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SUCCESS BREEDS ENVY

“Not all those you think are happy at your fortune actually are.” With a close reference to Steinbeck's The Pearl, write an essay on how selfishness is provoked by Kino’s pearl.

It is hard to tell what the actual intentions of people are when you come into good fortunes. This is particularly hard where the good fortunes are publicly declared like winning a lottery or an award like the Nobel Peace Prize. John Steinbeck brings out this feeling hard in his book The Pearl.
Kino lacks like every other person in the brush houses. He is unable to pay the greedy doctor the fee needed to treat his son Coyotito when the poor thing is bitten by a scorpion. However, the purse of Mother Nature opens and he finds the pearl described as the pearl of the world.
Since no one had ever seen such a pearl, the villagers in the brush houses and the owners of the walled city are elated by Kino’s find. The villagers particularly envy and adore Kino. But Kino all over sudden feels unsafe. The whole village turns out to be a monster ready to devour him. His brush house becomes a lone small island with sharks ready to pounce at him.
In the succeeding days, Kino has to fight the evil forces that lurk in the darkness with the intent of taking his pearl. He kills a man by the shore of the great sea and kills three others who were in hot pursuit of him.
When Kino realizes how his peaceful life has been disturbed by the promise of the pearl, he takes it back to the sea where it belongs. He blames the pearl for the loss of his purity and the loss of his son. The pearl becomes evil. Although he had harbored bigger hopes in the pearl, Kino’s life returns to the normal workaday life-away from the grandeur and might the pearl had promised.
Although Kino had a brother, a priest, the doctor and the pearl buyers- people who would have helped him achieve his dreams, all of them turned to their own cares living him to fight for the promise of a better life. Some like his brother was guided by fears, while others by the greed of possessing the pearl. The pearl buyers were looking for how they could win favour in the eyes of their boss, while the doctor the prospects of going back to Paris. The priest, on the other hand, was interested in improving the standards of his church.

If only Kino had had the support of his people, maybe his optimism about changing the lives of his people could have realised. However, his dreams die at the hands of greedy and detached people who let him fight his own battle. Such is the case of modern day life that hardly the poor make it in life.  

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