Sem. John Paul D.

Olea SSP – III

Creative Writing
Bro. Hansel B. Mapayo, SSP

And the music of the pearl had merged with the music of the family so that one beautified the other.

-Chapter III, The Pearl

What makes John Steinbeck’s The Pearl very interesting is the way he weaves music into his
story. The scenes were interpolated with songs about the family, the pearl, evil, the enemy, the
morning, and the sea. Such ingenious orchestration revealed to us two mirrors or two perspectives to
consider in understanding the message of the story: the visible (physical) and the spiritual
(transcendental) perspective.

The visible are those pertaining to the typical outer layer of the story – Kino, the pearl, his family
and the various scenes attached to them. Spiritual, which I want to deal with in this analysis, on the
other hand, are those profound truths that springs from symbols or events in the story being presented.
Steinbeck’s use of songs in the story is pivotal since it gives grandeur to the mysterious flow and
nuances of human emotion. The music or song in a particular scene tells us, as Plato, Boethius and
Confucius affirmed thousands of years ago, the disposition of the soul.

We remember the change in Kino from his sadness because of Coyotito’s situation to the joyful
and triumphal moment of finding the Pearl of the World and his son’s miraculous healing. As Steinbeck
puts it “and the music of the pearl rose like a chorus of trumpets in his ears.” Now, the pearl, an
inanimate object, becomes an instrument to rouse the soul toward joy and delight. But, we ask
ourselves then what is in the pearl that incites man to change from sadness to joy? What does the music
of the pearl tells us?

As we go further, beautiful music gradually fades away and the music of evil slowly envelops
Kino’s world. Artistically speaking if we hear music from horror or suspense films we have this picture in
mind of darkness, fear and melancholia. Steinbeck creatively shifted the scene from the golden days of
spring, and little by little as the ominous music being introduced, to the freezing nights of winter which
is symbolic of man’s dark side - “for the evil song was in his ears, shrilling against the music of the pearl.

Usually, the typical reader will just recognize The Pearl as an ordinary story about a father who
wants to change the life of his beloved family. John Steinbeck, I believe, wants us to see past what our
eyes can only visibly see. He created a novella-symphony not just to entertain but to set-up a mirror
where we can see our soul through the power of music. The musical motif of the pearl reminds me of
the way we see material things as inherently evil but for St. Therese of Lisieux, in her Story of a Soul,
she wrote “To the pure all is pure, the simple and upright soul sees not evil in anything, since evil
exists in impure hearts only and not in material objects.”

In today’s world of multi-faceted perspective and overwhelming creativity and ideas, a

simple story can be subjected to any fanciful interpretations. One cannot undermine someone’s
understanding of a particular story since it mirrors a person’s intimate structure of beliefs. The
problem whether The Pearl has an obvious moral message cannot be answered directly by yes and
no, there will always be a mediocre option in the middle. This is possible since man has a subjective
and objective interpretation of things. But, what makes a story beautiful is man’s capability to
transcend: To see past the myriads of images being shown and to submerge oneself to the
profound message silently told.