The ending of The Pearl, where Kino and Juana return to the sea and throw the pearl back into the water after losing their son, resists a single, clean interpretation, which is exactly what makes it such fertile ground for essay writing. Students genuinely disagree about whether the ending represents hope, defeat, or something more complicated, and that disagreement is worth building an assignment around rather than resolving for them.

Students who read the ending as hopeful often point to Kino and Juana walking together, side by side, as a sign of restored partnership and a return to their former way of life. Students who read it as tragic focus on everything permanently lost, Coyotito's death chief among them, arguing that no return to normalcy can undo that loss. Both readings have solid textual support, which is precisely why this prompt works so well as an argumentative essay.

A third, more nuanced reading treats the ending as neither fully hopeful nor fully tragic, but as an ambiguous return to a harder-won, more clear-eyed peace. Encouraging students to consider this middle position, rather than forcing a binary choice, often produces the most sophisticated essays in the entire unit.

Structuring the Debate Before the Essay

A structured class debate, with students assigned to argue a specific interpretation regardless of their personal view, works well as pre-writing for this essay. Being required to defend a position, even one they don't personally hold, forces students to engage seriously with textual evidence rather than simply restating their gut reaction to the ending.

• Does the essay commit to a clear interpretation of the ending rather than staying vague?
• Does it use specific details from the final chapter, not just general impressions?
• Does it acknowledge at least one piece of evidence that complicates its own reading?
• Does it connect the interpretation of the ending back to the novella's larger themes?
• Does the conclusion explain why this interpretation matters to the story's overall meaning?

Grading Interpretive Essays Fairly

Because there's no single correct reading of this ending, grading should focus entirely on the strength and consistency of the argument rather than agreement with any particular interpretation. Two essays reaching opposite conclusions should be capable of earning the same high score if both are well-argued and well-supported by specific textual evidence.

Watch for essays that hedge so much between interpretations that they never actually commit to a claim. A degree of nuance is valuable, but an essay needs a clear central argument to grade well, even when that argument acknowledges genuine ambiguity in the text.

Handling Student Frustration With Ambiguity

Some students find ambiguous endings genuinely frustrating and want to be told the "right" answer before they write. It's worth being direct with these students that literary ambiguity is often intentional, and that their job is to build the most convincing case for one reading, not to guess what the teacher secretly believes the correct interpretation to be.

Sharing a brief excerpt from Steinbeck's own commentary on the novella, where available, can also help students see that even the author's stated intentions don't fully resolve every question the ending raises, which reinforces that genuine literary ambiguity is a legitimate and worthwhile subject for analysis.

Making the Most of This High-Engagement Assignment

The ending of The Pearl consistently generates some of the most engaged classroom discussion and writing of the entire unit, precisely because it doesn't hand students an easy answer. A well-structured debate and essay assignment built around that ambiguity turns what could be a confusing final chapter into one of the most productive parts of the unit.

Grading these essays for argument strength rather than a predetermined correct answer keeps the assignment intellectually honest, and it tends to produce writing that genuinely reflects what students think, rather than what they assume a teacher wants to hear.