Thinking Like Steinbeck

Within the first few pages of The Pearl I began analyzing Kino and Juana's way of communication, which I thought was kind of unusual. They spoke mostly with their eyes and facial expressions but on the rare occasions that they opened their mouths, they only spoke a few words at a time. In a sense, their behavior set an eerie mood for the rest of the book. I wondered why the author chose them to have this sort of relationship and I thought of a few possible reasons. Again, one reason might be to contribute to the mood. Another reason is maybe to help illustrate the simplicity of the villager's way of life. Their limited vocabulary reflected the villager's poor education and bad living conditions. On the other hand, when the doctor spoke, he used full sentences and rich vocabulary. From these instances we can assume that the doctor is a well-educated man, which leads me to my final idea: The author used ways of communication to seperate people by class.