Even though life is hard, it gets harder for the Kino family. One day, a scorpion stings their child. The sting would make an adult sick for days, but for a baby it would kill it. His mother tries to get out most of the poison but she still is not sure and wants to go to a doctor. Unfortunately, this doctor is raced. He treats the poor villagers as if there were animals and the rich as human begins. When Juana appeared at his door, a servant of his answers and ask how much money they have for the treatment. Kino shows the servant the amount and the doctor refuses: “Have I nothing better to do than cure insect bites for little Indians? I am a doctor, not a veterinary.”(Pg 11) This makes Kino very angry because their baby’s life is at stake. Although they could do nothing, they went on with their daily work hoping that Coyotito would get better. His mother makes a foreshadowing when she prays for a pearl to pay the doctor to cure him. As usually that day, they find the “pearl of the world,” the size of a sea gull’s egg. With this pearl, they thought here comes a promise of comfort, hope and security but no one suspected its power to deceive, to corrupt and to destroy.
Evil came straight to them as all the villagers wanted it. Dark figured men came in to their hut to get the pearl, but lucky Kino saw the figure and scared him off. Unfortunately, that was not the last dark figured men. As Kino could not sell the pearl because buyers were all cheating him, the men came back. This time it was worse. They burned down their hut and broke their boat, but that was not all. Kino killed one of the men and then had to flee town. The spirits of evil was going to come sooner or later as Juana had foreshadowed before: “this pearl is evil, we have to get rid of it.”(Pg 38) They fled on foot since they had no boat left. Soon three men came to track them down. As few days passed, Kino had put a little distance between them. The trackers kept on going and one night they were very near. Kino decided that at night then the trackers were not looking, he would kill them and that was what he did. He was a kill machine; one after another they led dead. Unfortunately before this, Cyotito started to cry and the trackers used their rifle and shot into the darkest to make whatever it was to shut up. The baby was dead. Kino finally realized this pearl was evil and threw it back into the Gulf. He had killed his son because he was greedy.
The narrator would say that the moral of the story is that if a person were greedy they would never get what they want. Kino was a great example. He wanted a lot of money for his pearl, but no anybody would give him it so his baby boy paid the price. Cyotito had to dead before Kino realized his mistake. Steinbeck wrote this story in a way that inspires me to read more of his books.