Coyotito
Coyotito, the infant son of Kino and Juana, is the youngest and most defenseless member of the family at the center of John Steinbeck's The Pearl. His scorpion sting on the first morning of the story triggers the desperate search for medical help that leads directly to the discovery of the great pearl, and his death at the climax of the narrative becomes the irreversible consequence of Kino's refusal to abandon the jewel. Coyotito is less a developed character than a symbolic presence—the embodiment of innocence, hope, and the future Kino dreams of buying with the pearl's wealth—but his physical vulnerability and ultimate destruction drive the novella's moral and emotional arc.
Identity and Introduction
Coyotito is introduced as a sleeping infant in a hanging box in his parents' brush house. Kino's first action upon waking is to look at the box where Coyotito sleeps, and Juana's first movement is to go to the box and speak a reassuring word. The baby is described as laughing and reaching up his hand toward the scorpion that descends the rope toward him, a gesture of innocent curiosity that places him directly in harm's way. When the scorpion falls onto his shoulder and strikes, Coyotito screams with pain, and the neighbors pour into the house, passing the word: "Scorpion. The baby has been stung." The community knows that while an adult might survive the sting, a baby could easily die from the poison, and they describe the progression of symptoms—swelling, fever, tightened throat, stomach cramps—that could lead to death.
Role in the Plot
Coyotito's injury is the immediate cause of every major event in the story. Juana insists on taking him to the doctor, a decision that leads Kino to the gate of the doctor's house, where he is humiliated and refused treatment because he has only eight small seed pearls to offer as payment. That humiliation, combined with the need to pay for the baby's care, drives Kino to dive for pearls, where he finds the great pearl. When the swelling on Coyotito's shoulder begins to recede after Juana applies a seaweed poultice, Kino interprets the improvement as a sign that the pearl has healing power, and he howls with triumph. The doctor later visits the house, poisons Coyotito to create a false crisis, and then administers an antidote, using the baby's illness as a pretext to search for the pearl's hiding place. Throughout the middle of the novella, Coyotito is carried by Juana in a sling made from her shawl, nursed, and soothed, but he remains largely passive—an object of adult concern rather than an agent.
The Climax and Death
During the family's flight into the mountains, pursued by trackers hired by the pearl buyers, Coyotito becomes the source of the sound that betrays their hiding place. Kino and Juana take refuge in a shallow cave above a pool, and Juana whispers to Coyotito, begging him to be quiet. She covers his head with her shawl, but the baby whimpers. The watcher below hears the cry and says, "It sounded like a cry, almost like a human—like a baby." Another man dismisses it as a coyote pup, but the watcher cocks his rifle and says, "If it's a coyote, this will stop it." Kino is in mid-leap toward the trackers when the gun fires. After Kino kills all three men, he stands uncertainly, and then his brain clears and he recognizes the sound coming from the cave: "the keening, moaning, rising hysterical cry from the little cave in the side of the stone mountain, the cry of death." Coyotito has been shot through the head.
Symbolic Significance
Coyotito's death is the final, irreversible cost of Kino's refusal to give up the pearl. Throughout the story, Kino's vision of the future is centered on his son: in the pearl he sees Coyotito dressed in a blue sailor suit, sitting at a school desk, reading from a great book. "My son will go to school," Kino declares. "My son will read and open the books, and my son will write and will know writing." The baby represents the possibility of escape from the cycle of poverty and ignorance that has trapped Kino's people for four hundred years. But the pearl, which was supposed to buy that future, instead draws the violence that destroys it. When Kino finally looks into the pearl after the killing, he sees "Coyotito lying in the little cave with the top of his head shot away." The pearl has become "gray and ulcerous," and he throws it back into the sea. Coyotito's body, carried by Juana in a shawl "crusted with dried blood," is the silent witness to the failure of the dream. The family returns to La Paz walking side by side, and the people who see them say they "seemed to be removed from human experience; that they had gone through pain and had come out on the other side." Coyotito's death is the event that makes that transformation complete and irreversible.
