John Steinbeck uses many examples of animal imagery to help readers better understand characters' motivations and the complexity of the situations in which they find themselves. The short novel The Pearl is an extremely complex and elaborate story that is littered with extensive character emotions and actions as well as confusing situations, which the animal imagery helps grasp in an understandable way.
A good example of animal imagery that is applied to The Pearl is the way John describes Kino when he senses the danger when he and his family, Juana and Coyotito, are running away to a saf…