The story focuses on Kino, his wife Juana, and their infant son Coyotito. Kino is a diver and a fisher, and although his family lives peacefully they live in poverty. As they have very little money, they are reduced to having their son sleep in a box.
One day a scorpion crawls into Coyotito’s box and stings him. Juana attempts to suck the poison out of the wound. When this fails, Kino and Juana seek out a doctor. The doctor, hearing that they are poor, tells his butler to send them away, not wanting to help them.
Kino goes pearl diving and finds “the Pearl of the World”, a pearl which is the size of a seagull’s egg. Meanwhile, Coyotito recovers from the scorpion’s sting. Word of find the pearl had reached the doctor. The doctor, fuelled by greed to help the family, comes to ‘cure’ Coyotito, and gives the baby a medicine, saying the scorpions bite will continue to make him sick. Shortly after, Coyotito falls ill again, implying that the doctor poisoned him.
The local priest comes to bless Kino’s family. Kino tells him that he will get married to Juana and will buy a rifle, using the pearl as funds. The next day Kino decides to sell the pearl to a local man, who insists to Kino that the pearl is “worthless”. Kino, enraged, goes to several different places in order to sell the pearl, but each place is operated by friends of the first man. Kino realizes that they were conspiring to cheat him out of the priceless pearl.
Whilst enraged, Kino hears “the Song of the Enemy”, which is used to describe how Kino feels when his family is threatened or under duress. After, Kino’s house is destroyed by arson, and blinded by fury, Kino kills a man (presumably the arsonist).
Kino and his familiy decide to travel north to sell the pearl, but soon discover that they are being tracked by three men, two of which are travelling on foot and the third being armed with a rifle, each desperate to obtain the pearl. Kino and Juana try to escape late one night, trying to avoid detection by the men who are settled in a camp nearby. However, Coyotito begins to cry. Juana is unable to console him. The men, believe they hear a coyote in the cave in which Juana hid in with Coyotito. The armed man fires into the cave just as Kino leaps out to attack.
Kino ambushes and kills the three men in a frenzy of blood lust. He then hears the mourning cry of Juana and discovers that Coyotito was killed by the tracker’s shot into the cave. Kino and Juana, carrying the body of Coyotito, return to their village and return the pearl back to the bottom of the sea, in an act to ensure that no one would ever be hurt in the pursuit of obtaining it.
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