The Pearl by John Steinbeck

This is another book, like Frankenstein, whose moral of fortune and ambition comes back with bitter friends. The book was published in 1947. In the story, there is a native Mexican, Kino, who is a pearl diver. He has a wife and a small child.

The child gets sick with a scorpion sting, where the parents take him to the doctor to get treated. But the doctor won't treat the baby unless Kino has money. Kino doesn't have money, so he dives to find a pearl to pay for the doctor.

He finds a pearl. But the pearl is so large, it attracts the attention of the entire town. Fortune at first seems benevolent, but in the end, they also taste the bitter that is attracted by Fortune.

"Luck, he said, sometimes brings bitter friends."

No sooner had he found the pearl then he was besieged by people looking to take it from him. In the end, they Kino had killed 4 people and their own child was shot in the head and was killed. The pearl had cost them the one thing they were trying to save. Kino's ambition cost him his family and a pleasant life of diving for pearls with his family.

Like Frankenstein, the ambition of Kino, like the ambition of Victor Frankenstein, ended up killing the things he loved most.

Here's another on of my favorite quotes from the book:

"But now, by saying what his future was going to be like, he had created it. A plan is a real thing, and things projected are experienced. A plan once made and visualized becomes a reality along with other realities."