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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. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant everybody. Had the man looked into another he might have said, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men", and he would meant the same thing.
I have chosen this scene because it shows the whole atmosphere in Cannery Row. Cannery Row is a real city in Monterey, California where the whole story takes place. It is a fishing village with a couple of houses where only poor but contended people live. In Cannery Row there is the Western Biological Laboratory where Doc does his work, the Flophouse where Mack and the boys live, Dora's Bear Flag Restaurant, the whore house of the town, Lee's grocery, the boiler of the family Malloy and at last Henri's unfinished boat. Everywhere are uncompleted and dirty things like rusty pipes, rusty boilers, weeds and even a broken truck. All this things give the novel a untidy atmosphere. That metal scrap which is laying around expresses that the people don't care about their environment. For them it is unnecessary in which trash they have to live but for them it is important to be good hearted, to help others and to have a strong charity. As an illustration the boys live in an old dilapidate house, but they didn't care of it. What they want is to make everyone happy and especially Doc with a party. After the first party failed they didn't surrender to give Doc a surprising party because indeed they wanted to do something nice for Doc. Another example is Doc he is like a father to the people in Cannery Row. He helps everywhere he could.
Grapes of Wrath
Key scene page 55
Then the small farmers from Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma lost their land and came out west. Homeless and hungry, two hundred thousand, and then many more, came over the mountains. They were hungry and they were fierce. They had thought and hoped to find a home but instead they only found hatred. Okies - the owners hated them. The owners were soft and the Okies were strong. The owners were well-fed and the Okies were starving to death. The shopkeeper hated the Okies as well because they had no money to spend. The Okies wanted only three things land, food and work. And the Californians hated them for it.
This story is set in North America in the 1930s. For a long time, the Small farmers of Oklahoma and other central states of the USA were forced to leave their land because very little rain fell. The poor soil broke up and turned to dust. Then the strong winds blew away the dust and the soil deserted. These farmers had to borrow money from the banks. But during the Depression in the late 1920s, trade stopped. Many banks lost their money and had to close. The remaining banks were afraid to lend the money to anyone. Small farmers like the Joads had no land, no crops and no money. They had all heard of California, with its beautiful weather and large crops of fruit and vegetables. California was a big state and the farmers there needed people to pick their crops. So the homeless farmers of Oklahoma decided to make the long and difficult journey to the West. They hoped to find work there and one day have land of their own. But in the rich land of California, the farmers also had problems. There was too much fruit and the farmers could not sell it. They could not pay the people who had come to pick the fruit. The farmers were making no profit and were in debt themselves. They knew that next year their land would belong to the bank and were afraid that the people from Oklahoma the Okies would take their land. Therefore the Californians gave the Okies so little money for their work that they and their children starved and couldn't save money. All over the state of California fruit was left to rot. Men burnt the coffee and the corn they had grown. They threw the potatoes into the rivers so that, the people could not have them. And fruit was wasted and good food destroyed to keep prices high. A million hungry People saw good food destroyed. Children starved and the smell of rotting fruit filled the country. In the souls of the people, the grapes of wrath were ripening. They were ready now for a terrible harvest, for a time of anger and destruction.
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