Steinbeck began writing The Pearl as a movie script in 1944, but realised it would serve much better as a literary torture device for middle school English students that would slip under the cracks of the Geneva Convention.
Key moments: Main character finds a pearl, his wife tries to throw it in the ocean, squashed mosquito on page 36, going through all seven stages of grief - and discovering an undocumented eighth one - multiple times as you contemplate everything but the story.