Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

Ratings Explanation

Language:  Every foul word is spewed by characters in Cannery Row.  Extensive profanity; language that is crude (whores, pimps, pisspots) and derogatory (wops, Polaks, “ching chong Chinaman”, etc.)  The f-word, spelled differently, is also used.

Violence:  Drunkards get into several fights and knock out teeth, bloody faces, break windows, and destroy Doc’s laboratory.  The bouncer at the local house of prostitution throws a bum out and breaks his back.  A drunken man has a hallucination of a baby’s throat being slashed.  A man’s wife beats him; he retaliates.

Sexual Content:  The whorehouse on Cannery Row and the girls who work there are mentioned often, along with the business they conduct, but not in detail.  Mack and the boys discuss how often Doc, who runs the laboratory, has women stay overnight at his place whether or not he needs a dame.  Henri the painter has had several different women live with him on his boat.  The sex life of sea creatures is scientifically detailed, with reference to sperm, ova, semen, and eggs.  A short discussion on the Model T Ford, and how “Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris,” and that “most of the babies of the period were conceived in Model T Fords and not a few were born in them.”

Adult Themes:  Abundant references to alcohol and tobacco; the characters drown their sorrows in liquor.  Someone observes that “a man got just as drunk on half a glass as on a whole one, that is, if he was in the mood to get drunk at all.”  Dora, the whorehouse mistress, takes good care of her girls and won’t kick them out, even if they “won’t turn three tricks a month but still eat three meals a day.”  A man heavy in debt and depression shoots himself in the head; another man commits suicide with an ice pick to the chest.  An abused, mentally disabled 11-year-old boy breaks a store window and steals a clock to show Doc he loves him.  While collecting sea specimens on the shore, Doc discovers a dead girl’s body floating among the rocks.  The prevailing storyline is about people leading dissolute lives.

Synopsis

In the opening paragraph of this classic book, Steinbeck describes Cannery Row in 1940s Monterey, California as “a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of life, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.”  Then he goes on to describe its inhabitants, who are a dichotomy: whores, bums, gamblers, drunks, and sons of b—–es, but also saints, angels, martyrs, and holy men.  Steinbeck paints with a true artist’s skill and eye for detail the humanity of these people, their interactions with one another, their ignorance and downfalls and dissolute lives, their good intentions and dreams and ability to survive.  There is Mack, the elder and leader of a group of bums who have in common “no families, no money, and no ambitions beyond food, drink, and contentment.”  There is Doc, the owner of Western Biological Laboratory, who remains a constant on Cannery Row, the man to whom both the bums and Dora’s girls turn for companionship, advice, and an occasional dollar to buy a drink.  And there is Dora, proprietor of the Bear Claw, who “keeps an honest, one-price house” and takes good care of her girls who in turn take care of everyone else (it is Dora’s girls who take hot soup to and nurse back to health all the families in Monterey during the influenza epidemic.)  The book cannot be pinned down to a plot, rather, it is a commentary on life and the successes and failures, happiness and despair which come to those residents of Cannery Row.  Steinbeck studied marine biology, and in his detailed descriptions of the marine life inhabiting the tidepools on the California coast there are echoes of the lives of his Cannery Row characters.

John Steinbeck was a master at illustrating the frailties of human nature.  His story in Cannery Row is no exception and is why it is considered a classic, but like most of his books, the reader may feel weighed down with such heavy subject matter and flawed characters who repeatedly mess up their lives.  Well-written and a worthwhile read, but definitely for a mature audience.  I would hesitate having my high schooler read this, not so much out of a virtuous desire to protect him from the subject matter (okay, maybe a little) as much as the idea that a teenager (hopefully) hasn’t experienced enough life to really understand some of Steinbeck’s commentary.