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Humor is a vital part of John Steinbeck's works, informing not only the light-hearted tales but also the most tragic and socially conscious ones. Written in 1945, ten years after Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row, which Steinbeck would call his "poisoned creampuff," is wittier and more brilliant than its predecessor, its satire more encompassing and varied. While both share a number of themes and a similar satirical approach, Cannery Row is more complex; its characters and their interaction are less stereotyped; and the moral message behind the satire is more pointed. In both novels, Steinbeck castigates hypocrisy, selfishness, ignorance, accepted and double standards of value, the work and profit ethics, social pretense and respectability.
The satire relies mostly on the inversion of the logic of traditional morality and social expectations, which assumes that respectable people are better human beings than disreputable ones. Indeed, the failures of the social system tend to embody the qualities we are taught to admire in men, "kindness and generosity, understanding and feeling," while the successes embody "those traits we detest, sharpeness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self interest." However, the satire cuts both ways, never relying on the oversimplification of characters, and Steinbeck does not merely reverse traditional models of virtue, for his paisanos and bums are no angels, and share many of the human failings of the more reputable citizens. Nevertheless, they are more likeable because of their ability to find happiness in conditions commonly considered as dismal, and because their down-to-earth realism always cuts through clichés, as in the following conversation between Danny and Pilon:
"We gave our lives for our country, and now we have no roof over our heads."
"We never did have, "Pilon added helpfully.
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"Iam the heir. I, the favorite grandson. ""Thou art the only grandson, "said the realist Pilon.
Doc himself, who functions as the social and intellectual link between the bums and the reader in Cannery Row, would be considered by today's social standards as thoroughly unethical: he is concupiscent as a rabbit, practices illegal abortions, and has sex with his patients. In Steinbeck's humorously euphemistic terms, "he has helped many a girl out of one trouble and into another" (28) . However, he is the kind of human being one would...