their baby sleeps, and their meager breakfast of corncakes.

Later in the chapter, as they wait at the door of the doctor’s house, he and his surroundings are described at length. Steinbeck uses detailed imagery to convey his wealth:

On his lap was a silver tray with a silver chocolate pot and a tiny cup of eggshell china, so delicate that it looked silly when he lifted it with his big hand, lifted it with the tips of thumb and forefinger and spread the other three fingers wide to get them out of the way.

A simile is a comparison of unlike things for effect using “like” or “as.” A simile is used for Juana’s eyes, comparing her to a lioness: “She looked up at him, her eyes as cold as the eyes of a lioness.” In another simile, Kino’s “small misshapen seed pearls” are said to be “as ugly and gray as little ulcers.”

A metaphor is a direct comparison of unlike things for effect. Juana’s eyes are directly compared to stars: “Her dark eyes made little reflected stars.”

Steinbeck uses repetition and parallelism together in explaining the townspeople’s understanding of the village events and the doctor’s ways. One type of repetition employed is anaphora, the repetition of a word or phrase in successive phrases or sentences. Steinbeck begins numerous sentences with “They knew,” and in parallel sentence structure, a direct object follows this opening.

They knew every little scandal and some very big crimes .… And they knew the doctor. They knew his ignorance, his cruelty, his avarice, his appetites, his sins.

They knew his clumsy abortions and the little brown pennies he gave sparingly for alms.

Within this passage, Steinbeck also employs asyndeton, the omission of conjunctions within a sequence: “his ignorance, his cruelty, his avarice, his appetites, his sins.”

At the end of Chapter 2 of The Pearl, word has spread to other fishermen about Kino's discovery. When Chapter 3 begins, word has spread throughout the town as he's just reaching shore. Chapter 3 opens with a simile. A simile compares two different things using "like" or "as." A simile is a type of metaphor. 

A town is a thing like a colonial animal. A town has a nervous system and a head and shoulders and feet. A town is a thing separate from all other towns, so that there are no two towns alike. And a town has a whole emotion. 

Steinbeck describes the town as a living organism. When one part of it is affected, the other parts react. For some of Kino's neighbors, the pearl is a blessing and therefore (albeit mostly for selfish reasons) others (other parts of the town/organism) feel blessed. However, the pearl eventually becomes the object of everyone's dreams and Kino becomes the obstacle to those dreams. Therefore, many regard Kino as an enemy. A few paragraphs into Chapter 3, Steinbeck compares this influx of malicious thoughts to a scorpion bite. Except, in this case, the town poisons itself. 

The poison sacs of the town began to manufacture venom, and the town swelled and puffed with the pressure of it. 

Just as Coyotito was bitten and became sick, the town (a living organism like Coyotito) is bitten by their own greedy infatuation with the pearl. They become sick with selfishness and hateful thoughts towards Kino and his family. The town is "like" a living thing and, in this case, they poison themselves by succumbing to their greed. 

A simile is a literary device that makes a direct comparison between two different things using the words "like" or "as." At the beginning of chapter 3, Steinbeck utilizes a simile to compare the town outside of Kino's ocean front village to a colonial animal by writing, "A town is a thing like a colonial animal" (11). Steinbeck goes on to personify the town by writing that it has a nervous system, head, shoulders, and feet that enable news to travel faster than little boys can run. A colonial animal is a collective life form comprising of individual organisms that are interconnected. Steinbeck comparing the town to a colonial animal is an accurate description that depicts how the civilians in the town are closely connected and share news. This is evident by the speed in which the news regarding Kino's pearl rapidly spreads throughout the town and allows the corrupt pearl dealers to begin plotting on how to purchase the pearl for much less than it is worth.

Steinbeck compares the town to an animal in the beginning of chapter 3.

A town is a thing like a colonial animal.  A town has a nervous system and a head and shoulders and feet. …. And a town has a whole emotion. (ch 3)

He uses this comparison to demonstrate how news travels quickly in a town, and how the town itself seems to have its own momentum.  It is almost living and breathing on its own.  The town itself is more than the sum of its parts.  This is why the news of the pearl and Kino’s baby’s bite travels so fast.

Steinbeck describes the news also as moving on its own. It seems to move faster than people can tell it, because news travels fast in small towns when there is something important going on.

In John Steinbeck’s story The Pearl, it is the precious stone itself that serves a parable for the greed and avarice that naturally accompany the discovery and revelation of sudden wealth in the hands of desperately poor people.  Kino and his wife Juana hope to use the proceeds from the sale of the pearl they found to both secure financial resources needed to have their infant son Coyotito treated for his sickness from the scorpion bit, and to elevate their social status among their community.  Whether this constitutes greed or simply a determined effort at helping his family find a better life is worthy of debate, but The Pearl clearly is intended to act as warning against avarice and greed.  Since finding the pearl, Kino becomes entangled in a number of menacing confrontations and, very soon, his previously peaceable nature becomes supplanted by a more threatening, defensive posture that merely wants to preserve the pearl until it can be sold.  It is one such confrontation where Steinbeck employs a metaphor to describe the descent of his protagonist from peaceable, happy father into angry, defenseless and ultimately murderous protector of the pearl.  It is in Chapter Five where one finds Steinbeck’s use of a metaphor in comparing Kino’s canoe, which had originally belonged to his grandfather and, consequently, holds a personal and spiritual value that transcends its otherwise questionable condition.  Reflecting on his having killed one of the men who had intended to rob  him of the pearl, Kino subsequently notes the condition of the canoe, through the hull of which somebody had poked a sizable hole:

“The killing of a man was not so evil as the killing of a boat. For a boat does not have sons, and a boat cannot protect itself, and a wounded boat does not heal. There was sorrow in Kino's rage, but this last thing had tightened him beyond breaking. He was an animal now, for hiding, for attacking, and he lived only to preserve himself and his family.”

Kino has become that which he has previously eschewed: a violent murderous member of the lowest echelon of society.  He has incorporated the pearl into his very being, protecting and revering at the expense of his values and worth as a human being.  As Steinbeck’s protagonist notes following the egregious acts that have taken place in the interest of possessing this valuable deposit of calcium carbonate formed from the shell of a mollusk, a crustacean, a bottom-feeder: "This pearl has become my soul," said Kino. "If I give it up I shall lose my soul. Go thou also with God."

Steinbeck, perhaps more than any other author of his time, provided detailed descriptions of the natural world that makes the reader "see" exactly what his characters see or what his omniscient narrator wants them to see.  This is especially true of The Pearl.  Here are three vivid uses of description (Ch I, II, VI):

Near the brush fence two roosters bowed and feinted at each other with squared wings and neck feathers ruffed out.  It would bad clumsy fight.  They were not game chickens.  Kino watched them for a moment, and then his eyes went up to a flight of wild doves twinkling inland to the hills.  The world was awake now, and Kino arose and went into his brush house.

Light filtered down through the water to the bed where the frilly pearl oysters lay fastened to the rubbery bottom, a bottom strewn with shells of broken, opened oysters...The gray oysters with ruffles like skirts on the shells, the barnacle-crusted oysters with little bits of weed clinging to the skirts and small crabs climbing over them. 

This land was waterless, furred with the cacti which could store water and with the great-rooted brush which could reach deep into the earth for a little moisture...And underfoot was not soil but broken rock, split into small cubes, great slabs, but none of it water-rounded.  Little tufts of sad dry grass grew between the stones...Horned toads watched the family go by and turned their little pivoting dragon heads.