Discuss the author's viewpoint about the sea.

Steinbeck describes the sea the way the natives might have viewed it. There is a mythic quality to the prose that transcends the factual scientific understanding of the colonials. The sea is a world unto itself only unlocking her secrets for those who care to look, "Fiddler crabs bubbled and sputtered in their holes in the sand, and in the shallows little lobsters popped in and out......" There is also a surreal sense of the sea as being there and not there at the same time, "Although the morning was young, the hazy mirage was up....all sights were unreal and vision could not be trusted." Here we see the sea as being elusive like the precious pearls that Kino and the others search for. The beauty of the sea and the pearl cannot be separated.