Human action against human intention in Cannery Row For the characters of Cannery Row are perhaps more than they seem - more than obscure traders or vagabonds - but They, like the humanity they represent, are far from perfect. Neither their happiness nor their means of achieving it are simply the “right” path compared to the “wrong” path of the rest of the money-hungry world. Mack and the boys, like all of us, often break when they want to build, hurt themselves when they want to love; and, like the rest of us, their immediate appetites often distract them from their deep need to give of themselves. The inhabitants of Cannery Row, who represent humanity, are "consistent only in their inconsistency" – in short, they contain a mixture of good and evil that renders self-righteous human judgment both irrelevant and absurd. Lee Chong, for example, the Chinese grocer, is - as Steinbeck himself tells us - "more" than a Chinese grocer. It must be. Perhaps he is evil balanced and held suspended by good - an Asian planet held in its orbit by the pull of Lao Tze and away from Lao Tze by the centrifugation of the abacus and the cash register - Lee Chong suspended , turning, whirling among the grocery stores and the ghosts. "And what is true of Lee Chong is true of Cannery Row: a community of human souls often wandering, often groping, often absurd, but somehow noble and touching, even in the fact of their own lack of "importance" of the vast forces at work in the chaos that is life - and death - human endeavor is both fragile and ridiculous, and this is precisely what creates tragedy. , the pride, humility, sadness, comedy and nobility of our mortality..