The Music of John Steinbeck

I was recently asked to consider writing an essay about Steinbeck’s short novel The Pearl to be included in a text series for secondary and undergraduate English education. Frankly The Pearl wasn’t one of my favorite Steinbeck books, and I couldn’t imagine I would be able to come up with 20 pages on the short novel. But the more I reread it, the more the subject of the Song of the Pearl kept nudging my interest. I became curious about Steinbeck’s specifying a “song” as opposed to a musical note, chord, or phrase. I knew he was interested in classical music, and I believed his choice of the word “song” was important to the story. But the publisher’s formatting specifications were overwhelming and I couldn’t decide how to reduce the content to fit within the length requirements, so I decided to publish it elsewhere. I believe doing so is important to my personal mission to support the practical and scientific psychology of Carl Jung and William James as it was deftly applied by John Steinbeck in his fiction and non-fiction. The Song of the Pearl is about personal styles, levels of maturity, attitudes, and how such things influence individual perception, judgment, decision-making, problem-solving, and social bodies like the small indigenous coastal village of the central character in the novel.