“Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, nostalgia, a dream.” I think John Steinbeck summed up the theme for his whole book in the very first sentence of the story. Most of the people and things in John Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row are not as they seem. A lot of characters in Cannery Row have different sides to themselves. There …showed first 75 words of 515 total…

…showed last 75 words of 515 total…and things are not always as they seem. This theme does imply other themes like “Loneliness is the biggest disease of the entire world” because almost all the characters are lonely even though they all hide it. Doc was one of the only ones who wasn’t too good at hiding his loneliness because Mack figured it out. In general Cannery Row is a microcosm because it can be both a stink and a dream.