Cannery Row

The denizens of Cannery Row are the disenfranchised from society, all of them existing in Cannery Row in order to escape the interaction and confrontation of life outside of the Row with its tightly enforced social norms and middle-class values. Mack is the leader of a group of boys who live in a storage shed they call the Palace Flophouse and Grill. Throughout the novel, Steinbeck likens this group of Cannery Row inhabitants as a counterpart to the inhabitants of a tidal pool. However, there is an objective observation of those on Cannery Row, almost as lacking in sentimentality by the author as Doc’s marine biology observations. For Mack represents a duality to the author. One the one hand, he, and the other boys, are losers in society. They are outcasts and parasites who surely “failed” in modern society to gain their “rightful” place, and thus som

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is, where around the boys “the evening crept in as delicately as music” and they blend in so harmoniously with their surroundings that Steinbeck refers to them as “happy” (Steinbeck 77; 83). Nonetheless, Mack is unfulfilled when it comes to developing any kind of close, love relationship with another human being. However, Steinbeck seems to suggest this duality is apparent in all human beings, and, at least Mack gains comfort and contentment from nature more than those who pursue material possessions at the cost of their own contentment and development of their true nature. Though it may be a bum’s row to others, Mack has adapted to be comfortable here and find some pleasures. This same inability to form a close, deep relationship with another human being belongs to Doc. Doc is the “sage” of Cannery Row, a man who is just as ambiguous in his nature as is Mack. Doc’s lab is a “fountain of philosophy and science and art” (Steinbeck 28). He possesses a great library, listens to Beethoven and Bach, and displays reproductions of Picasso and Dali. He lives “in a world of wonders, of excitement” (Steinbeck 29). However, other than the theme of rejecting materialism and middle-class values that is strong throughout the novel,
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Approximate Word count = 1471
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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