Cannery Row takes place on a street lined with sardine fisheries in Monterey known as Cannery Row.

It
revolves around the people living there during the Great Depression: Lee Chong, the local grocer; Doc, a
marine biologist based on Steinbeck's friend Ed Ricketts; and Mack, the leader of a group of bums.

The actual location Steinbeck was writing about, Ocean View Avenue in Monterey, was later renamed
"Cannery Row" in honor of the book.

Plot

Cannery Row has a simple premise: Mack and his friends are trying to do something nice for their friend
Doc, who has been nice to them without asking for reward. Mack hits on the idea that they should throw a
thank-you party, and the entire community quickly becomes involved. Unfortunately, the party rages out
of control, and Doc's lab and home are ruined—and Doc's mood. In an effort to return to Doc's good
graces, Mack and the boys decide to throw another party—but to make it work this time. A procession of
linked vignettes describes the denizens' lives on Cannery Row. These constitute subplots that unfold
concurrently with the main plot.

Lee Chong

Lee Chong is the shrewd Chinese owner and operator of the neighborhood grocery store known as "Lee
Chong's Heavenly Flower Grocery". "The grocery opened at dawn and did not close until the last
wandering vagrant dime had been spent or retired for the night. Not that Lee Chong was avaricious. He
wasn't, but if one wanted to spend money, he was available." "No one is really sure whether Lee ever
receives any of the money he is owed or if his wealth consisted entirely of unpaid debts, but he lives
comfortably and does legitimate business in the Row."

Doc

Ed Ricketts' lab at 800 Cannery Row, Monterey, which was the basis for Doc's marine Lab

Doc is a marine biologist who studies and collects sea creatures from all along the California coast. Most
of these creatures are preserved in some way and are sent all over the country to universities, laboratories,
and museums. "You can order anything living from Western Biological, and sooner or later you will get
it." Doc is described as "deceptively small" with great strength and the potential for passionate anger. He
wears a beard, very strange and unpopular at the time, and has great charisma. "Doc tips his hat to dogs as
he drives by and the dogs look up and smile at him." Doc is also the smartest man in Cannery Row,
interested in knowing something about everything. "Doc would listen to any kind of nonsense and change
it for you to a kind of wisdom. His mind had no horizon," Steinbeck wrote. "Everyone who knew him
was indebted to him. And everyone who thought of him thought next, 'I really must do something nice for
Doc.'"

The character of Doc is based on Steinbeck's friend Ed Ricketts, to whom he also dedicated the novel.
Ricketts was a noted marine biologist and the one who got Steinbeck interested in the subject. Doc's
Western Biological Laboratory is a reference to Ricketts' real Pacific Biological Laboratories, which
stood at 800 Cannery Row from 1928 to 1948.

Dora Flood

Owner and operator of the Bear Flag Restaurant, Dora possesses a keen business mind as well as a strong
spirit. Despite the fact that she runs a whorehouse, she has certain standards - selling no hard liquor,
keeping an honest price on the services of the house, and allowing no vulgarity to be spoken on the
premises. Dora is also kind to those who have helped her, never turning out a girl too old or infirm to
work: "Some of them don't turn three tricks a month, but they go right on eating three meals a day." Being
an illegal operation, Dora has to be "twice as law abiding" and "twice as philanthropic" as anyone else in
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Cannery Row. When the general donation for a policeman's ball is a dollar, Dora is asked for and gives
50. "With everything else it is the same, Red Cross, Community Chest, Boy Scouts, Dora's unsung,
unpublicized dirty wages of sin lead the list of donations." During the darkest days of the Great
Depression, Dora paid people's grocery bills and fed their children, very nearly going broke in the
process. Dora runs a business that plays an important role in Cannery Row's society. Dora is debatably
the most successful character in the book.

Mack

Mack, a 48-year-old man, described as "the elder, leader, mentor and to a small extent exploiter of a little
group of men who had in common no families, no money, and no ambitions beyond food, drink and
contentment. But whereas most men in their search for contentment destroy themselves and fall wearily
short of their targets, Mack and his friends approached contentment casually, quietly, and absorbed it
gently." Mack has little compunction (remorse) about lying, stealing, or swindling, but his intentions are
generally good, so he is able to justify his actions and those of his friends as means to an end. It is said he
is highly intelligent and "could be President if he wanted to be". He and his group of friends are known to
all as "Mack and the boys" and spend a great deal of their time in an abandoned storage shed they christen
"The Palace Flophouse and Grill".

Hazel

Hazel is a dim but good, strong and loyal young man living with Mack and the boys in the Palace
Flophouse. His name is feminine because his mother was tired when he was born (the eighth child in
seven years) and named the baby after an aunt who was rumored to have life insurance. When she
realized that Hazel was a boy she had already gotten used to the name and never changed it. Hazel "did
four years of grammar school, four years of reform school, and didn't learn anything in either place."
Hazel loves to listen to people's conversations and remembers everything he is told but can hardly make
sense of any of it.

Eddie

Another resident of the Palace, Eddie is a part-time bartender who supplies the boys with "hooch" poured
off from whatever patrons leave in their glasses at Ida's Bar. "He kept a gallon jug under the bar and in
the mouth of the jar was a funnel. Anything left in the glasses Eddie poured into the funnel before he
washed the glasses... The resulting punch he took back to the Palace was always interesting and
sometimes surprising. The mixture of rye, beer, bourbon, scotch, wine, rum and gin was fairly constant,
but now and then some effete customer would order a stinger or an anisette or a curaçao and these little
touches gave a distinct character to the punch."

Chinaman

The enigmatic figure of "The Chinaman" appears in the story several times. He walks quietly through the
town, usually while the narrator is himself on the way down to the ocean. The Chinaman's association
with the eternal sea reminds us that the fast-paced and hilarious adventures of the Cannery Row
characters are merely ripples in the vast sweep of human experience.

Locations

Cannery Row is the living backdrop for the book. As described in the opening paragraph:

"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.
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Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, 'whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches,' by which he
meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, 'Saints and angels
and martyrs and holy men,' and he would have meant the same thing."

Lee Chong's Grocery

Lee Chong's is the first location we are introduced to in the novel, the hub (centre) of commerce in
Cannery Row. Lee Chong's store is truly a "general store" in which you could buy, "clothes, food both
fresh and canned, liquor, tobacco, fishing equipment, machinery, boats, cordage, caps, pork chops. You
could buy at Lee Chong's a pair of slippers, a silk kimono, a quarter pint of whiskey and a cigar. You
could work out combinations to fit almost any mood." Almost everyone in the area owes money to Lee
Chong, but he is generous with his debtors because he has found they will usually pay him back rather
than make the long trek to the next nearest store over in New Monterey.

The Palace Flophouse and Grill

Home to Mack and the boys, the house was originally a storage shed for fish meal and was given to Lee
Chong to clear a debt. Mack convinces Lee Chong that letting him and boys move in will keep it safe
from vandals and arsonists (an implicit threat). To save face, Lee asks Mack for five dollars a week in
rent (all the while knowing he will never see a dime of it). Lee figures that if Mack and the boys ever had
any money they would spend it at his place and would have very little reason to steal from him, as he had
the right to evict them at any time. "The saving to Lee Chong in cans of beans and tomatoes and milk and
watermelons more than paid the rent. And if there was a sudden and increased leakage among the
groceries in New Monterey that was none of Lee Chong's affair." As the weeks go on furniture and paint
and other niceties begin appearing in the Palace, and, piece by piece, it becomes a home to Mack and the
boys and their adopted pointer dog, Darling.

The Bear Flag Restaurant

The Bear Flag is the local whorehouse, owned and operated by Dora Flood. It is described as, "A decent,
clean, honest, old-fashioned sporting house where a man can take a glass of beer among friends... a
sturdy, virtuous club," where profanity and hard liquor are not allowed. The Bear Flag is respected (if not
liked) by the residents of Cannery Row for the simple fact that many of them depend on it. When a
sickness spreads through Cannery Row, it is the girls of the Bear Flag who go delivering soup and
company to the sick while they recuperate, and on the list of generous donors to local charities or events,
the Bear Flag is always at the top.

Western Biological Laboratories

Doc's home and office, the lab is a place where all kinds of living things are kept and preserved: live
rattlesnakes, starfish, octopi, etc. Doc makes frequent trips up and down the California coast to collect
specimens from the ocean. He sells them for dissection or observation at universities, museums and labs
all across the country. Doc also has a library's worth of books and records and an old phonograph player
besides. Scattered around the walls are reproductions of great works of art, ".....pinned here and there at
eye level so you could look at them if you want to." Doc loves his records, each song evoking a different
emotion in him. Doc is also known to bring a girl home from time to time, though these flings never seem
to last.

La Jolla

Doc goes on a trip to collect octopi from the tide pools in La Jolla, California. This is also where he finds
a girl floating dead in the water, leaving a lasting impression on him.

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Major themes

Camaraderie (Friendship)

The residents of Cannery Row work together to hold a party for Doc. They struggle to find the date, get
the funds, find the location and even fail at the first attempt. But this endeavor pulls together and
exemplifies the vastly different skills and resources of the residents to make a culminating goal for the
book.

Contentment

Mack and the boys at the Palace Flophouse need little and appreciate much, and whatever they do need
they acquire by cunning. Doc is happy with his station in life and in the community (but many worry
about his being lonely without a companion). Lee Chong could very easily go after the people in Cannery
Row and collect on the debts he is owed, but he chooses instead to let the money come back to him
gradually. "Henri the painter" is happy building his ever-changing boat and will continually dismantle it
and start again so that he can continue building it. Cannery Row is content because its denizens are not
ambitious to be anything other than who they are: their sole ambition is to better befriend Doc.

Prostitutes

Steinbeck expresses a certain respect for prostitution for its honesty of motives, while reserving moral
judgment for the reader. In Of Mice and Men, George has a small monologue in which he states that a
man can go into a whorehouse and get a beer and sex for a price agreed upon up front - unlike less
professional relationships, you know what you're going to get and what you will have to pay for it. The
same theme of respect is expressed in Cannery Row in Steinbeck's descriptions of the Bear Flag: it is a
business that provides a service in demand, it is run cleanly and honestly, and it benefits the community.

Overcoming superficial views of people

Throughout the story characters such as Dora Flood, Mack, and Doc are all expanded upon and they
reveal that they are much more complicated than they at first appear to be. For example, Dora Flood is the
owner of the brothel and is disliked by the women of the town because of her business, but she is very
generous and for two years donates groceries to hungry people. Doc, who is a loved and respected
member of society, is, deep down, a very sad and lonely person who, until the end of the story, never
opens up to other people.

Nostalgia

The novel opens with the words: "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." Author John Steinbeck spent some of the
happiest years of his life in a house in Pacific Grove near "Cannery Row" and the laboratory of his friend,
Ed Ricketts. This began in 1930 and lasted to 1941 when Steinbeck's marriage broke up and he fled
eastward to marry again (eventually). After a traumatic time documenting the war in the Mediterranean
campaign in 1943, Steinbeck returned home to find that his second marriage was also in difficulties.
Cannery Row was written in 1944 in an attempt to recover a Depression-era world in Monterey which
was, by then, already inaccessible to Steinbeck. Major influences for this change included the war's effect
on both Steinbeck and Monterey, the breakup of Steinbeck's first marriage, and the insulation caused by
Steinbeck's new wealth arising from his increasing fame and success as a writer. Steinbeck was already
beginning to suspect that he would never again be able to go back to living in this, his favorite part of
California. Indeed, after a failed attempt to live in California in the late 1940s, he left to spend the rest of
his life in New York.