The Pearl of the World

I despise John Steinbeck.
Now, don't misinterpret this as another sad case of a misguided adolescent having no appreciation of "the classics." Believe me, I appreciate them. Some of my favorite literature is the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe, O. Henry, and Roald Dahl, The Merchant of Venice, and 1984, to name a few. (I'd recommend them to anybody...except perhaps The Merchant of Venice, which tends to be a bit wearing on the mental facilities after a while.) No, I'm perfectly fine with the classics. It's Steinbeck with whom I have a problem.
This past school year, we read The Pearl, an epic tale of struggles, anguish, and moral lessons. In case you're not familiar with the story, I'll try to give an accurate and bias-free summary.
The novella relates the story of Kino, a native pearl diver in the coastal Mexican town of La Paz. He has little--he lives in a hut with his wife, Juana, and their baby Coyotito. (Surprised much?) One day, little Coyotito is mauled by a scorpion and needs medical help. The only doctor is a rich, pampered European who overcharges his patients. He refuses Kino's meager offering of a few deformed, grayish pearls. So Kino goes out to sea to dive for something better. He finds a huge oyster, and, in opening it, finds an appropriately proportioned pearl. He does not keep this monumental discovery quiet, as any sensible person not wishing to be robbed would. No, he parades it around, proclaiming that he has found the Pearl of the World. Juana tells him the wise thing to do--throw it back in the ocean--but does he listen? No. (Another case of a female being right.) I won't give away any more of the story, just in case you want to waste a few hours of your valuable time reading it.
The basic moral of the story is something like, "Don't be greedy" or "Wealth corrupts people" or "Be careful what you wish for." The latter is appropriate because **SPOILER ALERT** Coyotito dies at the end. Or, rather, near the end; Kino and Juana endure a few more pages of wretched misery before their story terminates. (Juana has the grace not to say, 'I told you so.')
Some stories with 'morals' or 'lessons' or 'statements about human nature' can efficiently and artfully embed them in something worth reading. Most of these can be taken at two levels: the story with the characters and plot, or the "This is what will happen to us if we don't wise up" side. The list is endless. But in The Pearl, it's one and the same: Man becomes wealthy suddenly. Man becomes miserable despite wealth.
As a matter of interest: How many of you know what a bougainvillea is? You probably can't even pronounce it correctly. (By the way, it's BOO-gun-VIL-yuh.) But Steinbeck uses this word and many others similarly polysyllabic and incomprehensible. Tell me, Mr. Steinbeck, what on earth is wrong with the word 'shrub?' I'm not saying that language should be dull and bland. But there's a difference between interesting word choice and using words that your readers will fail to understand. It's nearly as bad as the construction "not un-."
(But not quite.) You could say, "I ate a big snack," or "I gobbled down copious globs of lime Jell-O." Or you could say, "I gormandized a capacious morsel of nourishment," and you'd not only sound ridiculous, but also send people fleeing to their dictionaries. (Actually, because very few people like to admit ignorance, they'd probably simply pretend they knew exactly what you meant.)
We were assigned, as incoming ninth graders, to read Of Mice and Men. It was nearly as bad as The Pearl. But not quite. That's closer to the end of the spectrum with Twilight. I hesitate to commit even books that I don't especially like to that area. But let's face it: there are some books, books that everyone tells us we will love and cherish forever, classics, books of high acclaim, that we simply and inexplicably hate.