1. The Pearl
Discuss each of the following slides with a different group. After each discussion, I expect you to write a summary of what you discussed with each group. I will be collecting your summaries. We will also be sharing with the entire class.

2. Discuss…
If someone offered you one million dollars, no strings attached, would you accept it? Describe how your life would change if you accepted the money.

3. Describe
Describe a time when your optimism about an object or event turned to disappointment. Could you have done anything to prevent the disappointment? How did your ability or inability to influence the outcome affect your feelings about it?

4. Predict
How would you expect people in a small village to react to a poor man who finds an object of incredible value?

5. Analyze
In a society based on strict social class divisions, what chance do those on the bottom have to move up? How do you feel about people’s chances of moving up in today’s American society? Can you give examples?

6. Connect
In the preface to The Pearl, John Steinbeck calls this story both a “legend” and a “parable.” What do you think of when you think of legends and parables? What do you expect a book that has characteristics of both forms to be like.

7. Symbolism
In fairy tales and parables, a tangible object –a real thing that can be touched or seen- can take on intangible qualities, which cannot be perceived by the senses. What intangible qualities might a pearl represent?

8. Symbolism, part 2
In fairy tales and parables, a tangible object –a real thing that can be touched or seen- can take on intangible qualities, which cannot be perceived by the senses. If good and evil are the intangible qualities, what typically are the tangible objects that represent each?