John Steinbeck's Originality

 
Plagiarism is defined as stealing and passing off the ideas or words of another as one's own. The purpose of my paper is to prove that Steinbeck’s The Pearl was written as an original story, although it may have some similarities to Flight. My paper is going to show the reader that The Pearl was written as an original, well thought out story. While also showing the reader that although the stories do sound alike, Steinbeck could have easily just liked for his stories to connect in theme.
The story Flight, which was written eight years earlier, and The Pearl have a lot in common. The most important similarity is the development in themes. Both stories have similar historical background, similar plot, setting and ending tragedy. Both young men are pursued by trackers because of the fact that they had to protect themselves and in doing so they both killed men. The first similarity we see is that both stories’ main characters are young Indian men who have to deal with leading a not so fruitful life. They were both extremely poor and were basically ranked at the bottom of the society. In the Flight Pepe lives in a shack, and in The Pearl Kino also lives in a shabby brush house. They both lead a very poor but simple way of life.
Next similarity is that both main characters loose the most important things in a consecutive matter. In the “Flight” the man loses his knife, hat, horse and his gun. In The Pearl Kino becomes infuriated when he loses his canoe because it has a hole at the bottom.   Also both stories occur within a five day period.
In the stories both Pepe and Kino are obligated to leave their hometowns because they cannot explain themselves and what they have done. Because they can’t explain themselves both men decide to flee to the mountains. Another similarity is that their trip on the mountains is surrounded by images of death and by that experience they reach another level of awareness. As the scholar Timmerman said “the mountains represent...