The Pearl

            
             the extract from John Steinbeck's lyrical story.
            
             A lyrical story of John Steinbeck is called The Pearl-. The action of the story takes place in United States of America, somewhere at South, probably in California. There are no concrete geographical names mentioned in the text, however we can find the approximate location, judging by the author's use of proper names (e.g. Kino and Juana), his use of the language (americanisms favors-, etc.) and of course by the background information, given before the extract. .
             The main idea of the text is bad luck, which is simbolised by The Pearl-. All the action in the text is set around the Pearl. The author uses capitalisation in order to emphasize the significance of this thing. The pearl is a symbol. For each person it has its own meaning. For beggars the pearls find means bigger alms, for the doctor the pearl is a symbol of luxury, Paris, etc., for Kino it is probably a symbol of a lucky family life.
             The structure of the text is quite hard to define, as the given text is an extract, consisting of seven relatively small paragraphs. In general the text can be devided into three parts. .
             The first part serves as a sort of introduction, it can be called a starting point of the text. In this episode a town, which is a thing like a colonial enemy- and people's life in town are described. The author tells us about the main event of the story - Kino had found the Pearl of the World- and how news spread among people, living in the town. The author uses many stylistic devices, concerning mainly the town, such as personification (colonial animal-, etc.), polysindeton (e.g. a nervous system and a head and shoulders and feet-), coupling (scramble and dart-, pulsing and vibrating-), zeugma (put a thoughtful look in his eyes and a memory of certain repairs.""), metaphor (a colonial animal-) and lots of epithets (e.g. a thoughtful look-, foaming wave-, etc.).
             The second part starts with the third paragraph.