Cannery Row by John Steinbeck is a social experiment, a character study, a story of successes and failures, and a work of unadulterated art. Steinbeck’s purpose is to illustrate life in all its complexities and mysteries. In the process, Steinbeck warps life’s realities into his own modernized utopia, demonstrating how even the most down-on-their-luck of communities can become a paradigm of contentment. In order to present his findings on life’s intricacies, he utilizes an exquisite partnership of style and form. Style and form both impact Steinbeck’s purpose in the novel, specifically in the form of a complicated set of vignettes, anecdotes, off-tangent musings, and advanced sentence structures. They work in sync while mirroring the unique
