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.
Steinbeck revisited these characters and this milieu nine years later in his novel Sweet Thursday.
Read more about this topic: Cannery Row (novel)
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“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
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—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
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Our bodies are weak and worn;
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And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)