Cannery Row :: essays research papers

The pull together of Cannery RowA beading is created when a tiny speck of move into dust enters and irritates an oyster shell. The reaction of the oyster is to make a pleasing pearl out of the particle of dust. Some pearls argon perfect and others are imperfect, yet all are a unique and wondrous substructure of nature. In Cannery Row, John Steinbeck imitates natures process with Cannery Row as the oyster and Mack as the speck of dust. Steinbeck shows Mack as the sticker which causes Cannery Row to veer from a precarious course and make a change for the better. In the end Mack creates a wonderful pearl for Cannery Row the quality of unity and the reader learns that sometimes the best results come along from seemingly meaningless occurrences. Mack is in the least a big source of irritation and at the most worthless to the residents of Cannery Row. Steinbeck introduces him as ... the elder, leader, teach and to a small extent, the exploiter of a little group of manpower wh o had in common no families, no money and no ambitions beyond food, drink and contentment (9). His effect upon the town, while often anonymous, is clearly perceived A hardware store supplied a can of red create not reluctantly because it never knew about it... (12). Mack appears when he demand something and disappears when pay-up time comes around. To Cannery Row, Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step all over the noose while a generation of trapped, poisoned and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come-to-bad-ends, blots-on-the-town, thieves, rascals, bums (15). Because Mack does not fit societys conventional standards of living, the town also assumes that his character does not measure up either. He isnt seen for what he really is a man with a lovable soul who simply is not driven by worldly desires instead, citizenry judge him against others and by their own expectations of a man.Mack lacks ambition but not a good heart. His only intentions are for survival, never for the persona of inflicting pain or problem on others In the world rule by tigers with ulcers, rutted by strictured bulls, scavenged by blind jackals, Mack and the boys dine delicately with the tigers, fondle the frantic heifers, and wrap up the crumbs to feed the ocean gulls of Cannery Row (15).