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| Steinbeck, John: Cannery Row
Steinbeck, John: Cannery Row
CANNERY
ROW
SYNOPSIS
Cannery Row tells the story of the people, who live in
Cannery Row, Monterey, California.
Only a couple of houses stand in Cannery Row in the
Californian fishing Village Monterey: the Western Biological Labour, where the
Doc dissects his animals for museums and Universities; the „Palace
Flophouse“, a formally store for fish meal, Mack’s and his friends
place of refuge; Dora’s „Bear Flag Restaurant“; Lee
Chong’s inexhaustible grocery and then, over there, the useless boilers
and tubes with their changing occupants: a little theatre with wise and mad,
loving and crying, loafing and enterprising actors.
Originaldokument enthält an dieser Stelle eine Grafik!
Original document contains a graphic at this position!
Western Biological, whose owner and operator is Doc, is
right across the street and facing the vacant lot. Lee Chong’s grocery is
on its catty-corner right and Dora’s „Bear Flag Restaurant“ is
on its catty-corner left. Western Biological deals in strange and beautiful
wares. It is a low building facing the street and the basement is the
store-room.
Lee Chong’s grocery is the only store in Cannery
Row. It is small and crowed but within its single room a man can find everything
he needs or wants to live and to be happy. Lee Chong’s is right of the
vacant lot. On the left-hand boundary of the lot is the stern and stately
whorehouse of Dora Flood.
Dora’s „Bear Flag Restaurant“ is a
decent, clean, honest, old-fashioned sporting house where a man can take a gall
of beer among friends. This is no fly-by-night cheap clip-joint, but a sturdy,
virtuous club, built, maintained, and disciplined by Dora, who, madam and girl
for fifty years, has through the exercise of special gifts of tact and honesty,
charity and a certain realism, made herself respected by the intelligent, the
learned, and the kind.
Before Horace Abbeville dies, he wants to pay his debts
at Lee Chong. But because he does not have enough money, Horace gives Lee
„Palace Flophouse“, where Lee Chong’s fish meal is stored.
Shortly after Lee lets Mack and his friends the Palace Flophouse. They take care
of the house and live there happily.
The Palace Flophouse is no sudden development. Indeed
when Mack and the boys move into, they look upon it as little more than shelter
from the wind and the rain, as a place to go when everything else has closed or
when their welcome was thin and sere with over-use. But they managed it and
furnished the one room. Now they are really proud to live in Palace Flophouse.
They talk one evening about Doc and think that they should do something nice for
him, because he is so kind. After some time it occurred to them to give a party
to Doc. But because they have no money they decide to find
jobs.
An old boiler from the Hediondo Cannery moves on April
1932 into the vacant lot between Lee Chong’s and the Bear Flag Restaurant,
where it is set on blocks to await an inspiration on how to make some money out
of it. The boiler looks like an old-fashioned locomotive without wheels. It has
a big door in the centre of its nose and a low fire door. In 1935 Mr and Mrs Sam
Malloy move into the boiler.
Mack and his friends are still looking for a job to
finance the party for Doc. So Mack goes to Doc and asks him for a job. Because
Doc needs frogs, he sends Mack up to Carmel River to collect frogs for him. As
Doc needs his truck for himself, Mack goes to Lee Chong to borrow his old truck.
The only problem is that Lee Chong’s truck broke down.
Since quite some time Frankie, a boy of eleven years, is
coming to Western Biological to help Doc there. At home Frankie is beaten by his
uncles, and he can not go to school because his mother does not pay for his keep
on an institution. So Doc takes care of Frankie. One day Doc said that Frankie
was a great help to him, what Frankie is never going to forget.
Gay, a friend of Mack, repairs Lee Chong’s truck,
the Model T Ford. It took some time, but when all is said and done Gay brought
the car to run. And so Mack, Hazel and the other guys go to Carmel River to
catch frogs for Doc. Mack thinks that the best time for catching frogs is at
night, and so they wait since it becomes dark. The night is in by now and the
stars are white in the sky. Hazel feeds the fire when suddenly a man dark and
large, with a shot-gun over his arm, asks them what they are doing there. The
man is the owner of the land, where fishing, hunting, fires and camping is
forbidden. Mack apologises. When Mack sees the dog of the man he admires her,
and as he notices that the dog is wounded he cares about the wound and gives the
man, who is a captain, some good advice about how to handle this wound. The
captain invites the guys to his house and says to them that behind his house is
a pond, which is full of frogs. The captain gives Mack a puppy of the dog and
then the boys go to the pond to catch lots of frogs. Later they drive back
again, to Cannery Row.
Meanwhile Doc wants to go to La Jolla, a zone, between
Los Angels and San Diego, where he can get small octopi, for which he has an
order now. The best time to catch octopi is low tide, and low tide is at 5.17
a.m. on a Thursday. Early in the morning he gets his things together. So Doc
leaves Monterey on Wednesday morning and is easily in time for tide on Thursday.
It is about two o’clock when he gets to La Jolla. He drives down to the
cliff below which his tidal flat lays. There he stops the car, eats a sandwich,
drinks some beer, turns out the lights, and curls up in the seat to sleep. It is
a good hunting that day. He gets twenty-two little octopi. Later he finds in the
water a dead girl.
In the mid-morning the Model T truck roles triumphantly
home to Cannery Row and hopes the gutter and creaks up through the weeds to its
place behind lee Chong’s. As Mack and the boys have now enough money to
arrange a party for Doc, they make preparation for the party. They think about
what Doc would like, and because Doc is still in La Jalla they decorate the
laboratory. Eddie bakes a cake and the other ones work at the decorations or see
to the drinks. In the middle of the room they put a carton with all the frogs
inside and over it a sign that says: „Welcome Home, Doc“.
At one-thirty, Doc is still absent, a drunk wanders in
and passes a remark which was considered inoculating to Doc. Mack hits him a
clip which is still remembered and discussed. The man rises off his feet,
describes a small arc, and crashed through the packing case in among the frogs.
Someone tries to change a record drops the tone arm down and breaks the
crystal. And all the frogs are now away.
Wen Doc comes home, he climes the stairs. He looks in
wonder at the sagging door and at the broken window. Then he goes quickly from
room to room, stepping round the broken glass. He bents down quickly and picks
up a smashed phonograph records. On the stairs there are bumbling uncertain
footsteps and through the door comes Mack. His face is red and he stands
uncertainly in the middle of the room. Mack now tries to explain the situation,
but he does not match it. Doc also does not listen to him. He hits him suddenly
and starts to call Mack names. Then Mack apologises Doc for that mess and says
to him that he always did everything wrong. Mack walks clumsily down the stairs
and crosses over and walks up the lot and up the chicken walk to the Palace
Flophouse. Doc watches his progress through the window. And then wearily the
gets a broom from behind the water heater. It takes him all day to clean up the
mess.
Mack comes back from the laboratory with his mouth torn
and his teeth broken. As a kind of penance, he does not wash his face. He goes
to his bed and pulls his blanket over his head and does not get up all day. Mack
and the boys are under a cloud and they know it, and they know they deserved it.
They become social outcasts. All their good intentions are forgotten now. The
fact that the party is given for Doc, if it is known, is never mentioned or
taken into consideration.
Everybody takes about the incident, and Mack and the
boys are very sad. Darling, their dog, is their only mainstay and as the dog
even gets ill, they are absolutely shattered. Now a genuine panic comes over the
Palace Flophouse. Darling came to be vastly important to them. Finally, also
they do not want to, Hazel and Jones are chosen to call Doc. When Doc comes to
examine Darling, they think he is cold and professional.
As Darling feels a bit better, Mack goes to Dora to ask
her what they could do to show Doc what they think of him. She gives Mack the
advice to give a party to Doc he does get to.
Mary Talbot, Mrs Tom Talbot, is lovely. More than
anything in the world Mary Talbot loves parties. She loves to give parties and
she loves to go to parties. Since Tom Talbot does not make much money Mary
cannot give parties all the time, so she tricks people into giving
them.
There is no doubt in Mack’s mind that a dark cloud
hangs on the palace Flophouse. He analyses the abortive party and finds that a
misfortune creeps into every crevice, that bad luck comes up like hives on the
evening. The knowledge or conviction about the party for Doc is no sudden thing.
It does not burst out full blown. People know about it, but let it grow
gradually, like a pupa in the cocoons of their imaginations.
Darling is now already healthy and fond of life as ever.
The boys want to give Doc a really great party this time and they think that his
birthday would be a good occasion for this party. And so they try now to find
out when his birthday is. So Mack goes to him an talks a bit with him, and after
some time they talk about birthdays and Mack asks after his birthday. But Doc
lies to Mack by he says his birthday is on the 27 of October, while he was born
on the 18 of December.
Two little boys play in the bout works yard until a cat
climes the fence. The boys shoot stones to the cat and chase her away. A
startles man looks out the office window and then rushes for the door, but the
boys are too quick for him. The two boys go to Cannery Row and play nasty tricks
there.
Mack and the boys are now totally busy with the
preparations for Doc’s birthday party. They have to think about the
presents, they want to give to him and they decide to decorated not the
laboratory this time, but to have enough liquor there.
Doc does not know when he first becomes aware that
something is going on that concerns him. In Lee Chong’s conversation
stopped when he enters. At first it seems to him that people are cold to him.
When at least half a dozen people ask him what he was doing October
27th he is puzzled, for he has forgotten he had given this date as
his birthday. One evening he stops in at halfway House because they have a
drought beer he likes and keep it at the right temperature. There a drunken man
talks to him about the party which is given for him. Now everything fells into
place - Mack’s question and the silences when he is about. The next day
he begins making his own preparations for the party. His best records he carries
into the back room, where they could be locked away. He moved every but of
equipment that is breakable back there to. He knows how it will be - his guest
will be hungry and they will not bring anything to eat. They will run out of
liquor early, they always did. So Doc orders at the Thrift market a lot to
eat.
Also Frankie hears about the party. In the window of
Jacob’s Jewellery Store he sees the most beautiful thing in the world: a
black onyx clock with a gold face and on the top of it is a bronze group. He
wants to give it to Doc but he does not have enough money to buy it and that is
why he breaks into Jacob’s and steals the clock. But a policemen catches
him and brings him to Doc next morning.
As Frankie says to Doc that he loves him, Doc runs out
and gets in his car and goes collecting in the caves below Pt.
Lobos.
At four o’clock on October 27th Doc
finishes bottling the last of a lot jelly-fish. Meanwhile everybody in Cannery
Row gets ready for the party. Doc drives back and makes there the last
preparations for his party, by foreseeing possibilities, and he hopes to make
his party as non-lethal as possible without making a dull. He knows he was
watched. He is conscious of it all day. Not that he sees anyone, but someone or
several persons keep him in sight. So also Mack and the boys. Promptly at eight
o’clock Mack and the boys, combed and clean, pick up their jugs and march
down the chicken walk, over the railroad track, through the lot across the
street and up the steps of Western Biological.
Doc is very happy when Mack and the boys stand in front
of his door, although he knew that they come. In course of time, all inhabitants
of Cannery Row come to Doc’s surprise party. This time the Party is a
full success.
MAIN
CHARACTERS
Lee Chong
He is the owner of a grocery. Lee is round-faced and
courteous. He speaks stately English without using the letter
R.
Lee’s position in the community surprised him as
much as he could be surprised. Over the course of the years everyone in Cannery
Row owns him money. He never presses his clients, but when the bill becomes too
large, Lee cuts off credit; and the client usually pays or tries
to.
Horace Abbeville
He is a worried gentleman who has two wives and six
children, and over a period of years he has managed through pleading and
persuasion to built a grocery dept second in Monterey. Before he shots himself
he gives Lee Chong the place where the fish meal is.
Mack
Mack is the elder, leader, mentor, and to a small extent
the exploiter of a little group of men who had in common no families, no money,
and no ambitions beyond food, drink and contentment. Mack and his friends
approach contentment casually, quietly, and absorb it gently. Mack and
Hazel, a young man of great strength, Eddie who fills in as a bar
tender at La Ida, Hughie and Jones who occasionally collect frogs
and cats for Western Biological, are currently living in those large rusty pipes
in the lot next to Lee Chong’s.
Dora
Dora is a great woman, a great big woman with flaming
orange hair and a taste for Nile-green evening dresses. She keeps an honest,
one-price house, sells no hard liquor, and permits no loud or vulgar talk in
her house. Of her girls some are fairly inactive, due to age and infirmities,
but Dora never puts them aside, although, as she says, some of them do not turn
three tricks a month, but they do right on eating three meals a
day.
William
He is a previous watchman and a dark and
lonesome-looking man. In the day-time when his duties are few he will grow tired
of female company.
Doc
Doc is the owner of the Western Biological laboratory.
Doc is rather small, deceptively small, for he is wiry and very strong. Doc
listens to any kind of nonsense and charges it for you to a kind of wisdom. He
can kill anything for need, but he could not even hurt a feeling for pleasure.
His mind has no horizon - and his sympathy has no wrap. Everyone who knows him
is indebted to him. And everyone who thinks of him thinks next: „I really
must do something nice for Doc!“
In spite of his friendliness and his friends Doc was a
lonely and a set-apart man. Mack probably noticed it more than anybody. In a
group, Doc seemed always alone.
STRUCTURE OF THE
BOOK
The book has about 125 pages and 32 chapters. Not all
chapters were of the same length: some were hardly 2 pages long whereas others
were over ten pages long.
Every chapter tells the story of one inhabitant of
Cannery Row. Sometimes it seems that there is no context between the Chapters
but later almost everything makes sense.
Steinbeck used a lot of dialogues in his book. Some
chapters consisted only of dialogues, others told stories of already past Times,
which seemed not to match with the previous chapters.
THE LANGUAGE, WHICH WAS
USED
was not a specific language. I would say it was the
American-colloquial language. Steinbeck used a lot of vulgar words, which I did
not find in any dictionary. But I think if Steinbeck used standard language it
would not have matched with the subject of Cannery Row.
The book was not very difficult to read, but of course
it took some time to get used into reading the book and to understand the
vocabulary, which was used.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Of Cannery Row John Steinbeck said he just „opened
the pages and let the stories crawl in by themselves“. Cannery Row is a
street bordered by houses, shakes, and boiler pipes, in which live all kinds of
people, good and bad, kind and cruel, the industrious and the idle, who have one
thing at least in common - their poverty.
TOPIC
Cannery Row is a novel about carefree loafers who do
nothing for their living but are fundamentally good at heart. Cannery Row in
Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light,
a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.
COMMENT
I liked at the book, that it showed seriously the life
of normal people with all their problems and failures.
JOHN ERNST STEINBECK
Originaldokument enthält an dieser Stelle eine Grafik!
Original document contains a graphic at this position!
John Steinbeck was born in 1902 at Salinas, California.
He was educated at Stanford University. Afterwards he led a roving life,
becoming in turn ranch hand, carpenter’s mate, painter’s apprentice,
chemist, labourer, and newspaper man - until, when caretaker of an estate which
was snow-bound for eight months in the year, he began seriously to
write.
His works are marked by a compassionate under-standing
of the world`s disinherited. Steinbeck was awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in
literature for his best-known novel, The Grapes of Wrath (1939),
treats the plight of 1930s Dust Bowl farmers turned migrant labourers while
presenting a universal picture of victims of disaster. Among Steinbeck`s other
novels are Tortilla Flat (1935), Cannery Row (1945), East of
Eden (1952), and The Winter of Our Discontent (1961). His other books
include the novella Of Mice and Men (1937; later it made into a play);
short stories, notably the exquisite The Red Pony in The Long Valley
(1938); non-fiction works, e.g., A Russian Journal (1948), America
and Americans (1966); and screenplays. He died 1968 in New
York.
John Steinbeck’s strength lies mainly in
describing simple people whom he paints true of life. As a rule the events take
place on an rural background. The persons are closely attached to the earth on
which they live and work. Hostile forces, whether natural catastrophes or
subversive economic developments, lead to their destruction. Thus
Steinbeck’s work contains both romantic and lyrical elements, which by
their close connection with the needs of country people become sociological
problems.
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