Cannery Row by John Steinbeck - Essay Example

The story is about five characters living together along the street, during one of the hardest times in history; they are forced to battle out their financial and economical woes due to the depression and try to, through different plots, live together and survive in their own ways. In this way, the story has been broadly described as a tide pool because the characters are like a number of different kinds of fish living together in an aquarium. John Steinbeck writes, “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.

Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses.” (Steinbeck, John) The story is beautiful, and both tragic and mysterious and the way it has been portrayed. It is easy for a reader to look at the messed up lives of the people in the story and feel a sense of humour at the same time while trying to connect with them as fish belonging to a certain wing of a tide pool or an aquarium.

The main attempt of this story, according to the author, has been to capture the essence of the Cannery district in Monterey Row in the city of California. The main plot revolves around how Mack and his boys try and get hold of a rundown fishmeal shack and try and convert it into a habitual place to live in. They have feelings for their friends and family and thus want to throw a party for Doc, their friend and make him feel better. The reference of a tide pool has been provided as the story takes a slight turn in the first few chapters and the party leads to a mess in the Doc’s house.

This causes a certain amount of trouble and thus leads to ill will and bad luck falling on all the people