Cannery Row

Another important figure on Cannery Row is Lee Chong. The first chapter focuses on him and his grocery store—which is based on the real-life store Wing Chong (Glorious Prosperous), operated by Yee Won and, later, by his son, J. H. Yee, according to Shillinglaw’s introduction. Lee speaks “without ever using the letter R” (10) and wears half-glasses. He’s generous, offering lines of credit to “everyone in Cannery Row” (9) and therefore is respected by the community. After one of his customers pays a large bill with a building, Lee rents it to Mack and his friends. They never pay the agreed-upon rent for the Palace Flophouse but do care for and protect the building. Lee is “more than a Chinese grocer [...] evil balanced and held suspended by good—an Asiatic planet held to its orbit by the pull of Lao Tze and held away from Lao Tze by the centrifugality of abacus and cash register” (17).

Lee’s actions outside the grocery store balance celebrating the living and honoring the dead. He attends Mack’s parties for Doc, and he digs up his grandfather’s bones from a “grave on China Point” (17) and sends them back to China. Lee, like the other Cannery Row residents, reveres Doc—and makes sure he always has his well-loved beer. Additionally, Lee represents upholding social codes of behavior: He shuns Mack and his friends after the disastrous first party for Doc, mainly because the frogs escaping cost Lee the money that Mack and his friends owed him. However, Lee eventually forgives the Palace Flophouse residents, like the rest of the community, and makes sure that Doc enjoys his second party.

This small group of people—Mack, Hazel, Jones, Eddie, Hughie, and Gay—become the residents of the Palace Flophouse, the building Lee receives in exchange for a grocery bill. Before renting this house, the men lived in the vacant lot next to Lee’s grocery, staying in pipes and under a cypress tree there. Mack “was the elder, leader, mentor, and to a small extent the exploiter of a little group of men who had in common no families, no money, and no ambitions beyond food, drink, and contentment” (13). He sweet-talks a veteran into letting them gather frogs for Doc out of a pond, and he talks Lee into exchanging the frogs for groceries, knowing that Doc pays for specimens. However, Mack is often regarded with suspicion by residents who know that he’ll exploit whatever advantage he receives. For instance, Doc knows that Mack will try to exchange a note for gas for cash to buy liquor, so he warns the gas station attendant to only give Mack gas to travel to the Carmel River for frog-collecting. Shillinglaw’s introduction quotes a letter by Steinbeck noting that Mack was inspired by a man he knew named Gabe.

Hazel “loved to hear conversation but he didn’t listen to words [...] dark-haired, pleasant, strong, willing, and loyal” (33). Eddie is known for providing the group with alcohol he steals while working as a substitute bartender at La Ida. Gay is “the little mechanic of God, the St. Francis of all things that turn and twist and explode, the St. Francis of coils and armatures and gears” (63). Gay has a wife and leaves their abusive relationship to live at the Palace Flophouse, but spends much of the novel in the Salinas jail because of misadventures that occur while he’s looking for a part for Lee’s Model T Ford truck. After the disastrous party for Doc, when the group is men is shunned by the community, Hughie and Jones take jobs at the Hediondo Cannery. So, while they’re minor characters, they connect to the title of the novel and the main industry in Monterey.

Overall, this group of men represents a way of life that exemplifies the theme of Questioning the Nature of Success, and they live in a manner contrary to traditional norms. Doc highly approves of their way of life: He considers “Mack and the boys—the Virtues, the Beatitudes, the Beauties” (156)—successful because they “avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while […] 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” (18). Doc calls Mack and his friends the “true philosophers” (133).

Steinbeck’s novel includes positive depictions of sex workers. Dora is the madam of an establishment called the Bear Flag Restaurant. According to Shillinglaw’s introduction, she’s based on the “legendary madam Flora Woods” (xxvi) who ran the Lone Star Cafe in Monterey and was known for her generosity in the community. Dora takes after her namesake, running a “decent, clean, honest, old-fashioned sporting house [...] a sturdy, virtuous club” (19). Like Mack and his friends, Dora and her “girls”—the sex workers at the Bear Flag—are loved by some and disrespected by others. Dora is “respected by the intelligent, the learned, and the kind [...] hated by the twisted and lascivious sisterhood of married spinsters” (19).

Dora’s orange hair is her defining feature, and like the women who work for her, she wears evening gowns. Dora helps out older sex workers, who rarely meet with clients, ensuring that they can still eat regularly and have a place to live. In addition, she aids families in the community, paying grocery bills during the Great Depression and sending out women with soup to visit the sick during the influenza epidemic.

The novel highlights a few women who work for Dora. Phyllis Mae breaks a leg, and her healing process helps mark the passage of time. At the end of the novel, she claims to be able to “lick her weight in City Councilmen” (168), and she cries when Doc reads poetry during his party. Eva Flanegan is known for her red hair, going “to confession every week” (22), and going on vacation to East St. Louis. She condemns William, the Bear Flag’s bouncer, when he confesses to her that he plans to die by suicide. After William dies, Dora hires his replacement, Alfred, who is much more well-liked than his predecessor. Alfred struggles in the hard times after the failed party, accidentally breaking a rowdy customer’s back, so Dora offers him some time off to recover and gives him a chance to attend Doc’s second, successful party. In addition, Dora employs a Greek cook, who witnesses William’s death by suicide and makes the soup that Dora’s sex workers take to people during the influenza epidemic. Other sex workers, who appear only briefly, are Doris and Elise Doublebottom, and some remain unnamed.

Henri is an artist who claims to be from Paris but has only read about France in “periodicals.” His name is a pseudonym, though his real name is never revealed. He spends many years building—but never finishing—a boat that he lives on. Doc explains that “Henri loves boats but he’s afraid of the ocean” (37). The unfinished state of the boat—the fact that it doesn’t have a toilet—makes it impossible for Henri to keep a girlfriend or wife around for very long. His interior world includes having a vision on his boat of a man killing an infant. His exterior world includes creating a pincushion art piece as Doc’s gift, and studying the flagpole skater.

Richard Frost is the only resident of Monterey who works up the courage to ask the flagpole skater how he goes to the bathroom on top of the department store (learning that he has a can on the roof with him). Working up to asking this question causes conflict between him and his wife. In addition, Richard talks with Doc about Mack and his friends, asking, “Who wants to be good if he has to be hungry too?” (135). This pragmatic viewpoint counters Doc’s philosophical and unrelentingly positive one.

In addition, Steinbeck refers to one character as “an old Chinaman” (24). He walks around the neighborhood—only at dusk and dawn—in shoes that make a “flip-flapping” (26) noise. As such, this unchanging character is used as a marker of time. A boy named Andy makes a racist comment at this unnamed man and, in return, the man’s eye offers a startling vision that shames the boy.

Other minor characters in the novel include two couples. Mr. Sam Malloy and his wife (whose first name isn’t revealed) live in a boiler that was discarded from Hediondo Cannery and placed in the vacant lot. This illustrates how the characters in Cannery Row are on the edges of the cannery business rather than immersed in it. Sam is a kind of landlord, charging rent for the other pipes in the lot. Throughout, the novel refers to the couple’s discussions about decorating the boiler. Mrs. Malloy wants to make it more domestic by adding things like curtains. Sam disagrees with this initially because they don’t have windows but eventually comes around to the idea. For Doc’s second party, Sam gives him some antique auto parts, and Mrs. Malloy crochets “six doilies for Doc’s beer glasses” (161).

Like the Malloys, Mary and Tom Talbot have discussions about domestic life, and like the other characters in the novel, they’re poor. This hinders Mary’s desire to throw parties. She considers it her job “to keep despondency away from Tom because everybody knew he was going to be a great success some time” (143). Mary holds tea parties for neighborhood cats. Her parties don’t cheer Tom until, at one of these parties, a cat wounds—but doesn’t kill—a mouse, and she screams for his help. Putting the mouse out of its misery gets Tom out of his saddened state of lying in bed. Mary’s character was inspired by Steinbeck’s first wife, Carol.

Steinbeck uses both couples to portray gender roles of the time. When the Malloys disagree, Mrs. Malloy says, “Men just don’t understand how a woman feels [...] Men just never try to put themselves in a woman’s place” (48). Wives were to care about household items and social events, as well as emotionally supporting their husbands. The narrator condones the latter but links the former with consumerism and traditional ideas of success.