The Pearl: Rewritten Beginning
Here is an alternate beginning of John Steinbeck’s The Pearl.
Rewritten beginning
Suddenly Kino awoke from his sleep, as if on instinct. His eyes surveyed the dark realm in which he had slept. A piece of coal burnt dankly and secretly as his wife rapidly fanned it alive, spawning a vicious fire licking the atmosphere with its long flames.
To avoid the ardent spears which the fire spew, Kino turned his head to Coyotito, his innocent son laying in a seemingly safe vessel. The child’s harmless face kept Kino’s gaze for a while, when the Utopian moment was suddenly disturbed.
The tranquil silence slowly mixed into the sound of tripping feet. A minor movement stole Kino’s focus. In the light of the fire’s fierce flames, a scorpion lead astray was climbing the rope hanging above Coyotito’s vessel.
His mind clouded with ferocity and love for his child, Kino viciously threw his paw against the poisonous insect threatening what he held so dearly. Too early slipped the vile threat, and it struck as it fell upon the child’s soft neck.
Enraged, Kino smashed the scorpion against the dirty ground of his hay shelter, stomping and crushing it into oblivion. Meanwhile his wife tried to draw the secrete from Coyotito’s wound, but it was too late. The venom was spreading in his helpless body.
Rationale
In order to make the story seem more interesting, I started the introduction with an event, ignoring unnecessary adjectives describing the setting, since the setting will be revealed throughout the story anyway.
The word “suddenly” is charged with a certain feeling, feelings of ferocity, haste and to an extent recklessness. By introducing the story with such a mood, I make the reader alert and awake. The main character’s name is used very early, which indicates that he is important for the plot. Conveniently, Kino is a primitive name that leads one’s thought to barbarism, village-dwelling and low-developed tools.
Since I want Kino to be portrayed as a vicious and primitive beast in the beginning, I associate the words “instinct”, “survey” and “sleep” with him. To emphasize the primitive setting, the room in which Kino awakes is dark, and he sees only the tiny flame which Juana is reviving.
All that is associated with danger keeps one awake and interested, which is why I choose to put focus on the fire. Aggressive adjectives and personifications are utilized to describe the fire and its flames. Because of the personifications, the reader is required to think, and therefore stays interested as long as they are not too far-fetched.
The second paragraph consists of a transition between danger and safety – it first continues the danger theme with “ardent spears”, and switches to a safer vocabulary with words such as “safe”, “child” and “harmless”. Emphasizing this safety too much would result in boring the reader, and therefore the paragraph is abruptly canceled with a cliffhanger.
“The sound of tripping feet” is often associated with harmless insects, which is why I use it in this manner – the reader is surprised when the scorpion is revealed, which makes them even more awake. By mixing the fire with the scorpion, an inherently dangerous creature, a very tensed atmosphere is achieved.
A vocabulary hinting of anger and recklessness is still being used (”clouded”, “ferocity”, “viciously”), but it is blended with words of secrecy and lethality, such as “poisonous”, “vile” and “venom”. This makes the reader further think of Kino as a vicious beast, an effect which is also achieved by using the metaphor “paw”.
Coyotito is portrayed as innocent by words like “helpless”, since this amplifies the effect of him being the victim of the scorpion’s poison.
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