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Greed in the Bible and The Pearl

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John Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1903 and passed away on December 20, 1968, he is widely known for his Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Grapes of Wrath. His novella The Pearl, was published in 1947 and functions as a parable about greed and evil, telling a simple story to get a big point across. The story focuses on a poor man and his wife who find an enormous pearl, for which their entire village becomes greedy. Steinbeck uses his biblical reference of “A Pearl of Great Price” to illuminate the severity of greed through his protagonist Kino to further show the identity change in man and society from the acquisition of greed. Greed was given to the Earth through the seven seals. The seven seals are in the book of Revelation, the seven seals present the scroll of the apocalypse and each seal represents one of the seven ways that will un-doubtingly cause the end to our world and highlight the coming of Christ. The four horsemen deliver the first four seals. The Bible states “When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” And I saw, and behold, a pale horse, and its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed him; and they were given the power over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth” (Revelation 6:7-9), the ,“I,” in this section is John who is having a vision of God on his throne, John is bearing witness to the steps that will lead to the coming of Christ and the end of Earth. The fourth rider symbolizes death that results from war and famine when men turn against each other. Each rider adds to what the previous rider already stated about their seal, “And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a denarius, and three measures of barley for a denarius; and [see] thou hurt not the oil and the wine” (Revelation 6:5-6), stated above, the third seals brings forth economic hardships and poverty that follow the unleashing of wars on humankind, while the rich get richer. The forth adds that the result of wars is death because the men turned against each other, the men turn against each other because of greed. The men see the rich getting richer and want that life which turns them against one another. The four horsemen have introduced greed, and as time goes on society is able to highlight specifically ways in which greed is influenced on people in modern time. In the film, "Now You See Me," directed by Louis Lettier, the first 15 minutes of the film shows the greedy eyes of Americans as they bound in the air reaching for money falling from the ceiling of a magician show. In the film the four magicians call themselves the four horsemen, correlating themselves with the four horsemen from the book of Revelation, in essence the film depicts the magicians raining down greed and the audience responds by acting out instead of sitting quietly and properly watchi

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