When Steinbeck turns to describe the inhabitants of Cannery Row he describes them with the same zoologist eye and sees them in a tide pool with the same seductions, appetites and survival instincts. Like Sea of Cortez, Cannery Row is linked as well to American romantic literature of the nineteenth century. The inhabitants of the Row are romantics in their casual defiance of traditional society. Mack, his boys, and others live in a relatively independent existence, illustrating Emerson’s dictum of doing your own thing. Others appear less hedonic than dreamy and mysterious, thereby contributing to the romantic aura. Doc may or may not be considered a Thoreauvian character, but as a scientist he finds in the tide pools evidence for nature’s laws …show more content…
and for the belief, also expressed in Sea of Cortez that all living things are related (Lawrence 35).
The tide pool image, figuratively a part of the community, bears resemblance to Thoreau’s pond and possible to Melville’s ocean. These and other romantic elements tend to be ironic, for not many things in the novel are truly heroic or exceptional. Steinbeck’s reply to Malcolm Cowley that Cannery Row was indeed a “poisoned cream puff” attests to the other side of the coin ( Lisca, The Wide World, p. 198). That other side is satire directed at most aspects of life in Cannery Row. There is obvious ridicule in references to middle-class and upper-class men who slip unseen into Dora’s place, to owners and administrators of canneries who drive sheltered in big cars to and from their offices in the Row, and to police and city officials who require big donations from Dora is she is to stay in business. Middle-class respectability such as ambition, perseverance, industry, and dependability receive their comeuppance because Mack, Eddie, Albert, and the Mallorys put little faith in standards of the arrived or the almost-arrived. Yet the Row figures do not escape reproach because they are not above displays of selfishness, dishonesty, and immaturity. Mack’s rejection of William, the bouncer and pimp, leads to the
man’s suicide, and his actions in the first party are stupid and destructive. But generally Mack and the others appear to be more likeable human beings than many middle-class characters in the fiction. Part of the satire and irony in Cannery Row lies in the fact that principal figures combine bohemian and middle-class qualities. Lee Chong and Dora Flood are unique because they combine financial respectability and compassion. Unlike their middle-class counterparts elsewhere in Monterey, Chong and Dora place financial values below human values. Through long-time loans to most everyone in the Row, Lee has lost considerable sums of money. He has also been charitable in other respects. After the suicide of Horace Abbeville, who had jokingly admitted that he lacked credit for even a pack of gum for his kids, Chong sees to it that no child in the Row ever goes without a stick of spearmint chewing gum. A man of natural dignity and integrity, Chong serves as an example to others in the community. What Dora Flood sells cannot be purchase on credit. Her price for amenities, however, is reasonable and the same for everyone. She runs a “decent, clear, honest, old-fashioned sporting house,” and she allows no one in her establishment to raise prices. Dora and her establishment are acceptable to the middle-class community because she contributes valuable services and pays sizeable dues.
As John Steinbeck publishes “Cannery Row” in 1945, the same year when World War II ends, some scholars claim that his book somehow relates to the war. The novel is one of the most admirable modern-American narratives of the 20th and 21st century. It is set during the Great Depression in Monterey, California. The entire story is attached to a sensitively complex ecosystem that creates different approaches for the reader. The system is so fragile that one’s mistake can be the town’s last. Steinbeck depicts unique characters like Mack and the boys (who will stand as one character and/or group), Doc, and Lee Chong. Although there are many themes that can be extracted from these characters, the theme that arises the most is the isolation of the individual as it can be split into two different categories, the psychological and the physical.
“You crazy fool. Don’t you think I could see your feet was wet where you went acrost the river to get it?” He heard Lennie’s whimpering cry and wheeled about. “Blubbering’ like a baby! Jesus Christ! A big guy like you.” Lennie’s lip quivered and tears started in his eyes. “Aw, Lennie!” George put his hand on Lennie’s shoulder. “I ain’t takin’ it away jus’ for meanness. That mouse ain’t fresh, Lennie; and besides, you’ve broke it pettin’ it. You get another mouse that’s fresh and I’ll let you keep it a little while.” (Steinbeck
Cannery Row is densely populated with a group of characters, in the narrative sense of the word and in terms of personalities. There is Dora, an imposing figure of a woman who runs a successful brothel, Henri, the non-French Frenchman, Lee Chong the shrewd but kind-hearted grocer, Doc the scientist, Mack, who leads a small group of men and is loved by the people of Cannery Row, and a host of other fascinating people who make Cannery Row so compelling. It may not seem obvious when reading John Steinbeck’s novel “Cannery Row,” but the main point or lesson in the novel is the importance of respect and Steinbeck uses his characters to tell this story about
"No one is born a racist bigot. In other words, racial bigotry or racial prejudice is not genetically or
In reading the excerpt from Cannery Row by John Steinbeck I noticed that in many ways it was similar to "The Hairy Devil" chapter in The Shipping News. "And it is also generally understood that a party hardly ever goes the way it is planned or intended." This excerpt from Cannery Row helps illustrate the main themes of both works. In both stories the parties were not intended to get out of control but they took a sudden change of events, mostly due to the consumption of alcohol. The characters in Cannery Row seem almost happy and excited when a fight breaks out at the party.
The minor characters in John Steinbeck’s novel Cannery Row are a contradiction within themselves. Steinbeck shows two conflicting sides to each character; for example, Mack is smart and lazy and some of his colleagues are both good and bad. Doc is a father figure with some bad habits. Dora Flood is a kind-hearted saint who happens to run a brothel. Lee Chong is a shrewd businessman who likes to take advantage of others. Henri is an artist with a French background even though he isn’t from France. Through his characters, Steinbeck shows that humans are complicated and can have many faces.
Comedy and Satire are two very common, yet different genres used in literature. Comedy is most commonly used to be humorous and amusing, whereas, satire is usually defined as a piece of work intended to criticize serious topics or problems going on in the real world. Ken Kesey, the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest very specifically chose to incorporate these two genres to push his own beliefs. In the 1950’s, younger generations of America’s population began to question conformity and the ethics of institutions like the one Kesey wrote about in Cuckoo’s Nest. Like many others in this younger generation, Kesey was considered a hippie and part of many counter-culture groups going against the government. Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over
As night falls on Cannery Row actuality and fear overwhelms the souls as they lay awake at night. At this very moment they are alone to think to ponder their existence their importance their meaning. During the day the things the people of Cannery Row use to fill their void. To give them happiness is gone and for those long hours of the night they are truly alone. The cats, the parties, and companions are gone just for a second. But they return in the morning to calm the weary and the broken spirits of the people in Cannery Row. Each of us just like the people in Cannery Row uses something or someone to compensate for the loneliness in our lives. Money, relationships, and personal struggles are evident and bring about loneliness to the people in cannery. They bring about loneliness to everyone not just the people of Cannery Row. Cannery Row is not a fantasy or a dream for we can all learn something from each person in this story. Their lives can be a reflection of our own lives. We may not talk to cats or hang curtains in a room with no windows. But we share something with these people. And if we sympathize with these people it is because we feel we can relate in some kind of way. All of us as human beings on this earth use something to nourish the loneliness in our lives without these certain things we would feel neglected, distressed and misplaced. Cannery Row is filled with misfits people who just do not belong in what you would call a normal society. But they all seem to gather and blend in this one place where they can belong. In Cannery Row people go to the beat of their own drum. They go where they want. Do what they want and they say what needs to be said. The freedom to be different to be eccentric is something the...
Cannery Row is a novel John Steinbeck wrote after World War I. At first, the novel almost seems like a humorous book, written in a style commonly used by Steinbeck. The book has its main plot, but also has side chapters that periodically interrupt the main idea, which adds to the story. One would think that these side chapters are there to universalize the book, but in fact that is not true. The side chapters tell their own story, and they have a message that Steinbeck was clearly trying to show through his book. The novel has a main point about respect. In Cannery Row , Steinbeck is trying to say that respectability is the destructive force that preys on the world. Steinbeck uses his characters to tell this story about respect and its effect on society. The central figure of the whole book, Doc, better explains this point by saying, "It has always seemed strange to me . . . The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitive, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second" (131).
The concept of loneliness and community is apparent throughout not only the book, but also throughout the chapter as an overlying theme. The tide pool, through its clear waters, provides an insight view to what Cannery Row is like, in it of itself. The animals are all separate entities, living in a community, lonely in their own way. But it’s not until the interaction between two animals that it’s apparent that the community is what connects everyone together. Hazel, just like the animals in the tide pool and everyone else in Cannery Row, is lonely. Steinbeck sets up this description by telling the audience Hazel’s background and how he “got his name in a haphazard way as his life was afterword” and how he “was named Hazel before the mother
... it functions. Cannery Row also shows how much everyone truly needs community in our society, even the Undesirables of the world. Many characters throughout the novel show this, such as Doc with the loneliness he presents. The community in Cannery Row encompasses a very wide variety of people, from whores to bums to strange storeowners. Although these people are all independent and completely different, they are all interconnected and are willing to support each-other. In Cannery Row, Steinbeck presents a structure of different moral values, those which make a person good, and also those who are valued by society, but may be valued for the wrong reasons. Steinbeck defines what he thinks a good person is, using the characters in the book as examples. He shows that what society sees as an ideal person may not be as good as the traits that people generally scorn.
ohn Steinbeck's “Cannery Row” offers many interpretations, especially when viewed through the lens of the Holy Bible. From the Christ like figure of Doc to his apostles, Mack and the boys, Cannery Row is ripe with religious tropes. However, Doc is also considered to be quick to anger at times, and carries with him many themes found throughout the Old Testament texts and some legends that are even more aged. However, if we consider Doc to be the messianic figure he is then it wasn't the party that Doc had a problem with, nor that it was held without his knowing on his property. The issue arises with the process by which Mack and the boys use to fund the party. The green frogs harvested ultimately causes Mack and the boys to succumb to greed in an effort to praise Doc. The collection of frogs used as a currency is what sends Doc into a rage.
Interpersonal relationships are a potent entity that wildly flutter, like a liberated pigeon, through the miserable docks of Elia Kazan’s 1954 film ‘On the Waterfront,’ shaping the moral metamorphosis of protagonist Terry Malloy – from an analysts perspective, the ‘power’ source of the film. Terry’s voyage from an inarticulate and diminished “bum” to a gallant “contender,” is the pedestal that the film gyrates around, however, it is palpable that Terry – a man branded with his primitive mores - is not equipped of emancipating himself from the self-preservative cycle of “D and D” singlehandedly. Therefore, the catalytic, moral facilitation of inspirational outsiders - Edie Doyle and Father Barry – are essential to the rewiring of Terry’s conscience and his propulsion into “testifying what is right against what is wrong.” However, rapports do not simply remain ‘strong’ and stable for the entire duration of the film – they fluctuate. Terry shuffles closer to the side of morality each scene, portrayed by the simultaneous deterioration of Terry’s intertwinement with Johnny Friendly and “the mob” and intensification of his romantic involvement with Edie and confidence in Father Barry. Relationships fuel and glorify Terry’s powerful, audience-enthralling journey to morality.
John Steinbeck is an intriguing and intelligent author native to the grapevine-woven and sun-soaked Salinas, California. Many of his works, including Of Mice and Men, and Cannery Row, have striking similarities such as similar characters, and setting , seeing as they ‘took place’ near each other in real life. As any good book, both of these novels have many ideas that are in fact complete opposites, like the overall story progression and the plot, or absence of one in the case of Cannery Row. To understand these two books clearly, this essay will compare and contrast the setting, characters, plot, and the themes present in both books.
... influenced by Steinbeck’s upbringings and local residence of the Salinas valley to the Monterey bay.