John Steinbeck Materialism And Greed

“Greed in the end fails even the greedy,” says Cathryn Louis. Kino was very greedy about the pearl which lead to everything he loved to fall apart.In the folktale, “The Pearl,” by John Steinbeck there is a lot of materialism and greed will lead to immoral behavior. In the folktale, the protagonist, Kino, finds a pearl to help his family to try to get out of poverty. In the end, the characters in the story have so much greed that it completely destroys the family.
Steinbeck uses the pearl a sa symbol to represent that materialism and greed can lead to immoral behavior. This is seen when Kino is about to throw the pearl back into the ocean at the end of the book. The narrator states, “And in the surface of the pearl, he saw Coyotito lying in the little cave with the top of his head shot away” (89). This shows that the pearl led Kino to be very greedy, which resulted in Coyotito dying. Another time …show more content…
When Kino beat up Juana, it is seen that Kino is showing immoral behavior because of greed. The narrator states, “ Her arm was up to throw (pearl) when he leaped at her and caught her arm and wrenched the pearl from her. He stuck her in the face with his clenched fist and she fell among the boulders, and he kicked her in her side” (59). This shows that Kino was so greedy that he beat up his wife to protect the pearl from being destroyed. Another example of when Kino uses immoral behavior because of greed is when Kino finds out that he will not get a fair price for the pearl. The pearl buyer says, “ I can give, say a thousand pesos...You want to cheat me… And suppose Kino took, a thousand pesos. Only yesterday he had nothing.” This states that Kino is being to greedy with his pearl. The quote states that if he did take the money he would be a thousand pesos richer than yesterday because the day before he had nothing. Both of this examples were about Kino using immoral behavior because of