General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Pearl

The Pearl is a 1947 novella by the American writer John Steinbeck (1902–1968) that tells, as a parable, the story of Kino, a poor Mexican pearl diver whose discovery of an enormous pearl brings his family greed, violence, and grief instead of prosperity. Steinbeck developed it from a folktale he heard in the Gulf of California, first published it as a short story in 1945, and expanded it into a book published by Viking Press in November 1947, the same year Emilio Fernández's film adaptation La perla won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Author	John Steinbeck, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962³
First publication	Short story "The Pearl of the World," Woman's Home Companion, December 1945¹
Book publication	Viking Press, November 1947, 132 pages¹^•⁴
Setting	La Paz, Mexico, based on a story Steinbeck heard there³
Film adaptation	La perla (1947), directed by Emilio Fernández, Golden Lion at Venice²
Film honors	Five Mexican Ariel awards, including Best Picture and Best Director; Golden Globe for Cinematography, 1949⁵^•⁶
Later standing	Eighteen printings by 1962 and forty-two by 1972; a staple of school reading lists¹^•⁷

Spoilers

The story

Kino is a poor Indian fisherman living with his wife Juana and their infant son Coyotito in a simple dwelling on the beach. When the baby is stung by a scorpion, the local doctor refuses to treat him because the family cannot pay. Kino then finds a pearl of singular beauty and size and dreams of selling it for enough money to let his family live comfortably and to educate the boy.⁸^•³

With the pearl, as the Kirkus review of the book put it, "evil enters the hearts of men." Kino turns down the low price offered by the local dealers and determines to go to the capital for a better market; the doctor, hearing of the pearl, plants doubt and superstition to get his share; neighbors and strangers turn against Kino, burn his hut, and attack him, and when he kills in self-defense they pursue him into the mountains and kill the child. Only then does Kino concede defeat, and he and Juana return to the ways of their people, throwing the pearl into the sea.⁴ Steinbeck presented the story of exploited but dignified Indians as a parable, with no attempt to add to its simple pattern.⁹^•⁴

Origins and publication

Between 1940 and 1944, Steinbeck pondered a folktale he had heard with his close friend Edward F. Ricketts while in the Gulf of California. He transformed it into a short story titled "The Pearl of the World," which first appeared in the Woman's Home Companion magazine in December 1945.¹ Steinbeck himself located the story in La Paz, Mexico, and wrote that the tale he heard there was "so much like a parable that it almost can't be."³

From story to novella. At this stage of his career several of Steinbeck's recent works were drawing harsh criticism, including criticism of their shortness. His editor, Pat Covici, suggested expanding the short story, since two of Steinbeck's other small books had already been criticized for slightness. Steinbeck developed the story into a novella in a hasty three-month span, and the original manuscript carries very few corrections, marked in ink.¹

Publication then took nearly two years, because Steinbeck wanted the film version and the book to appear together. The film production ran much longer than he anticipated, pushing the release back and causing him to gradually lose interest in the project. Viking Press finally published the novella in November 1947, coinciding with the release of the film version by RKO Radio Pictures.¹

The first edition was a two-dollar hardback with illustrations by José Clemente Orozco, a contemporary of Steinbeck who shared similar social concerns and created woodcuts depicting Mexican culture. A twenty-five-cent Bantam paperback included stills from the motion picture, and at least three major editions appeared within the first year.¹

The 1947 film

In 1944, Steinbeck told the story to the Mexican film director Emilio Fernández, who convinced him to turn it into a filmscript.⁸ The resulting film, La perla (The Pearl), was directed by Fernández from a screenplay by Fernández, John Steinbeck, and Jackson Wagner, with cinematography by Gabriel Figueroa and music by Antonio Díaz Conde. Pedro Armendáriz played the diver, María Elena Marqués played Juana, and Fernando Wagner played the doctor. It was coproduced by RKO Radio Pictures, with Óscar Dancigers as producer.²^•¹⁰^•¹¹

Production. Two versions of the film, one in English and one in Spanish, were made, and The Pearl was the first Mexican-made English-language picture to be distributed in the United States. RKO put up 50 percent of the financing, and because most of the picture was made in Mexico the final budget for both versions was a meager $400,000. In early 1946 three months of location shooting took place outside Mexico City, some in the coastal region of Guerrero, with additional scenes at RKO's Churubusco Studios, the RKO ranch in Encino, California, and Universal Studios; the underwater pearl-diving scenes were filmed in a tank at RKO in late May 1946.⁵

Reception and honors. The film won the Golden Lion at the 1947 Venice Film Festival, confirming Fernández's stature as Mexico's leading filmmaker, and it won five Ariels from the Mexican Motion Picture Academy: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Photography, Best Male Star for Pedro Armendáriz, and Best Character Role for Juan García. Gabriel Figueroa's cinematography won the 1949 Golden Globe, and the film has been preserved in the United States National Film Registry.²^•⁵^•⁶^•¹⁰ A 1948 New Yorker review called the film "a handsome thing," praising its use of Pacific-coast scenery and its arrangement of the Mexican cast in patterns characteristic of Orozco murals, while judging that the idea behind the script was never altogether clear.¹² On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 90 percent Tomatometer rating from 31 reviews.¹³

Reception and legacy

The book's early reception was poor. Many critics ignored the text, and those who reviewed it called the novella naïve and simplistic, so sales were mediocre at best. The book then found a large audience in American schools: in January 1948 alone it sold 2,000 copies, and Steinbeck's popularity grew with it. A 1972 edition notes that there were eighteen different printings by 1962 and forty-two by 1972, and the book is now one of the most widely read books among young students because of Steinbeck's style and its moral qualities.¹

Kirkus, reviewing the book on publication, praised "Steinbeck's peculiarly intense simplicity of technique" in this vignette of a story retold by the pearl divers of a fishing hamlet until it has the quality of folk legend.⁴ The novella has remained a staple on school reading lists since 1947, valued for its simplicity, its natural beauty, and its themes of greed, power, morality, and oppression.⁷ More than one commentator has noted the story's similarity to Hemingway's novella The Old Man and the Sea, published a few years later.¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Films by genre, form, and subject › Adaptations of literature, stage, and other media › Films based on novels, novellas, and short fiction › Films based on contemporary literary fiction › Drama and romance adaptations

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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