Public Images In John Steinbeck's Cannery Row

One of John Steinbeck's best known novels, Cannery Row, is a classic in which he sculpts each character in an extremely realistic and detailed way. Steinbeck was familiar with the area near the small, depressed town of Cannery Row and the people who crossed his path were eventually transformed into characters in the novel. Every character has an important role in the community. In the novel, many of the characters carry themselves differently in public then they do when they are alone. Steinbeck develops a theme, people are not what they seem, throughout the novel by showing public images are not always how someone acts, what we expect from someone is not always what they do, and everyone sees one another from a different perspective. …show more content…
For instance, “In spite of his friendliness and his friends, Doc was a lonely and set-apart man” (Steinbeck 100). This quote means that Doc, a main character that owns Western Biological Laboratories, was very outgoing and willing to lend a hand to anyone in public but when he was alone he was very depressed and lonely. This can also be seen toward the beginning of the story when Steinbeck introduces, in a vignette, an old Chinaman who seems to grasp the community's attention. “Some people thought he was God and very old people thought he was death and children thought he was a very old Chinaman” (Steinbeck 23). Thus supporting the theme because this mysterious Chinaman was just human and minding his own business but his public image was so exaggerated that the community became frightened of