The Pearl (novella)
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The Pearl (novella)
''The Pearl'' is a novella by the American author John Steinbeck. The story, first published in 1947, follows a pearl diver, Kino, and explores man’s purpose as well as greed, defiance of societal norms, and evil. Steinbeck's inspiration was a Mexican folk tale from La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico, which he had heard in a visit to the formerly pearl-rich region in 1940. The book was adapted as a Mexican film named '' La Perla'' (1947) and as a cult Kannada movie ''Ondu Muttina Kathe'' (1987). The story is one of Steinbeck's most popular books and has been widely used in middle and high school classes. ''The Pearl'' is sometimes considered a parable. Plot Kino, a poor pearl fisherman, lives with his wife Juana and their infant son Coyotito in La Paz, Baja California Sur. Kino sees a scorpion crawl down one of the ropes holding up the hanging box that serves as Coyotito's crib and tries to remove it. However, Coyotito shakes the rope, causing the scorpion to fall into the ...
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John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception." He has been called "a giant of American letters." During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels ''Tortilla Flat'' (1935) and ''Cannery Row'' (1945), the multi-generation epic '' East of Eden'' (1952), and the novellas ''The Red Pony'' (1933) and ''Of Mice and Men'' (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning ''The Grapes of Wrath'' (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies. Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particularly in ...
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Indigenous Peoples Of The Americas
The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples. Many Indigenous peoples of the Americas were traditionally hunter-gatherers and many, especially in the Amazon basin, still are, but many groups practiced aquaculture and agriculture. While some societies depended heavily on agriculture, others practiced a mix of farming, hunting, and gathering. In some regions, the Indigenous peoples created monumental architecture, large-scale organized cities, city-states, chiefdoms, states, kingdoms, republics, confederacies, and empires. Some had varying degrees of knowledge of engineering, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, writing, physics, medicine, planting and irrigation, geology, mining, metallurgy, sculpture, and gold smithing. Many parts of the Americas are still populated by Indigenous peoples; some countries have ...
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Eusebio Kino
Eusebio Francisco Kino ( it, Eusebio Francesco Chini, es, Eusebio Francisco Kino; 10 August 1645 – 15 March 1711), often referred to as Father Kino, was a Tyrolean Jesuit, missionary, geographer, explorer, cartographer and astronomer born in the Territory of the Bishopric of Trent, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. For the last 24 years of his life he worked in the region then known as the Pimería Alta, modern-day Sonora in Mexico and southern Arizona in the United States. He explored the region and worked with the indigenous Native American population, including primarily the Tohono O'Odham, Sobaipuri and other Upper Piman groups. He proved that the Baja California Territory was not an island but a peninsula by leading an overland expedition there. By the time of his death he had established 24 missions and visitas (country chapels or visiting stations). Early life Kino was born Eusebio Chini (the spelling Kino was the version for use in Spanish-speaking domains) in ...
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Pearl Hunting
Pearl hunting, also known as pearling, is the activity of recovering pearls from wild molluscs, usually oysters or mussels, in the sea or freshwater. Pearl hunting was prevalent in the Persian Gulf region and Japan for thousands of years. On the northern and north-western coast of Western Australia pearl diving began in the 1850s, and started in the Torres Strait Islands in the 1860s, where the term also covers diving for nacre or mother of pearl found in what were known as pearl shells. In most cases the pearl-bearing molluscs live at depths where they are not manually accessible from the surface, and diving or the use of some form of tool is needed to reach them. Historically the molluscs were retrieved by freediving, a technique where the diver descends to the bottom, collects what they can, and surfaces on a single breath. The diving mask improved the ability of the diver to see while underwater. When the surface-supplied diving helmet became available for underwater work, it ...
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Protagonist
A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a story contains a subplot, or is a narrative made up of several stories, then each subplot may have its own protagonist. The protagonist is the character whose fate is most closely followed by the reader or audience, and who is opposed by the antagonist. The antagonist provides obstacles and complications and creates conflicts that test the protagonist, revealing the strengths and weaknesses of the protagonist's character, and having the protagonist develop as a result. Etymology The term ''protagonist'' comes , combined of (, 'first') and (, 'actor, competitor'), which stems from (, 'contest') via (, 'I contend for a prize'). Ancient Greece The earliest known examples of a protagonist are found in Ancient Greece. At first, dramatic pe ...
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Paradox
A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically unacceptable conclusion. A paradox usually involves contradictory-yet-interrelated elements that exist simultaneously and persist over time. They result in "persistent contradiction between interdependent elements" leading to a lasting "unity of opposites". In logic, many paradoxes exist that are known to be invalid arguments, yet are nevertheless valuable in promoting critical thinking, while other paradoxes have revealed errors in definitions that were assumed to be rigorous, and have caused axioms of mathematics and logic to be re-examined. One example is Russell's paradox, which questions whether a "list of all lists that do not contain themselves" would include itself, and showed that attempts to found set theory on the identification ...
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Richard Harris
Richard St John Francis Harris (1 October 1930 – 25 October 2002) was an Irish actor and singer. He appeared on stage and in many films, notably as Corrado Zeller in Michelangelo Antonioni's '' Red Desert'', Frank Machin in ''This Sporting Life'', for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, and as King Arthur in the 1967 film ''Camelot'', as well as the 1981 revival of the stage musical. He played an English aristocrat captured by the Sioux in '' A Man Called Horse'' (1970), Oliver Cromwell in ''Cromwell'' (1970), an embattled Irish farmer in Jim Sheridan's '' The Field'' (which earned him a second Academy Award nomination for Best Actor), English Bob in Clint Eastwood's revisionist Western ''Unforgiven'' (1992), Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in '' Gladiator'' (2000), '' The Count of Monte Cristo'' (2002) as Abbé Faria, and Albus Dumbledore in the first two '' Harry Potter'' films: ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'' (2001) and ''Harry Pott ...
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Lukas Haas
Lukas Daniel Haas (born April 16, 1976) is an American actor and musician. His acting career has spanned four decades, during which he has appeared in more than 50 feature films and a number of television shows and stage productions. Early life Haas was born in West Hollywood, California, the son of Berthold Haas, an artist, and Emily Tracy, an author. His mother is from Texas, and his father emigrated from Germany. He has two brothers: twins Simon Jakoway Haas and Nikolai Johannes Haas, both designers. Acting career Haas was discovered at the age of five in his kindergarten by casting director Margery Simkin. His first screen role was as a child in the 1983 nuclear holocaust film '' Testament''. He became more widely known in 1985 when, at the age of eight, he appeared in ''Witness''. His performance as an Amish boy who is the sole witness to a police officer's murder was well received by critics. Haas followed this with roles in films such as ''Solarbabies'' (1986) and ''Lady ...
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Alfredo Zacharias
Alfredo (, ) is a cognate of the Anglo-Saxon name Alfred and a common Italian, Galician, Portuguese and Spanish language personal name. People with the given name include: *Alfredo (born 1946), Brazilian footballer born as Alfredo Mostarda Filho *Alfredo II (1920–1997), Brazilian footballer born as Alfredo Ramos dos Santos *Albee Benitez (born 1966), Filipino-American businessman and politician born as Alfredo Benitez *Aldo Sambrell, a European actor also known as Alfredo Sanchez Brell *Alfredo (album), an album by Freddie Gibbs and the Alchemist * Alfredo Ábalos (born 1986), Argentine footballer *Alfredo Aceves (born 1982), Mexican baseball player * Alfredo Aglietti (born 1970), Italian footballer and manager * Alfredo Aguilar (born 1988), Paraguayan goaltender * Alfredo Armas Alfonzo (1921–1990), Venezuelan writer *Alfredo Alonso, Cuban-born media executive with Clear Channel Radio *Alfredo Álvarez Calderón (1918–2001), Peruvian diver * Alfredo Amézaga (born 1978), Mex ...
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Ball State University
Ball State University (Ball State, State or BSU) is a public university, public research university in Muncie, Indiana. It has two satellite facilities in Fishers, Indiana, Fishers and Indianapolis. On July 25, 1917, the Ball brothers, industrialists and founders of the Ball Corporation, acquired the foreclosed Indiana Normal Institute for $35,100 and gave the school and surrounding land to the State of Indiana. The Indiana General Assembly accepted the donation in the spring of 1918, with an initial 235 students enrolling at the Indiana State Normal School – Eastern Division on June 17, 1918. Ball State is Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity". The university is composed of seven academic colleges. , total enrollment was 21,597 students, including 15,205 undergraduates and 5,817 postgraduates. The university offers about 120 undergraduate majors and 130 minor areas of study and mo ...
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Jack Wagner (screenwriter)
Jack Wagner (May 20, 1891 – July 13, 1963) was an American Academy Award nominee screenwriter and cinematographer mostly during the silent era of motion pictures. Biography Born in Monterey, California, United States, Wagner was one of five children, all boys, of William Wallace Wagner, a railroad conductor, and Edith Wagner, a writer who provided dispatches for the ''Christian Science Monitor'' during the Mexican Revolution. He lived in Mexico from about 1895 to 1909 before moving to Los Angeles to work for D. W. Griffith on his early films. Between the years 1909 and 1912, Wagner worked mostly as a furniture painter, set designer and second unit cameraman. He then turned his attention to gag writing and found a job with Mack Sennett writing gags for Keystone Kops shorts. His specialty was comedy construction, especially the famed car chase scenes. He often alternated between writing comedy and working behind the camera as a principal photographer or assistant cameraman. ...
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La Perla (film)
''La perla'' (''The Pearl'') is a 1947 Mexican-American film directed by Emilio Fernández. It is based on the 1947 novella '' The Pearl'' by John Steinbeck, who also co-wrote the screenplay. In 2002, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Plot summary In a fishing village in La Paz, Mexico, pearl fisherman Kino (Armendáriz) and his wife Juana (Marqués) are in anguish because their infant son Juanito was stung by a scorpion. The nearest doctor, a foreigner, refuses to treat him without adequate payment and he is taken instead to a traditional healer (curandero). The doctor does not want anything to do with the natives. Later, the doctor and his brother (Wagner), a loan shark, meet Kino after he finds a valuable pearl and they decide to steal it from him. The opening scene shows waves crashing and people of the village standing on the beach wa ...
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