John Steinbeck’s The Pearl takes place in and around the city of La Paz, where Mexican-Indian pearl diver named Kino lives
happily with his wife Juana and infant son Coyotito. After a poisonous scorpion stings Coyotito, Juana calls for a
doctor, a white man, something unheard of among her fellow villagers. The doctor says he doesn’t make house calls, obviously he was ahead of his time, so the family sets out for the wealthy part of town.
When the doctor finds out that Kino can’t afford his price, he refuses to treat the baby and insults them. Kino expresses shame and outrage at his poverty and standing and beats on the gates to the doc’s house until his hands are bloody and his heart is raging with disgust at the injustice of society. Left with no choice, Kino jumps into work, and the water, hoping to find great mythical pearl that is the dream of every pearl diver. He comes up with an oyster that contains a pearl the size of a seagull egg. Even better, Coyotito’s swelling begins to go down.
The pearl has a negative effect on the villagers, who all see in it something to further their own selfish interests, including the doctor who sees the giant pearl as his ticket to a life of luxury in Paris. Kino’s plans for the money are to arrange a proper marriage to Juana, new clothes for the family, a rifle and to eventually send Coyotito to school.
The doctor finally deems Kino worthy enough for a house call, tells him that Coyotito may look better, but he’s not out of the woods just yet and gives the baby a white powder, knowing it too is poisonous. Kino, getting desperately suspicious, buries the pearl. Coyotito gets violently sick and the doctor returns to cure him. The doc suggests that Kino can give him the pearl for safekeeping while he gathers up payment, Kino declines but looks nervously toward where he buried it. Once the doctor leaves, Kino reburies the pearl.
That night, Kino finds a strange man in his hut and chases him off after receiving a blow to the head. Kino attempts to sell the pearl, but the buyers are in league against him and refuse to give him what it’s worth. As his wife tries to convince him that the pearl is bad luck, he is
beaten badly by a group of strangers. Juana wants to throw the thing back into the water, but Kino insists and going to the capital and selling it. Before he can, however, Juana digs it up and tries to throw it into the water. This time she is the one beaten, but not by strangers. Kino has become a wife-beater. Juana becomes one of those women who calmly accept being beaten by her husband, chalking his behavior up the differences between the sexes.
Kino again is beaten by the strangers but manages to stab one of them before losing consciousness. When he wakes up he realizes he’s killed a man and is forced to flee. He gets Juana and Coyotito and prepares to leave by his canoe only to find that someone has created a hole in the bottom of it. Angered at this betrayal of his link to his ancestors, Kino returns home only to find his house has been set on fire. The family takes refuge in his older brothers’ house where his brother pleads with him to give up the pearl. Kino refuses and under cover of darkness takes his family northward.
The next day Kino sees images of the man he killed, Juana’s abused face and Coyotito still suffering from the scorpion bite when he looks at the pearl’s surface. Later he see three men heading toward them, one carrying a rifle. The men pass by without spotting Kino, but knowing it’s just a matter of time before they are found, he suggests to Juana that they give up. They flee to the west, the stone mountains.
When they reach the mountains, and realize the trackers are still on their trail, they hide inside a cave. Kino sneaks out to attack the trackers, but right when he’s about to strike Coyotito begins to cry. The man with the rifle thinks he is firing at a coyote pup. Kino is able to get the gun away from the men and kill them but then hears Juana crry out from inside the cave. The bullet fired into the cave struck Coyotito and killed him.
Kino and Juana return to La Paz and walk through the city, followed by a crowd, until they reach the shore. Kino throws the pearl into the water and watches as it sinks to the bottom.