lennie would be lost and alone in the world with no clue on how to survive by himself; he would have to make his own decisions, and from past dilemmas, this has been proven to be a issue. In John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, George is given the dreadful grievance and responsibility of killing Lennie; his decision to kill Lennie is justified because Lennie is a danger to society, and by killing Lennie, George prevents him from a contrarily tragic, miserable death.

Many feel that the most common cause of discrimination is because of someone’s abilities, while in actuality the majority of discrimination is done because of someone’s looks. In the novella Of Mice and Men, Author John Steinbeck crafted numerous characters to give a visual of what this discrimination looks like. Many types of discrimination occur in this novella. Ageism against senior citizens can be seen in a character named Candy and his dog, who are discriminated against for their appearance. Sexism against women can be seen in Curley’s wife, who is neglected countless times by her husband. There’s even a character named Crooks who experiences racism for being an African American, the most devastating example of judging people by appearances. Steinbeck and his creation of these characters can illustrate a message to readers about human nature; people discriminate against others based more on appearances than abilities. Analyzed within this essay is evidence of why Steinbeck created these characters, how the dialogue they experience adds to the claim and the overlooked abilities that each of these characters had.

Has there ever been a time where you felt that you did not fit in? A time where you felt isolated from your friends for a specific circumstance? Oppression is still alive, and still occurs on a daily basis. The novella Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck deals with two migrant workers trying to get a hold of a stable farming job to pursue their life dream. Just as that dream is in their reach, George cannot stop Lennie from the active cycle of mistakes that take place. Oppression is the struggle for a human being not to be judged by their skin color, nationality, gender, or race. Two characters that show these evident qualities are Curley’s Wife and Crooks. In this novella, Curley’s Wife and Crooks is used by Steinbeck to symbolize the apparent theme of oppression through the characteristic of gender and race.

Across the world today, women do not receive the same basic human rights as men living in the same country. For example, in Yemen, only 50% of women can read, and in a poll recorded in 2006, before girls there reach the age of eighteen, 52% of them are married (Hess). Women in the United States were once seen as unequals in society and were at an immediate disadvantage. In Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck elucidates how society at the time devalued women through the character Curley’s wife.

John Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California, a farming community with of about 2500 people. He was the third of four children and the only son of John Ernst and Olive Hamiton Steinbeck. His sisters Beth and Esther were much older than John and he felt closest to Mary, the youngest. He spent his childhood and adolescence in the Salinas Valley, which he later called “the salad bowl of the nation.” John’s mother, Olive, was the daughter of Irish immigrants. She left her parents’ ranch to become a teacher. John remembered his mother as energetic and full of fun. He called his father, in contrast, “a singularly silent man.” Steinbeck’s father, also named John, worked as the treasurer of Monterey County. He had chosen a

For Kino, the ‘pearl of great price’ initially manifests itself as the opulent catalyst to his elaborate fantasies including new clothes for his family and a proper education for his son. Eventually, these dreams extend to the possession of a rifle as ‘humans are never satisfied’. ‘And the music of the pearl rose like a chorus of trumpets in his ears … It was the wildest day-dreaming.’ Simile associates the pearl’s wealth and its accompanying anthem with victory; the victory of achieving his dreams; of being able to protect and sustain his family. However, the unsuccessful reality of Kino’s ownership of the pearl leads him to alter his reality substantially. ‘For his dream of the future was real and never to be destroyed.’ Confronted by his selfless dreams being greedily denied by others and the pearl’s music exposed to be ‘interwoven with the music of evil’, Kino becomes barbaric and violent. ‘He was an animal now, for hiding, for attacking, and he lived only to preserve himself and his family.’ Metaphor elucidates Kino’s transition to inhumanity due to the overwhelming failure of his family-focussed dreams. The only dream Kino fulfils is his possession of a rifle which he gains through the act of murder. ‘Kino was a terrible machine now. He grasped the rifle even as he wrenched free his knife.’ Depicted as apathetic automaton through metaphor, Kino’s descent into callousness and cruelty by his ambition is further displayed. Steinbeck’s ‘The Pearl’ conveys the psychological consequences that arise from dreams that are within

Once people find out about his pearl, people begin to attack and take advantage of him. Kino recognizes this, and takes the pearl to the capital. Fueled by greed, the pearl effects Kino, Juana, and the community as a whole. Before Kino had found the “pearl of the world”, he had lived a simple life. Kino resided in a brush house on the outskirts of his village with his wife and son.

Steinbeck gives each one of the main characters an individual reaction to the pearl. He shows the priest, and the priest wants to know if Kino will give some of the money to the church. Then the doctor’s reaction to the pearl is that, the doctor thinks of what the pearl could do for him and how he could spend the pearl on a trip to Paris. The beggars in the novel feel that Kino can be a man who made rich and is often generous and that the beggars may receive some money from Kino. The buyers for the pearls think that the pearl has a great affect on the town and that it becomes everyone’s dream to have the pearl. As the pearl becomes part of everyone in the town’s problem, everyone starts to turn against Kino because of the pearl that he has.

In “The Pearl” Steinbeck exposes our fault, failures, and dreams. He wrote these to hopefully improve our way of life. In the story a couple of peoples whose dreams, faults, and failures he exposed were the priests, the sales man, the doctors, and Kino's. In the first couple of chapters he exposes the faults of some of these people. In the middle chapters is when he exposes their dream and failures and by the end of the story he has exposed everything. This essay will explain what the dreams, faults, and failures are and why I consider them to be. I'll also explain how we are improved after being exposed to their existence.

In Steinbeck’s book, The Pearl, Kino’s perception of the world and his thoughts were morphed because of Coyotito being stung by a scorpion. This was a significant event because it involved conflicting races who abhorred one another; these two groups were known as the Spanish Mexicans and the Native Mexicans. When Coyotito (part of the Native Mexican group) was stung by this particular invertebrate, he obviously needed medical attention. The only person who “knew” how to treat a scorpion sting was the doctor, who was a part of the Spanish Mexican group. Kino, who was in the middle of this predicament, was torn between aiding his child and forced to beg for help from his antagonizers. The other vital detail in this was that before this particular event, Kino was feeling joyous that day because he felt it was a morning that presided over all other mornings. He started playing the Song of the Family in his head, which held prominence in Kino’s mind, as it

All of the village people suddenly sparked an interest in Kino once he discovered the pearl, “people with things to sell and people with favors to ask. Kino had found the Pearl of the World. . . .Every man suddenly became related to Kino's pearl, and Kino's pearl went into the dreams, the speculations, the schemes, the plans, the futures, the wishes, the needs, the lusts, the hungers, of everyone, and only one person stood in the way and that was Kino, so that he became curiously every man's enemy” (Steinbeck 23). The pearl does not result in an immediate change in Kino’s personality, but rather how others view him. The pearl symbolizes hope, a trait that Kino previously possessed, but somewhat lost after the incident involving Coyotito’s illness. Kino’s “eyes and voice [became] hard and cold and a brooding hate was growing in him” (Steinbeck 38). At the beginning of the novel, Kino is very optimistic and positive. Therefore, when this hate begins to consume him, it is very unusual, leading us to believe that the pearl has an influence on Kino.