The sea shapes the destiny of the Kino family:
TO GET ANSWERS TO THE PEARL ESSAY QUESTIONS
The Kino family comprises Kino, Juana and Coyotito. They are a poor family living in a brush house by the sea in the outskirts of La Paz and eking out a living from hunting for pearls and fishing from the sea. They are seemingly destined to remain poor pearl hunters.
Juan Tomas, Kino's brother, tells us that Indians are kind of meant to remain poor harvesters of pearls. The people have even tried to get better markets for their harvest from the sea twice, but their noble efforts have come a cropper, with the people charged with the responsibility disappearing with the pearls and the money, never to be heard from again. We are told it is like the town keeps track of its units. Everyone keeps to the beaten track and anyone who tries anything new disappears from the unit, or rather is cast away, never to be heard from again. The Catholic Father never tires in his frequent sermons to remind his congregation that each has been accorded a place in life and must keep it. Trying to do anything different is a betrayal to God who has assigned the roles. Even as they hope to find The Pearl of Destiny, in their hearts they know it is a pat on the back by
God, or gods or both. It is a part of destiny as everything is determined by forces beyond them. It is in light of this that the Kino family can be examined. Perhaps they prayed too hard on the day Coyotito was stung by the scorpion and the gods decided to humour them by playing a very cruel joke on them. The discovery of the Pearl That Might Be turns their lives around in a way they could never have imagined in their wildest nightmare. In their minds, the sea has brought them some unimaginable luck and fortune. They can now have the church wedding of their dreams, wear new clothes and their baby can go to school to lift them out of their ignorance. Kino can now even afford a gun, a symbol of power and authority.
But their lives turn for the worse. The love and harmony that they once knew suddenly disappears. They lose their house and means of livelihood, the boat. They become hunted prey by those who desire to take their fortune from them. They leave the only place they have called home and the only people they have known and flee into the desert and the mountains. In the mountains they lose their only child, the one they had laid so much hope in. They go back to their home and shattered lives, to continue in their humdrum existence, much worse than they had been before 'fortune' showed up at their door. All the efforts, all the dreams and aspirations they had drawn from their gift from the sea go back into the sea, from whence it had come. This is when Kino belatedly agrees to throw back the evil pearl into the sea like Juana had previously urged him to.
It is like their destiny is what the Catholic Father has always preached. The destiny is to remain in their small corner of the world in their poverty and ignorance. It is to harvest small, run-of-the-mill pearls and sell them at miserable prices to greedy merchants for a pittance. The plight of the family only goes to reinforce what they have always known; that the gods are never happy when you try to grab fortune from the sea out of your own efforts.
The Kino family's destiny appears to be tied to the sea in their backyard. They are to remain poor pearl harvesters living in a crowded tiny brush village outside a town that has turned its back on them.
TO GET ANSWERS TO PEARL ESSAY QUESTIONS
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