Desire and Consequence in‘The Old Man and the Sea’ and ‘The Pearl’.

Summary of stories:

Steinbeck’s touchingly simple novella ‘The Pearl’ was written in 1945, and explores the destructive effect of capitalism on a traditional Mexican village, around the turn of the century. It tells the story of Kino, an Indian pearl diver who discovers a massive, beautiful, and extremely valuable pearl. The pearl fills Kino with a new desire to abandon his simple, idyllic life in favor of dreams of material and social advancement, dreams to give his son and wife everything they desire, but dreams that are oppressed by the social hierarchy of Kino’s village. Although Kino has discovered this beautiful pearl worth more than anything he has found before, it only leads to death and destruction and eventually leaves Kino and his wife with nothing, and their beloved son dead.

‘The Old Man and the Sea’ is another novella, the story of an epic struggle between an old, seasoned fisherman and the greatest catch of his life. Written in 1952 by Ernest Hemingway, it was the last major work of the author before his suicide, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. It is the tale of a fruitless and ancient fisherman named Santiago. Santiago had spent eighty-four days without a catch, and, confident that his unproductive streak will come to an end, sets sail farther out than usual. He places his bait deep into the water and a few hours later an enormous marlin takes the bait, however the old man cannot reel the fish in, and instead the fish pulls the boat far into the ocean for three days and three nights. The old man receives cuts and slashes from the fishing line each time the fish struggles but still he does not give up. Eventually the fish tires and Santiago is able to pull the fish close enough to the surface to kill it with a harpoon, but it is too big to hold in the boat, and therefore Santiago must lash it to the side of the boat while he journeys home. The marlin leaves a trail of blood in the water which attracts sharks. By the time Santiago returns to his village the sharks have consumed the marlin, leaving only a skeletal carcass.

The protagonists of both novellas are motivated by basic desires: Kino strives to love and provide for his wife and child while remaining loyal to the tradition of his village, whereas Santiago has the self-driven desire to prove he is not past his ‘sell-by date’, that he is still capable despite his age: his desire is to maintain his pride. Two seemingly chance occurrences in ‘The Pearl’—Coyotito’s scorpion sting and Kino’s discovery of the pearl—open Kino’s eyes to a larger world. As Kino begins to covet material wealth and education for his son, his simple existence becomes increasingly complicated by greed, conflict, and violence. Kino’s wife, Juana, is more reflective and more practical than Kino. She prays for help when Coyotito’s wound leaves Kino in a rage, and she also has the presence of mind to salve the wound with a seaweed poultice. Like Kino, Juana is at first seduced by the greed the pearl awakens, but she is much quicker than Kino to recognise the pearl as a potential threat, acknowledging to herself that ‘It is not good to want a thing too much’. Santiago, on the other hand, desires to maintain his pride. He needs to reel in the fish he has hooked as a final triumph, saying to to the marlin: “Fish...I’ll stay with you until I’m dead”. He cannot face the thought of returning to the village a laughingstock once more and instead commits himself to the epic hunt, reminding himself that “man is not made for defeat”.

“I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him... He was sorry for the great fish that had nothing to eat and his determination to kill him never relaxed in his sorrow for him. . . . There is no one worthy of eating him from the manner of his behavior and his great dignity. I do not understand these things, he thought. But it is good that we do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.
This passage is found at the end of the third day related by the novella. As Santiago struggles with the marlin, he reflects upon the nature of the universe and his place in it. He displays both pity for the fish and an unflagging determination to kill it, because the marlin’s death helps to reinvigorate the fisherman’s life; if he releases the marlin then he will have nothing more to live for. Santiago is a proud man, and he realises that a man can be “destroyed but not defeated”. Because of this mindset, the vicious wounds he has sustained from his struggle so far are insignificant. The predatory nature of this exchange is inevitable, for just as hawks will continue to hunt mice, men will continue to kill marlin, and sharks will continue to rob them of their catches. The cruelty of this natural order is corrupt, however, because of the equality Santiago feels for his prey, he is animalistic and senseless . His opponent is worthy—so worthy, in fact, that he later goes on to say that it doesn’t matter who kills whom. There is, in the old man’s estimation, some sense to this order. Man can achieve greatness only when placed in a well-matched contest against his earthly brothers. To find glory, Santiago does not need to extend himself beyond his animal nature by looking to the sun or the stars, perhaps hinting that he is not interested in a God.

This is comparable but less glorified in the case of Kino and his pearl. As Kino seeks to gain wealth and status through the pearl, he transforms from a happy, contented father to a savage criminal, demonstrating the way ambition and greed destroy innocence. Kino’s desire to acquire wealth perverts the pearl’s natural beauty and good luck, transforming it from a symbol of hope to a symbol of human destruction. He exploits what the earth has given him, driven by corrupted hierarchy of his village. Kino’s struggle to protect the cherished pearl might represent the human struggle to preserve cherished qualities or attributes—moral virtue, innocence, integrity, the soul—from the destructive forces of the outside world, such as greed and desire. Furthermore, Kino’s greed leads him to behave violently toward his wife; it also leads to his son’s death and ultimately to Kino’s detachment from his cultural tradition and his society. Santiago in ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ does not see death as a means to an end like Kino, but as a circle of life, and with the upmost respect for the creature he has killed. It is not for material gain that he kills the marlin, it is part of his rejuvenation and therefore the marlin did not die purposeless. The end of the marlin’s life is the most vital moment of the novella, as the fish comes alive “with his death in him” and exhibits to Santiago, more strongly than ever before, “all his power and his beauty.” The fish seems to conquer his own death, because it invests him with a new life.

Steinbeck also makes the explicit point about Kino’s euphoric reaction to the pearl, and how it not only changed their external wealth but also Kino’s personality. The caring father and partner who, upon finding the pearl, promised education and luxury to his wife and child, attacks his wife when she tries to take the pearl from him and allow him to realise how it has corrupted him. The pearl has given him a questionable grip on sanity, acting ‘half insane and half God’, whilst Kino ironically declares himself a man. Kino’s existence is futile; the rational and level-headed Juana realises that Kino is an unstoppable force, as insurmountable as a storm and his struggle to gain what he has tasted will lead him to destruction. Santiago’s pearl is his marlin, and he too tasted glory when he killed it. Like Kino, his treasure started to slip away when he realised the enormous fish would not fit in the boat, but instead of letting his emotional instincts get the better of him, he reminded himself of his roots, of all he had to be thankful for and blessed the death of the fish and the rejuvenation of his life. He reminded himself of his motto: “man can be destroyed but not defeated”, realising that despite his blistered, torn and broken body, he still caught the enormous fish and experienced its beauty. His ‘hubris’ is what enables him to endure, and endurance is perhaps what matters most in Hemingway’s conception of the world - a world in which death and destruction are unavoidable but open to interpretation. That is enough for Santiago, unlike Kino who no longer can see the beauty in the Pearl but only the paranoia, wealth and loneliness. He has been defeated and it cost him the life of his beloved child. It is not the pearl that has defeated Kino but the desire and greed from exploiting the pearl that has ruined his life. He represents the dangers of ambition and greed, and how they jeopardise human vitality.

By the time Santiago reaches home with his marlin, all there is left is a skeletal carcass but his pride and appreciation is not dampened. Physically, Santiago came back with nothing but injuries, but emotionally he held everything and became a revitalised man. His village rejoiced in the carcass, because it was a sign of the momentous struggle, and there is reborn hope like a phoenix from the ashes. The fisherman who once mocked him now stand in awe of him, and Santiago’s marlin carcass reminds us of the vast, every-shifting tension that exists between loss and gain, triumph and defeat, life and death. After the death of their son, Kino and Juana return to the village. As in Chapter One, Kino detachedly observes a cluster of ants, but this time he lays his foot down in their path. This symbolises how Kino has changed his understanding of nature, and watching the ants work around his obstacle he realises that he cannot control nature, or manipulate it for his own devices, as nature always has its way. In the end, Kino did get the ultimate price for his pearl: his son’s life. Through that experience he learnt that some things are priceless because they belong to the earth, and with that thought he returns the pearl to the ocean. The renunciation of the pearl could mean empowerment of Santiago, but also that he will continue to live a life of poverty leads to an element of tragedy in discarding the pearl. The last chapter holds a lingering image of Juana and Kino: “the sun was behind them and their long shadows stalked ahead,”, symbolising their situation: their brightest days being behind them, and a joyless journey to come.