Colonial society’s oppression of native cultures.

Kino’s songs; nature imagery

"She looked up at him, her eyes as cold as the eyes of a lioness."

It (the canoe) was a bulwark (wall of defense) against starvation.

Fiddler crabs bubbled and sputtered in their holes in the sand, and in the shallows little lobsters popped in and in and out of their tiny homes in the rubble and sand.

The narrator focuses on Kino’s thoughts and feelings, but sometimes switches to Juana or the doctor. She/he also gives opinions about what’s happening.

The beach was yellow sand, but at the water;s edge a rubble of shell and algae took its place.

"Across the brush fence were other brush houses and the smoke came from them too..."

"This doctor was of a race which for nearly four hundred years had beaten and starved and robbed and despised kino's race..."

Kino

the doctor

the pearl represents hope; the scorpion represents fate; Kino’s canoe represents survival

This was the bed that had raised the King of Spain to be a great power in Europe, had helped to pay for his wars, and had decorated the churches ...

--she had prayed that they might find a pearl with which to hire the doctor to cure the baby, for the minds of the people are as unsubstantial as the mirage of the Gulf (the narrator insults Juana's thinking)

In the surface of the great pearl, he could see his dreams form...He put back his head and howeled.

Kino had wondered often at the iron (strength) in his patient, fragile (weak) wife.

Juana prayed to find a pearl so that they could pay the doctor to cure the baby. In fact, Juana's remedy was better than anything the doctor would do.

A poor man throws a valuable pearl in the ocean because it only brought him saddness and problems.

They knew his ignorance, his cruelty, his avarice, his appetites, his sins. (a list of descriptive words to emphasize doctor's bad traits)

...the indigene came humbly to the (doctor's) door. (The words emphasize the circumstances of the the poor people).