"The Pearl" by John Steinbeck. About the book and the use of symbolism.

Authors often write about how they are feeling, or try to send messages through their writing. Although on occasion it is very obvious, sometimes it isn't and their thoughts are just guessed at. The writer's use symbols to stand for what they are really feeling or thinking, that's to leave some of the story to the reader's own mind. In John Steinbeck's, The Pearl a pearl was one of the major symbols used in the book.
In The Pearl one of the main characters in the book is Kino, a poor pearl diver who tries to support his family and wants to send his son to a good school so that he could le…