Walter Dean Myer's Short Story 'The Treasure Of Lemon Brown'
649 Words3 Pages
Unit 1-6 Paragraph Essay “The human heart has hidden treasures, in secret kept, in silence sealed; the thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed.” -Charlotte Bronte. Walter Dean Myer’s short story, “The Treasure of Lemon Brown,” explores the values of Greg Ridley, a 14 year old boy who yearns to play basketball, but can't because his grades for math are too low. The novel, The Pearl, written by John Steinbeck tells an old legend of a man named Kino who finds a perfect pearl, soon being corrupted by greed. In the two stories, the conflicts of the main characters cause them to see what is important to life differently. Greg struggles with math, forcing his grade for the subject to drop, and making it unable to play basketball. Greg’s father tells his son, “And you want to play basketball?…show more content… Steinbeck wrote, “In KIno’s ears, the Song of Family was as fierce as a cry.” Kino and Juana both realize their mistakes from the pearl, they see how attached they had become to it, and had let their dreams cloud the thoughts. People can easily get hooked on something they see as good, while their entire life crumbles around them. While the couple suffered a great loss, the death of their only child, they found it better to move on. Kino was aware he couldn’t just give up at life; he still had family he needed to care and love, not be distracted by bad omens. The book read, “KIno and Juana strode side by side through the stone and plaster city and down among the brush houses, and the neighbors stood back and let them pass.” Juana and Kino both went back to town, even though the had become severely traumatized. They know that life must keep going on, and the world would keep turning round. KIno had changed, he wasn’t so preoccupied with the pearl, similar to Greg changing on what was really