Essay On The Great Chain Of Being By John Steinbeck

In John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, the ideas described in “The Great Chain of Being” are best exemplified through Steinbeck’s portrayal of gender issues. This is proven with Kino and Juana’s reactions to the scorpion stinging Coyotito, Juana’s wisdom in her attempt to get rid of the pearl, and Juana’s strength during the family’s flight from their village and the trackers.
When Coyotito was stung, Juana’s immediate action and Kino’s fiery wrath obviously displayed a disturbance within “the hierarchal order within the family” (GCB). Stereotypically, women are thought to be the ones rendered useless by their hysteria, and in the “The Great Chain of Being”, the man is supposed to be above his wife. The Pearl then goes on to directly state that Kino “was helpless, he was in the way” (Steinbeck 6), while Juana took swift control of the situation. But as stated by “The Great Chain of Being”, betraying one’s nature and leaving one’s assigned station on the Great Chain of Being can have great consequences.
Not only was Juana throwing away a possible source of great wealth, she was defying her husband’s wishes in her attempt to circumvent disaster. Juana was able to recognize that placing, the pearl, an object like the “various types of inanimate objects, such as metals, stones, and the four elements”(GCB), from the bottom of the Great Chain was a grave mistake. One that Kino, “whose senses were dulled by his emotion” (Steinbeck 59), couldn’t recognize, again displaying a disturbance in hierarchy, and inadvertently foreshadowing the misfortune to come later in the