Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
+the sense of community on jonh steinbeck cannery row
what is cannery row about by john steinbeck
what is cannery row about by john steinbeck
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Cannery Row is a relatively simple novel with basically little or no plot to it. Many critics are quick to call the novel trivial and second rate as compared with Steinbeck’s other works. However this book shows Steinbeck’s renewed interest in the comic portrayal of the basic, uncomplicated lifestyles of the working class. Steinbeck incorporates a few themes into the novel such as failure and historical themes like the depression era. The book is overall optimistic, but Steinbeck takes some off topic chapters to capture some of the darkness that happens within Cannery Row.
The underlying story in Cannery Row is about Mack and the boys trying to hold a party for Doc. Mack and the boys are a group of unemployed men living together in the run down fish-meal shack. Doc is a very intelligent and caring man who runs a biological supply house. The boys set up a party at Doc’s place, but Doc is late to get there and the party ends without him there. The boys are upset about their failure. When Doc helps out their dog, the boys decide to hold another party for Doc. This time he is able to go to it and everyone has a good time. (sparknotes.com)
Cannery Row does not have much of a plot, but it is still very active as a social document about the attitudes of society during the depression era of the 1930’s. Although the book was published after World War II had ended, it strongly suggests the depression period with both tone and spirit. The majority of the people in the novel are the unemployed are poverty stricken, but all are considered as the good people. There are also no antagonists in this novel, only people who tightly hold on to what they have, such as Lee Chong, and see everyone in distrust.
As John Steinbeck publishes “Cannery Row” in 1945, the same year when World War II ends, some scholars claim that his book somehow relates to the war. The novel is one of the most admirable modern-American narratives of the 20th and 21st century. It is set during the Great Depression in Monterey, California. The entire story is attached to a sensitively complex ecosystem that creates different approaches for the reader. The system is so fragile that one’s mistake can be the town’s last. Steinbeck depicts unique characters like Mack and the boys (who will stand as one character and/or group), Doc, and Lee Chong. Although there are many themes that can be extracted from these characters, the theme that arises the most is the isolation of the individual as it can be split into two different categories, the psychological and the physical.
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck is a novel about loneliness and the American Dream. This book takes place during the Great Depression. It was very difficult for people to survive during this time period. A lot of people hardly survived let alone had the necessities they needed to keep relationships healthy. Of Mice of Men has a common theme of disappointment. All the characters struggle with their unaccomplished dreams. The migrant workers, stable buck, swamper, and the other men on the ranch had an unsettled disappointment of where they were at in their lives. George and Lennie, two newcomers to the ranch, aren’t like the other guys. They have each other and they are the not loneliest people in the world. Lennie has a dream though he wants to own a farm with plenty of crops and animals one day. The only problem is his blind curiosity of people and things around him. George wasn’t justified for killing Lennie because Lennie was innocent and never got the chance to find out what he did wrong.
In conclusion, the phalanx of Cannery row expresses that when everyone comes together as a community, nothing bad will happen. However, if the rest of the community is not involved to achieve a goal, then it would happen otherwise. The idea of a phalanx creates a close knit community. With good intentions, a phalanx will allow individuals to work together and achieve goals. Once a phalanx is formed, the community sticks together during times of happiness and hardship. Therefore, Steinbeck attempts to create a utopian society through Cannery
‘“Maycomb’s Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump in what was once a Negro cabin. Its windows were merely open spaces in the walls. What passed for a fence was bits of tree-limbs, broomsticks and tool shafts. Enclosed by this barricade was a dirty yard.”’ Mayella only has one thing that keeps her sane from all the horrible things that has been happening.
Though both Scottsboro and Maycomb seem like a loving town with nice people, however, their dark sides are discovered through their actions. There are many parallels between Scottsboro and Maycomb, the major issue being the events that occurred during the Great Depression. The Great Depression happened after World War Two. It’s an economic crisis worldwide where mostly everyone has no job and money at that time. Maycomb is a town with a traditional old generation because their thinking is different than the city people, they dress differently and people like Aunt Alexandra would want to teach their kids about their family name or its legacy.
In today’s society everyone strives to be successful. Society portrays the idea that success is getting a job and being rich. In Cannery Row however, Steinbeck goes against the idea of how society depicts success and suggests that it may be something else. We can see it through his writing style and characters that success really is more than just money, and more geared to how you see yourself. A successful individual is one who views themself as successful by not giving in to cultural stereotypes, not caring how others perceive you, and by being content with the effort you put into something.
The book notably opens with an immediate instance of self-delusion: tricking the reader into believing that Maycomb is just an old, ordinary, and quiet town through description of the town’s history, when in reality, it was teeming with prejudice and racism. The reader immediately leans about this sleepy southern town where “a day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is considered a classic novel by many in the literary field. The trials and tribulations of the Joad family and other migrants is told throughout this novel. In order to gain a perspective into the lives of "Oakies", Steinbeck uses themes and language of the troubling times of the Great Depression. Some of these aspects are critiqued because of their vulgarity and adult nature. In some places, The Grapes of Wrath has been edited or banned. These challenges undermine Steinbeck's attempts to add reality to the novel and are unjustified.
In the story Cannery Row Loneliness is a main theme to the characters lives. One of these themes is Loneliness. 'He was a dark and lonesome looking man' No one loved him. No one cared about him'(Page 6). The severity of his solitude makes this theme one of the most important. The seclusion of this man can penetrate ones innermost thoughts and leave them with a sense of belonging after hearing of this characters anguish. In addition a man who was not entirely alone was still feeling secluded. ?In spite of his friendliness and his friends Doc was a lonely and set- apart man.?(Page 132). An individual could have many people around him but could still not have the one good friend that he needs. Seclusion comes in many different forms that can be d...
“Tired old town...there was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see...” This quote, from To Kill a Mockingbird, represents how most of the people lived in Maycomb, Alabama and in communities across the United States. During the Great Depression, people in Maycomb suffered severely. Many people had nothing to do during the long, hot days, and, as a result, just sat around. When the Great Depression began, the people of Maycomb lost their jobs and their hope. Running parallel to the Great Depression, the Jim Crow laws were heavily enforced in the South. For many years, each of these greatly affected Maycomb and the nation as a whole.
The concept of loneliness and community is apparent throughout not only the book, but also throughout the chapter as an overlying theme. The tide pool, through its clear waters, provides an insight view to what Cannery Row is like, in it of itself. The animals are all separate entities, living in a community, lonely in their own way. But it’s not until the interaction between two animals that it’s apparent that the community is what connects everyone together. Hazel, just like the animals in the tide pool and everyone else in Cannery Row, is lonely. Steinbeck sets up this description by telling the audience Hazel’s background and how he “got his name in a haphazard way as his life was afterword” and how he “was named Hazel before the mother
John Steinbeck does not portray migrant farm worker life accurately in Of Mice and Men. Housing, daily wages, and social interaction were very different in reality. This paper will demonstrate those differences by comparing the fictional work of Steinbeck to his non-fictional account of the time, The Harvest Gypsies.
Novels that exhibit what the life is like for the people at ranch can help readers reflect on how they might react in comparable situation. George and Lennie who struggle to transcend the plight of inerrant farmworkers are followed by the novel Of Mice and Men written by John Steinbeck. Readers are positioned to respond to themes through Steinbeck’s use of conventions that are dispirit. Themes such as Freedom and confinement, loneliness, and racism are pivotal in the novel and draw out a range of responses from the readers.
Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is a realistic novel that mimics life and offers social commentary too. It offers many windows on real life in midwest America in the 1930s. But it also offers a powerful social commentary, directly in the intercalary chapters and indirectly in the places and people it portrays. Typical of very many, the Joads are driven off the land by far away banks and set out on a journey to California to find a better life. However the journey breaks up the family, their dreams are not realized and their fortunes disappear. What promised to be the land of milk and honey turns to sour grapes. The hopes and dreams of a generation turned to wrath. Steinbeck opens up this catastrophe for public scrutiny.
Cannery Row is a novel John Steinbeck wrote after World War I. At first, the novel almost seems like a humorous book, written in a style commonly used by Steinbeck. The book has its main plot, but also has side chapters that periodically interrupt the main idea, which adds to the story. One would think that these side chapters are there to universalize the book, but in fact that is not true. The side chapters tell their own story, and they have a message that Steinbeck was clearly trying to show through his book. The novel has a main point about respect. In Cannery Row , Steinbeck is trying to say that respectability is the destructive force that preys on the world. Steinbeck uses his characters to tell this story about respect and its effect on society. The central figure of the whole book, Doc, better explains this point by saying, "It has always seemed strange to me . . . The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitive, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second" (131).