The Pearl: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Kino awakes in the early morning and looks around him to see his son still asleep in the hanging box, and his wife lying next to him with her eyes open, as though she’d been watching him as he slept.

He hears in his head the “Song of the Family,” like the songs of his ancestors before him, and then steps outside of his brush house to watch the sun rise. Juana, meanwhile, begins to make a fire in the pit and to grind corn for morning corncakes.

Kino watches a crowd of industrious ants and coaxes a shy dog that has wandered over to their hut, as Juana makes the cakes and sings to Coyotito. It is a morning like all others, safe and whole.

Breakfast sounds come from neighboring huts. Two roosters look to be about to fight.

Kino goes back into the hut and eats his corncake with Juana, both of them silent because they need not speak, as sun streams in through the hut’s crevices.

Suddenly, Kino and Juana freeze as they see a movement from Coyotito’s hanging box and turn their heads to determine its source: a scorpion is climbing slowly down the rope of the hanging box, toward Coyotito.

Kino gets a determined look in his eyes and begins to approach the hanging box, the “Song of Evil” playing in his ears.

As the scorpion moves further down the rope, Juana prays in a whisper, an ancient prayer as well as a Hail Mary.

Kino is reaching for the scorpion when it freezes in place and flicks its tail. Coyotito then laughs and shakes the hanging box’s rope, causing the scorpion to fall on him and sting his shoulder, despite Kino’s attempts to grab it in the air.

From Coyotito’s shoulder, Kino takes the scorpion and squashes it angrily. Juana, meanwhile, tries to suck the poison out of Coyotito’s shoulder. Kino stands by, feeling helpless.

All the neighbors flock to the brush house at the sound of the baby’s cries. They all know that a scorpion bite can easily kill a baby, if sufficient poison has seeped in.

Just as Kino is admiring her fortitude, Juana demands that the doctor be gotten.

Her request, both wonderful and surprising (because the doctor never visits their neighborhood), spreads quickly through the neighbors. When word gets back that the doctor will not come, Juana decides that the family will go to the doctor themselves.

The neighbors follow at the heels of Kino and Juana as they walk to and arrive at the city, replete with plaster, stone, and fancy gardens.

Beggars in front of the church there, who know everything about the town—the sins of its inhabitants, the bad ways of the doctor—pin Kino and Juana down as “poverty people,” and look on to see what will come of their visit.

At the doctor’s gate, Kino hesitates, recalling that the doctor’s people had historically oppressed his own people. Finally, still enraged by the recollection, he knocks the iron ring against the gate and reports Coyotito’s sting to the servant who opens it, speaking in the old language because the servant is of his race. The servant does not reply in the old language, and heads inside to call on the doctor.

The Doctor, fleshy and stout, is in his bed, drinking chocolate in a Parisian dressing gown and dreaming of returning to France. Religious pictures, including a photograph of his dead wife, line his walls.

When the servant tells the doctor about Kino and Juana, and Coyotito’s scorpion bite, the doctor becomes angry, insulted by the notion that he would deign to “cure insect bites for ‘little Indians’” for no money. He says, derogatorily, “I am a doctor, not a veterinary.”

The Doctor asks if Kino has any money, so the servant returns to the gate and asks how Kino planned to pay. When Kino pulls out eight ugly, flat pearls, the servant reports that the doctor had to rush out and would not be able to see them.

Shame settles over the group of neighbors and beggars that has followed Kino and Juana; they disperse to save Kino from the humiliation.

Kino stands for a while at the gate, before putting back on his hat. In a sudden lash, he punches the gate, and then looks down at his bloody knuckles in wonderment.