When Kino, a poor Mexican pearl-diver, finds a magnificent pearl - 'the Pearl of the World' - he believes that all his dreams can come true. He will marry his wife in the church wearing fine new clothes, their infant son will never want for anything - least of all the medicine so recently denied to him - and the boy might one day go to school, learn to read and write. But Kin's vision of a bright future blinds him to the greed and fear the pearl arouses in his neighbours and in himself, and his shining dream begins to blacken and twist. . .