“He felt the creeping of fate, the circling of wolves, the hover of vultures.”
John Steinbeck, The Pearl, 1947
Kino and Juana are cursed, damned by their hope for a better life.
He is a pearl diver. She, the new mother of their child.
They have nothing.
And they have each other. And a hut in their little fishing village made from brush. And a canoe passed down from Kino’s grandfather. And the kind of quiet dignity that is shaped from survival on the ragged-most edge of subsistence in Baja California.
In the upper town, where people use money and live in stone houses, they buy the pearls from the divers and ship them across the ocean where kings and queens wear them. The handful of pearl buyers in the upper town collude to fix prices while the priests teach that none should desire to rise above their station or else face damnation.
This is the order of things.
Then Kino discovers a great pearl, the finest ever found in their village, on the day their baby is stung by a scorpion. Perhaps, now, the doctor would treat their baby. Perhaps, now, Kino and Juana could be married in a church. Perhaps, now, the door would be closed on hunger and a new life would await them.
But the jaws of poverty close on those unfortunate enough to receive blessings. The big fish slaughter the smaller fish.
Miracles exact a cruel price on those who have nothing.
This is a bleak book, but a necessary one, for those who live in stone houses in the upper cities.
The neighborhoods I now find myself in, it turns out.
///
POSTSCRIPT:
I wrote this reflection before President Trump deposed Dictator Maduro and seized control of oil-rich Venezuela on Jan 3, 2026. Steinbeck’s parable of predatory exploitation, how the powerful rig systems to extract resources from the subjugated poor, gains urgent resonance in light of these events. Make no mistake, however those in power deal with the political fallout, it will be the Kinos and Juanas who pay the price.