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| Steinbeck, John: Cannery Row
Steinbeck, John: Cannery Row
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.
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.
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.
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