The Black Pearl by Scott O'Dell

First published: 1967

Subjects: Coming-of-age, family, jobs and work, and religion

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Adventure tale

Time of work: The 1960’s

Recommended Ages: 13-18

Locale: La Paz, Baja California, Mexico

Principal Characters:

• Ramon Salazar, a young man who begins training in his family business in the summer of his sixteenth year but soon learns more about himself and about life than he learns about pearl diving
• Manta Diablo, a legendary kite-shaped sea monster reputed to have seven eyes and seven rows of teeth and capable of easily destroying a ship
• Blas Salazar, Ramon’s father and, of the five pearl dealers in La Paz, the most renowned and respected for the honesty of his dealings and the quality of his pearls
• Gaspar Ruiz, a physically and emotionally intimidating young man claiming to be from Spain, a boastful, bullying liar and a rival to Ramon for possession of the black pearl

Form and Content

The Black Pearl is Ramon Salazar’s first-person account of the events of the summer of his sixteenth year. He tells his tale in retrospect from the vantage point of his newfound wisdom and his newly acquired adulthood. Since his sixteenth birthday in July, he has been a partner in his family’s business. In a short time, he has learned to dive for pearls, has discovered an astounding treasure, and has emerged as a local celebrity. In only four months, however, he has also suffered the bullying of Gaspar Ruiz, the attacks of the Manta Diablo, the death of his father in a great storm, the theft of his treasure, threats to his life, and the challenge of becoming the breadwinner of his family. Ramon’s narrative recounts his education into the myths and repressions of his culture, his training in his profession, and his first efforts to construct his own identity and values.

Once a child who smiled at his mother’s tales of the monster Manta Diablo, Ramon now gives an eyewitness account of both the terror and the beauty of the giant sea creature. The symbolism of the Manta Diablo—the largest of the devilfish, the manta ray—is made clear by an old priest’s tale of how the ancient manta was a land animal long ago cast into exile in the sea just as Lucifer, the enemy of humans and God, was cast out of heaven by the Archangel Michael. In his excursions into the realms of the tropical waters that provide his livelihood, Ramon symbolically delves into the mysterious realms of his unconscious being. Indeed, the ocean and its Manta Diablo offer travelers terror and death, but Ramon testifies to his discovery that the ocean and its awesome winged demon are also keepers of inestimable wealth and absolute beauty. The manta’s amber eye and silver back gleaming in the moonlight of the Vermillion Sea show Ramon the sacred in the universal cycles of death and life, evil and good.

There are eighteen chapters in the novel, depicting three cycles of growth. Ramon is first on land, challenged with new responsibilities in the business office of Salazar and Son, pearl dealers. He then actively seeks the danger of the sea and the challenge of learning to dive for pearls. The hero’s quest for a great black pearl and the material success and ego satisfaction that it represents alternates between sea and shore, at first with the fleet and then totally alone in strange, dark waters. The final and most critical choice in Ramon’s journey is to determine whether the pearl should remain in the lagoon where he found it or should be brought inside the church in the center of his community. That he returns the pearl to the church signifies his decision to ally his powers with the human community.

Like most tales of the initiation of a young person into adulthood, The Black Pearl features a young protagonist who is obedient and responsible, with a strong work ethic. He also has egoistic dreams of success and nagging feelings of inadequacy because of his small stature and sheltered lifestyle. In the classic mythic pattern, Ramon’s journey of initiation requires that he move outside his own society, conquer the monster of his own fears, and then find, seize, and return home with the great treasure—a magnificent, flawless, sixty-two-carat black pearl. This pearl becomes a gleaming symbol of his newly discovered adult identity. The final dilemma in Ramon’s journey is deciding the destiny of the pearl and the destiny of his adult identity. Gaspar Ruiz operates as a foil illuminating his choices. Gaspar chooses false ego, boundless greed, and murderous violence at sea. At last, adrift but alive, Ramon wills the pearl of his life not be dedicated to fear, superstition, and evil. It will remain in the outstretched hand of the statue of the Madonna at the center of the church in the center of his hometown, a perpetual emblem of love, faith, and goodness.

Critical Context

The Black Pearl is among more than two dozen works by one of the most highly respected American writers of fiction for children and young adults. Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960), certainly Scott O’Dell’s best-known work, won the Newbery Medal in 1961. The Hans Christian Andersen Author’s Medal, the highest international recognition for an entire body of work written for young readers, was given to O’Dell in 1972, a first for an American writer. Born in Southern California, O’Dell was particularly drawn to subjects involving the histories of its native peoples. His works have remained popular in classrooms not only because of his trustworthy research on events, culture, and customs but also because the experiences of the protagonists show readers both conflicts of social values and individual desires common to all. Other powerful and universal concerns, such as the relationship between humans and their physical universe and the enigma of humankind’s seemingly boundless inhumanity, are dramatically and vividly explored.

Because The Black Pearl represents and affirms aspects of comfortable family life in a Mexican city, it offers an attractive classroom alternative to more common tales of poverty, struggle, and desperate attempts at escape. It is nevertheless far less popular among teachers and students than Island of the Blue Dolphins, perhaps because of the protagonist’s culturally induced male myopia. Women are inconsequential in the novel; their only role in the provincial and patriarchal world represented by the protagonist is to submit to men’s will and look to a man, even a sixteen-year-old, for leadership and the determination of the future. There is also an unquestioned and unexamined hint of racism in Ramon’s participation in the disdain with which local Indian cultural views are regarded. Even the novel’s dominant characters, Ramon and the macho Gaspar, seem one-dimensional as foils for each other, and their fates seem more didactic than satisfying. Yet, the metaphor of a jewel of personal self-esteem discovered by a young man and shared with his world glows in a reader’s memory.