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Your freedom is gone and enjoyment of the little things that make life worth living -- eating with family members, for instance, and lying in bed with someone you love in safety and comfort.
The scene in which Kino and Juana find water up in the mountains -- a very small pool of pure, fresh water -- bring out this idea. The simple things in life that God gives are what is important, not what you can buy. The water gives them life and satisfaction and beauty, whereas the pearl brings nothing but destruction, hatred, envy,...
The pearl cannot quench their thirst. Love and the simple enjoyments of life can.
Kino loses his innocence also when he focuses on money and possessions instead of spiritual things -- like home, family, community, fitting in, love, and honesty. The Bible says, "The love of money is the root of all evil." It sure seems that way in this story. Kino and Juana hardly knew evil existed in the beginning of the story. They didn't even realize that the doctor had made the baby sick for the sake of his own status and wealth. But as soon as money came into the picture, Kino experienced rage, danger, violence, bloodshed and the death of his child. Nothing is any good at all, if your child dies. Not all the pearls in the world.
Finally, redemption is possible and is achieved by some: when Hester, Pearl and Dimmesdale all stand on the public scaffold, Dimmesdale falls fatally ill and Pearl kisses him, the spell of sinfulness is broken for them (Hawthorne 175), while Chillingworth "positively withered up, shrivelled away and almost vanished from mortal sight" because his plan to destroy Dimmesdale were simultaneously broken (Hawthorne 175). In sum, Puritan religious views are highly
John Steinbeck's 1942 novel The Moon is Down can be interpreted as a propaganda piece, aimed at emboldening and comforting the conquered peoples of Europe during the Second World War. However, admitting this pragmatic objective of the book does not necessarily detract from the value of the arguments or themes found within. Steinbeck manages to convey a comprehensive picture of contrasting world perspectives though his depiction of a fictitious
They work when they can picking crops, but agitators create a violent atmosphere, after wages are cut due to the overabundance of pickers. People are starving and the law is harsh with locked out strikers who fight with desperate workers who become "scabs." This is a forceful story about how a proud family survives, and about the humanity in even the meanest of men. Of Mice and Men George and
Pearl, by John Steinbeck, has been noted as one of the most highly regarded novels in United States since World War II. Its appealing characters and obvious allegory have helped to make it a mainstay in American literature. A parable is a short work, usually fictitious, that illustrates a lesson, often on the subject of good and evil and the novel reads like a one; rich in religious overtones of
Mice and Men Isolation in Steinbeck's of Mice and Men Of Mice and Men is a novelette by John Steinbeck that is filled with isolated characters desperate to latch onto the American dream. The dream of the protagonists, George and Lennie, is to have a place of their own in Depression-Era southern California. Things look promising as the itinerant workers get jobs on a farm, make friends, and devise a plan
In this novel, class has more to do with breeding and background than it does with simple wealth. Class is a complex concept, and this has made it very difficult to negotiate shifts and changes in one's class status. The Great Gatsby illustrates that class is capable of producing deep-seated prejudices that cannot simply be altered by external factors like money. Another very famous novel that affirms these class divisions