THE UNSUCCESSFUL CLASS STRUGGLE AS REPRESENTED BY KINO’S EXPERIENCE IN JOHN STEINBECK’S “THE PEARL”
Rut Arsari Christy
ABSTRACT
Anyone who gets a fortune will most probably be rich. However, The Pearl, depicts Kino, a pearl hunter who found a fortune; i.e. the biggest pearl ever, to remain poor. Kino should be able to have a better life because if he sells the pearl, he will get a lot of money. Therefore, it is quite surprising that Kino and his family are depicted to remain poor at the end of the story. Since The Pearl doesn’t portray an economically homogenous society, such a society fits Marxist ideas, which divides a society into two big groups, i. e. the rich and the poor. The study tries to find out why Kino failed to improve his life although he had already owned the biggest pearl ever. The finding of this research is to explain about the facts of class struggle. Through this research, it will be known that one’s success is not only determined by individual efforts, but also by external forces. A society may not support a lower class’s struggle to go to the higher class, and that individual attempts to fight against the domination of the powerful group will be mostly useless.
