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ELEVEN The Pearl in the Sea ofCortez: Steinbeck's Use of Environment Kiyoshi Nakayama While the Western Flyer was docked at La Paz, Steinbeck heard a story of ayoung boy whofound apearl ofgreat value, could not sell itfor afair price, and so'threw it back into the sea. This sketch from Sea of Cortez became the germ of Steinbeck's novella, The Pearl. But connections between The Pearl and Sea of Cortez go deeper-to a shared philosophic stance. Steinbeck 's biological holism and environmental sensitivity are reflected in both works. In the "Narrative" section of Sea ofCortez, John Steinbeck notes that "on the water's edge of La Paz a new hotel was going up, and it looked very expensive. Probably the airplanes will bring week-enders from Los Angeles before long, and the beautiful poor bedraggled old town will bloom with a Floridian ugli~ess" (SOC 118). He was prophetic. Fifty years later, in the early summer of 1989, a Mexicana jet brought me and dozens of tourists from Los Angeles to La Paz. The city I found had grown to a population of 180,000 people. The hotel where I stayed, Steinbeck's "new," "expensive" Hotel Perla, was only one of many high-rise luxury units along the beach. Even though I knew that the La Paz of the 1990s would be a far different place from that of the 1940s, I had long wanted to visit the old city-the setting of The Pearl-as well as the Sea of Cortez that Steinbeck delineates so attractively in the novella. Also, I had long wished to learn about the rise and fall of pearl industry in the area and, with luck, also about the Indian boy's story that Steinbeck had heard in 1940. The present essay materialized from this "leisurely" research trip in search of "The Pearl in the Sea of Cortez," tracing closely how Steinbeck made use of what he saw in the Gulf of California in the The Pearl in the Sea ofCortez 195 spring of 1940 to write his own version of the "pearl" story. Accordingly , I will discuss how Steinbeck's organismic biology and philosophy as well as his use of the environment-the sea, the land, and the people of La Paz and the Sea of Cortez-relate to Kino's life and the theme of The Pearl. The Historical Background From 11 March through 20 April 1940, John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts made a scientific expedition to the Gulf of California aboard a chartered purse seiner, the Western Flyer. On the night of 20 March, waiting for a pilot to lead the boat through the channel to La Paz Harbor the next morning, Steinbeck and the crew "wanted very much to get to La Paz," because they "were out of beer" and found "the water in [their] tanks stale-tast~ng" (SOC 101). Steinbeck continues : But there were other reasons why we longed for La Paz. Cape San Lucas had not really been a town, and our crew had convinced itselfthat it had been a very long time out oftouch with civilization. ... In addition, there is the genuinefascination of the city ofLa Paz. Everyone in the area knows the greatness ofLa Paz. You can get anything in the world there, they say. ... It is a proud thing to have been born in La Paz, and a cloud ofdelight hangs over the distant cityfrom the time when it was the great pearl center ofthe world. The robes ofthe Spanish kings and the stoles of bishops in Rome were stiffwith the pearls from La Paz. (SOC 101-102) The history of La Paz dates back to the sixteenth century. A brochure available at the Tourist Information Center reads: La Paz . .. was founded by Hernan Cortes in May 1535. The conqueror called it UPuerto de Santa Cruz" (Port ofthe Holy Cross), but in 1596 Captain Sebastian de Vizcaino, referring to the beautiful bay as uBahia de La Paz/" baptized it with that name. ... It was a coveted prey of English pirates for the best pearls ofthe world found here, and its beaches served them as solid shelter after their raiding the galleons cruising the Pacific Ocean. (La Paz N. pg.) La Paz was permanently settled in 1811 and twenty years later became the capital of all of Baja California. In the course of its history, there was brutal bloodshed, even in this peninsula of Baja Califor- [18.189.2.122] Project MUSE...

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