Okay, okay… I got the title a little wrong. Steinbeck’s book is actually titled The Pearl. I started thinking about this book because the current value of the Mega Millions lottery is $850 million. The current value of the Power Ball lottery is $730 million.
The Pearl is a wonderful, concise novel of about 90 pages. It is not near as well known as Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, but it should be. The language and the imagery are captivating and the narrative is spellbinding. If I remember the back story of this novel it is based on an old Spanish legend.
The story is situated somewhere in South America. The primary protagonists of the story are an exceedingly impoverished indigenous couple, Continue reading “The Lottery by John Steinbeck”