The Pearl Figurative Language Essay

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In the novella The Pearl by John Steinbeck, Kino has found the pearl of the world. Kino, Juana, and their baby Coyotito must run from their town for safety after multiple attacks. Along with the exciting plot, this story has a much deeper meaning. “If this story is a parable, perhaps everyone takes his own meaning from it…” This is a quote from the epigraph of the novella in the beginning of the book. This quote can easily be deciphered as everyone takes their own meaning from the story(The Pearl) and gets a different moral or theme from it. The theme or moral of the story is, there is good and evil in everything. This is true because John Steinbeck uses motif of nature, imagery, and motif of sound to portray the theme of there is good and…show more content…
One of the pieces of figurative languages he uses is imagery. Steinbeck uses imagery various times throughout the novella, one of them being, “ Kino lifted the flesh, and there it lay, the great pearl, perfect as the moon. It captured the light and refined it and gave back in silver incandescence. It was as large as a sea-gull’s egg. It was the greatest pearl in the world(19).” This imagery is an example of the good in the word by using phrases such as, “perfect as the moon”, and “silver incandescence” to show the pureness and how perfect the pearl or life can be. As said in Steinbeck's theme there is both evil and good in the world, so he also used imagery of bad or evil things. For example, Steinbeck uses imagery of color in the quote, “Above, the surface of the water was a green mirror(90).” This imagery of color shows evil by using the color green, “green mirror”, which is the color of envy or greed which are both evil or bad traits. Steinbeck uses imagery of color again on page 23 to show evil in the quote, “The news stirred up something infinitely black and evil in the town…” The imagery shows the evil in the town by using the phrases, “infinitely black” and “evil in the

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