Skip to main content

In The Pearl, what internal conflict does Juana experience?

In The Pearl, the protagonist, Kino, and his wife, Juana, find a huge pearl that they believe could make their family rich. The pearl potentially offers their family many things that Juana wants: they could afford to take their sick son to the doctor, for example, or they could afford the cost of school fees and a uniform to send their son to school.


However, it is also immediately evident that keeping the pearl will place their family in danger. The first night after they find the pearl, Kino buries it in a corner of his house. He wakes up during the night when he hears an intruder attempting to dig his way into their home. Kino chases the intruder away, but his wife feels unsafe and begs him to get rid of the pearl.


As their family's misfortunes grow and ultimately culminate in the death of their son, Juana's internal conflict remains her hope for what the pearl could provide their family, and the danger she believes it places them in.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.