Raziye Karimpoor Boldaji - Kharazmi University - Faculty of Literature and Humanities

In John Ernst Steinbeck’s The Pearl, the family’s futile attempt to lift up from poverty and enhance theirsocial class level is a representation of the peripheral countries’ struggle to gain independence from the corecountries in order to cease being looted and controlled by them. Applying dependency theory by Andre GunderFrank with respect to the history of the setting in which the selected work is narrated, this paper sheds light ona new aspect of the novel by finding a relationship between the protagonist and his family’s case and the unjustand oppressive state of the peripheral countries according to the core countries.

peripheral countries, metropolis-satellite, Andre Gunder Frank, John Steinbeck, The Pearl