The Lady and the Tiger and ''The Pearl'' - Book Report/Review Example

The authors grippingly maintain the curiosity in order to reveal man's helplessness and limitations in his life. In other words, the attempt here is to study the barbaric king in Stockton's story by comparing him to the relentless efforts of Kino, who is bold or foolish to nurture his ambitions. Nothing pleased the king "so much as to make the crooked straight and crush down uneven places" (Stockton).In both of them, there is an extraordinary wisdom posited by the authors. The tragedy is that it is too fantastic to bring happiness to a hard realistic society or world.

An impossible reality is fictionalized to remind the readers that there is a great gap between dream and reality.Stockton's king, belonging to very olden time, has been always successful in turning his fancies into facts. His idealism exhibited through his arena cannot be rejected as a mere barbaric strategy to do justice to his subjects. It has the basic qualities of a good scheme of retribution and reward: "crime was punished, or virtue rewarded". The tiger and the lady are mere symbols in the story.

What is important is the way he differentiates innocence and crime, and his firm determination to punish the guilty and give a reward to the innocent. The cruelty is not in the way he throws his criminal to the beast as a form of punishment, but in the way, he rewards the innocent. He is indifferent to human emotions and the choices one cherish. Even the married should accept and marry the beautiful lady of the land as a reward. The real charm of the story lies in the scene where the entire people throng to enjoy witnessing either the way the tiger devours the guilty or to watch the innocent wed the most beautiful lady.

Taken at a cosmic level, this public indifference has a touch of divinity in it. God too has been indifferent to human sufferings and joy. The bloody slaughter and the hilarious wedding, therefore, should be taken as the extremity to which man is fated to accept. The story reached its climax when the king's daughter becomes a victim of his barbaric idealism. It is this irony which lifts the story to a great height. One cannot escape from the trap which one sets knowingly or unknowingly is the message emerging from the story.

Similarly, the pearl in Steinbeck's story becomes a symbol of the extreme force determining one's fate. It is a symbol of wealth or the greed for wealth. It also smells of capitalism. However, the real pearl in the story is the baby. Kino, the father, pins great hope on the child. As in Stockton's story, the central theme in The Pearl moves around innocence and crime. The humble family of Kino is not only innocent but they are also pure in their ambitions. They only want their baby to grow into a great and rich man.

The fate is otherwise. The scorpion stings the baby, and the doctor denies medical help.