Order Vs Chaos on Cannery Row
The theme of Cannery Row, in short, is no less than a poetic statement of
human order surrounded by a chaotic and essentially indifferent universe, and
this is one reason why the structure of the book does seem so "loose" - why
Steinbeckian digressions and interchapters so often interrupt the flow of
narrative.
A wandering and mysterious Oriental threads his way through the story
with no "purpose" but to remind us of the emptiness and pathos and loneliness
we all share, things which render our cruelty or ambition futile. The face of
a drowned girl appears like a paradoxical vision of "immortal death"; a chaos
of sea-life-and-feeding is given order and shape by an obscure scientist -
observer, who realizes the he is himself part of the processes which he
catalogues; a serio-comic painter devotes himself to work which inevitably
comes to nothing - and we recognize an allegory of our own labors; there is
suicide, loneliness, joy, love, and isolation jumbled together in a peculiar
and haphazard fashion which somehow results in emotion neither peculiar nor
haphazard; the recognition of ourselves.
The symbolism of chaos-and-order is basic to Cannery Row; various
characters, each in his own fashion, try to arrange and observe what cannot,
in any essential aspect, be changed. As Steinbeck says in one of his
"inter-chapters" or digressions, it is the function of The World-of human
communication-to create by means of faith and art an Order of love which is
mankind's only answer to that fate which all men, and indeed all life, must
ultimately share. And if John Steinbeck turns to the "outcasts" from society
as symbols for this vision, it may be that only the outcasts of machine
civilization can still remember who they truly are.
Once again, even in this most charming of books, Steinbeck
recapitulates the themes so integral to his work: the need of the human animal
to organize, to combine for purposes beyond that of the mere individual
appetite; the corruption and poison of moral pomposity and insane acquisition;
and the loneliness-within-brotherhood of all flesh and mortality.
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