Cannery Row

“In the pipes and under the cypress tree there had been no room for furniture and the little niceties which are not only the diagnoses but the boundaries of our civilization.”

This passage describes the locations where Mack and his friends lived before Lee allowed them to rent the building that became known as the Palace Flophouse. Being unhoused meant that they didn’t buy furniture. In other words, they didn’t participate in consumer culture, which the novel critiques via one of its main themes: Questioning the Nature of Success.

“The Word is a symbol and a delight which sucks up men and scenes, trees, plants, factories, and Pekinese. Then the Thing becomes the Word and back to Thing again, but warped and woven into a fantastic pattern. The Word sucks up Cannery Row, digests it and spews it out, and the Row has taken the shimmer of the green world and the sky-reflecting seas.”

Here, the Sense of Place theme melds with a discussion about the craft of writing. Steinbeck draws on structuralist theory, which explores how words (combinations of letters) represent the things (objects, people, etc.) that they describe.

“Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature.”

This passage develops the theme of Questioning the Nature of Success, arguing that animals and people who reject traditional success (consumerism and wealth) are blessed. However, the deity envisioned here is a manifest deity—one present in nature rather than in heaven.

“From this room come smells—formaline, and dry starfish, and sea water and menthol, carbolic acid and acetic acid, smell of brown wrapping paper and straw and rope, smell of chloroform and ether, smell of ozone from the motors, smell of banana oil and rubber tubing, smell of drying wool socks and boots, sharp pungent smell of rattlesnakes, and musty frightening smell of rats.”

This describes part of the Western Biological Laboratory and supports the novel’s Sense of Place theme. Steinbeck frequently uses the sense of smell throughout the novel. This is just one example of how he develops his descriptions with olfactory details.

“Indeed, if you could can sardines with ledgers, the owners would have been very happy. As it was they used decrepit, struggling old horrors of machines that needed the constant attention of a man like Gay.”

In this quote, Steinbeck examines the primary industry of Monterey: the canneries. The upper-class owners, removed from the actions of their working-class employees, are interested only in profits (represented in ledgers). Their negligence in obtaining better equipment contributes to the theme of Questioning the Nature of Success.

“City hunters going out for sport load themselves with food and liquor, but not Mack. He presumed rightly that the country was where food came from.”

This passage is another example of the Sense of Place theme. When going to collect frogs for Doc, Mack and his friends end up killing and eating a rooster they encounter on the way. Unlike the upper-class inhabitants of the city, Mack and his friends understand where their food comes from and prefer to live off of the land.

“Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system.”

While Cannery Row addresses some hard topics, like death by suicide, it also contains many moments of humor and happiness. This passage is part of an educational discussion about the ubiquity of the Model T Fords, but it presents the information in a humorous manner.

“Early morning is a time of magic in Cannery Row. In the gray time after the light has come and before the sun has risen, the Row seems to hang suspended out of time in a silvery light.”

The novel contains many scenes from this time of day, which it calls “[t]he hour of the pearl” (82). This develops the Sense of Place theme by conveying an idea about the quality of light in a western coastal town. The Pacific Ocean along California not only offers spectacular sunsets but also gives the dawn a different look and feel than sunrises on the Atlantic coast.

“Dora, who was soft as a mouse’s belly, could be as hard as carborundum. She went back to the Bear Flag and organized it for service.”

This passage describes how Dora, a madam, aids the community during the influenza epidemic. Steinbeck consistently portrays sex workers in a positive manner. Her kindness and strength develops the theme of The Function of Community.

“Henri was fascinated. He thought of doing a huge abstraction called Substratum Dream of a Flagpole Skater. Henri couldn’t leave town while the skater was up there. He protested that there were philosophical implications in flag-pole skating that no one had touched.”

This passage also develops the theme of The Function of Community. Everyone in Monterey gets excited about the flagpole skater. Henri tells Doc he can’t go with him to La Jolla while the skater is atop the department store because he’s caught up in the general feeling and is interested in using the event to create art.

“The tide goes out imperceptibly. The boulders show and seem to rise up and the ocean recedes leaving little pools, leaving wet weed and moss and sponge, iridescence and brown and blue and China red.”

This beautiful description is another example of the how the novel develops the Sense of Place theme. Tides affect Doc’s work of collecting specimens for the biological laboratory. The portrayal of the natural world alongside human interactions gives them both equal importance.

“Financial bitterness could not eat too deeply into Mack and the boys, for they were not mercantile men. They did not measure their joy in goods sold, their egos in bank balances, nor their loves in what they cost.”

This is an important passage for the theme of Questioning the Nature of Success. Mack and his friends don’t believe in traditional measures of success, such as revenue, wealth, or consumerism. Steinbeck criticizes consumption, especially overconsumption, as a method for finding happiness.

“Doc never locked the laboratory. He went on the theory that anyone who really wanted to break in could easily do it, that people were essentially honest and that finally, there wasn’t much the average person would want to steal there anyway. The valuable things were books and records, surgical instruments and optical glass and such things that a practical working burglar wouldn’t look at twice.”

This passage reveals an idea about the theme of The Function of Community. Doc feels like he doesn’t have to lock his doors or safe. Rather than accumulating items that could easily be sold at a pawn shop or on the black market, Doc has items with cultural and scientific value. This also develops the theme of Questioning the Nature of Success.

“I don’t do nothin’ but clown no more. Try to make the boys laugh.”

This quote is part of the conversation between Mack and Doc after the party that Doc misses and results in his lab being trashed. Mack explains his habit of being unable to follow through with his good intentions. This behavioral trend is part of the reason why he wants to entertain people rather than pursue success in a career. His comment speaks to the theme of Questioning the Nature of Success.

“It is not known whether Henri was a good painter or not for he threw himself so violently into movements that he had very little time left for painting of any kind.”

This quote comments on a kind of artist more interested in ideas about art than the act of making art. It develops the character of Henri as someone who isn’t dedicated to craft but wants to appear knowledgeable about art and communities of artists who create movements.

“They could ruin their lives and get money. Mack has qualities of genius. They’re all very clever if they want something. They just know the nature of things too well to be caught in that wanting.”

This is another passage that supports the theme of Questioning the Nature of Success. Doc believes that Mack and his friends are intelligent, and this intelligence includes not participating in a culture of consumption. Doc argues that constantly desiring objects and money doesn’t lead to happiness.

"Oh, it isn’t a matter of hunger. It’s something quite different. The sale of souls to gain the whole world is completely voluntary and almost unanimous—but not quite. Everywhere in the world there are Mack and the boys. I’ve seen them in an ice-cream seller in Mexico and in an Aleut in Alaska.”

Here, the theme of Questioning the Nature of Success extends beyond Monterey. While Steinbeck offers a Sense of Place about the particular location, he also uses the well-traveled character of Doc to argue that anti-consumerist sentiments exist in many places. People from different places and walks of life reject the idea that money equals happiness, going against the norm.

“She had long dancer’s legs and dancer’s feet and she seemed never to touch the ground when she walked. When she was excited, and she was excited a good deal of the time, her face flushed with gold. Her great-great-great-great-great grandmother had been burned as a witch.”

This is a description of Mary Talbot, a character inspired by Steinbeck’s first wife, Carol. Mary always tries to support her husband, even when he’s struggling financially. While many of the wives in the novel are portrayed negatively, Mary—like the sex workers—is portrayed in a positive, albeit quirky, light.

“Certainly all of Cannery Row and probably all of Monterey felt that a change had come. It’s all right not to believe in luck and omens. Nobody believes in them. But it doesn’t do any good to take chances with them and no one takes chances. Cannery Row, like every place else, is not superstitious but will not walk under a ladder or open an umbrella in the house. [...] But most people in Cannery Row simply do not believe in such things and then live by them.”

This passage conveys an interesting paradox: following superstitions without believing in them. It develops the theme of The Function of Community, describing Monterey as well as “every place else.”

“Eric, a learned barber who collected the first editions of writers who never had a second edition or a second book, decided to give Doc a rowing machine he had got at the bankruptcy proceedings of a client with a three-year barber bill.”

This passage highlights the symbolic importance of books. The barber’s book collection shows that he’s an educated individual. In addition, his collection reveals his individuality, in that he likes to collect a certain kind of first-edition book.

“Sometimes an illuminated guest wanted to play with the rattlesnakes. By making careful preparations, by foreseeing possibilities, Doc hoped to make this party as non-lethal as possible without making it dull.”

Doc’s concern for protecting the community is evident in this passage. Having learned about his “surprise” party, he seeks to protect his valuable records as well as the community members who attend the party. Parties bring people together in celebration, and keeping them safe shows care, both key parts of the theme of The Function of Community.

“Even now

If I see in my soul the citron-breasted fair one

Still gold-tinted, her face like our night stars,

Drawing unto her; her body beaten about with flame,

Wounded by the flaring spear of love,

My first of all by reason of her fresh years,

Then is my heart buried alive in snow.”

This is an excerpt from the poem “Black Marigolds” by Bilhana Kavi, which Doc reads at his party. Steinbeck includes many literary allusions throughout the novel, but the stanzas from this poem are the only direct quotes. They inspire all the guests at the party to think about lost loves, and the words bring Dora and Phyllis Mae to tears.

“Even now,

I know that I have savored the hot taste of life

Lifting green cups and gold at the great feast.

Just for a small and a forgotten time

I have had full in my eyes from off my girl

The whitest pouring of eternal light.”

This passage can be compared to the one above, as it is Doc’s own stanza of poetry inspired, in form, by “Black Marigolds” and inspired, in content, by his party. It demonstrates part of the craft of writing—how writers draw on what they read to create new works of art.