High-Q | פסיכומטרי - מרתון

Text VI (Questions 26-30)

John Steinbeck was the type of author who liked to know his material firsthand. He was not content to narrate a story, which had no basis in fact. Thus, many of his works take place in California, where he lived, and they deal with subjects which he thoroughly understood. Within his novels are characters that seem to breathe the very reality of life itself. When not writing about his native California and its citizens, he would use people with whom he had become 5 intimate in other ways. His story THE PEARL was based on real characters Steinbeck became acquainted with during one of his prolonged journeys. Consequently, one of the finest attributes of THE PEARL is the feeling that the author knows his material and his characters in great depth and with perfect accuracy. The scenes in this novel, from its opening with the primitive pearl fishers to the corruption of the town, are narrated with the skill of a person who has witnessed the 10 events. In the late thirties, Steinbeck came to know Ed Ricketts, the owner of a biological laboratory in Monterey. They became partners and engaged in a lengthy exploration of marine life along the shores of the Gulf of California, the setting of THE PEARL. It was here that Steinbeck met the type of Indians who became the characters of THE PEARL, and it was here that he first heard the 15 story of the “pearl of great price.” In a non-fiction book, THE SEA OF CORTEZ, Steinbeck describes, as he does fictionally in THE PEARL, the simple humanity of the native people, their struggles against nature, and their attempts to keep a sense of dignity to their lives as they are constantly being cheated by forces in society which they do not comprehend. As a result of his trip with Ed Ricketts, Steinbeck writes of these people in THE PEARL with great conviction and 20 realism.

מרתון ספר

359

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