Franziska Langenegger <[e-mail]>

Cannery Row by john Steinbeck

The Autor

John Steinbeck is born in 1902 in Salinas, California. He went to
university, left six years later without taking a degree. Then he went to
New York as a journalist. In this time, 1929, his first novel was published.
He married and returned to California and wrote several novels like „Of
Mice and Men“ or, „The Grapes of Wrath“. He became also a filmmaker.
In 1945 he published „Cannery Row“. The last decades of his life he
spent in New York and Sag Harbor with his third wife. In 1962 he won
the Nobel Price and died in 1968.

Structure

The novel doesn’t tell a great story. It rather cosists of little stories about
the people of Monterey, this little town in California where sardines were
processed. The place the sardines are put into cans is called “Cannery
Row“. Steinbeck himself lived there long time. The stories are about the
„gathered and the scattered“ or, like the first page of the book describes :
BOOK PAGE 5 (LINES 7-12). Most of the treated people had been
friends of Steinbeck. Therefore this novel is a kind of an autobiographical
book.

Summary

For this summeary i’ve picked up only the anecdotes of the main
caracters Doc, Lee Chong, and Mack and his boys.

Mack and the boys ask Lee Chong to live in a house, he recently
became owner, known ever after as the Palace Flophouse. Lee Chong
has to agree and Mack and the boys move in.

They furnish the house and want to give a party for doc because Doc lets
them work for him from time to time if they need money, and he helps
them in every other situation. For the party Mack and they boys need
some money and they ask Doc for work. Doc askes them to collect four
hundred frogs while he has to go to south California to collect some
octopi.

Franziska Langenegger <[e-mail]>

To collect the frogs they need a car. Lee Chong finally agrees to lend
them his old T-Model Ford. After several difficulties they arrive at Carmel
river and get drunk while waiting the dawn. In a good condition they go
for frog hunt and collect a hughe amount of them.

Because Doc isn’t back yet, Mack and the boys pay with the frogs at Lee
Chong’s grocery for party decoration and meat. Lee will sell the frogs
later to Doc. Paying with frogs, Mack and his boys can decorate Doc’s
laboratory, where the party will take place, before Doc comes back from
his octopi-collection in southern California. They plan a kind of a
welcome-back-party.

When the party starts Doc isn’t back yet and it soon gets out of control.
The result is a broken door, a broken phonograph, broken windows,
records, books, and a great mess in Doc’s laboratory. But the worst thing
is that the frogs disappeared. Doc comes back from south California the
day after his welcome-back-party.

After this failure Mack and the boys become social outcasts in Cannery
Row because everyone thinks their intention was to have a party in
absent people’s property and the absent, Doc, is a very popular man.

Mack goes to ask Dora Flood what would be the best thing they could do
for doc and to be respected again in Cannery Row. Her proposal is
another party, this time with Doc.

With Dora’s connections the news spread fast and almost every
inhabitant of Cannery Row wants to come to Doc‘s surprise-birthday
party. Since everyone is concerned about what gift to get, Doc was
bound to hear of about the party and has the possibility to prepare
himself this time.

(Because it isn’t a very exciting story, i’ll tell you how it ends.)

The day of the party, Doc gives himself surprised and half the town joins
the party in Doc‘s laboratory. The mornig after it’s the same mess as the
last time. Doc’s very sad, not absolutely about the mess, but simply
about his life, his lost girls and just everything.

Franziska Langenegger <[e-mail]>

Themes

- Alcoolism

(Doc, Mack and the boys)

- The relationship between the Individual an society. In the novel this two
things correspond to loneliness and, on the other side the partys.

But the novel’s not a social criticism, Steinbeck is only an observer and
makes a humorous, lovely description of the society. He just recognize
the facts, without complain of. The autor himself seem to have accepted
life just like it is what is shown in the description of the caracters.

He writes about the failed dreamers, Mack and his boys, who have lost
all their goals in live and only want to eat, to drink and to have some fun,
and they don’t seem to be very unhappy with their way of living.

He don’t criticize any bad behaviour or acting like Lee Chong’s, who has
only an eye to the main chance, or his description of how cruel people
can be to each other.

-BOOK PAGES 88+89 (FROG HUNT). The frogs are described as
human beings who feel pain, they want to find a new home in a new
country. I think this is a description of the second world war wich
Steinbeck had experienced as a war correspondent in europe.

-At least the novel is a love declaration to Cannery Row. The town is like
an individual, sometimes it goes bad, sometimes better.