Point of View

Cannery Row, a novel by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck, is first published in 1945. It is narrated in the third person past tense by an anonymous, neutral storyteller who is privy to the characters' thoughts and feelings. Born and raised in Salinas, the county seat of Monterey County, California, and educated at nearby Stanford University, the author settles in Salinas after an unsuccessful attempt at writing in New York City. The physical beauty of this area of central California coast fills the novel, and the description is almost entirely through the author's eyes rather than any character. (At one point, Mack does admire a sunset overlooking the bay and dune country around Seaside.) He waxes particularly eloquent on the lovely Carmel, which has everything a river should: rapids, shallows, an artificial lake, and pools, and on the lush life in tide pools at the tip of...