Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

This piece of writing by John Steinbeck is quite interesting. He is able to successfully paint a picture, actually even more than that, he is able to make you feel that you are at that very place, seeing those very things, smelling, hearing and tasting those things which he has described. He even characterises each of the creatures, using examples of other things we have experienced, so that we can fully understand what he is describing.

Overall, I believe that this writer is very skillfull and this piece is very exciting to read, especially if you are one of those who really love the environment of the sea and it's creatures.

I enjoyed reading this piece of writing. The author really drew a picture for the reader to imagine and recreate in their minds. The original comment is quite right by making the statement that text books would be much more popular if they had the same type of language and i would strongly recommend any text books with this sort of language. By the way he describes the various creatures and features, you can tell that the author has a great deal of passion towards this environment and a decent amount of knowledge.

I am impressed at the way ASMS students are able to expres themselves.  Even when a post disagrees with another point of view, it is polite and gives reasons.

I loved Steinbeck's writing, when I had enough time to sit quietly and read it.  He also wrote "The log from the Sea of Cortez" which was a more scientific description of underwater exploration.  But generally, his writing is certainly not easy to read.  In fact sections are quite poetic with very close descriptions. 

There's a place for "Hitch-hikers" and Steinbeck, but probably not on the same afternoon.

P.s.

sibl0017 should perhaps rethink their "huge waste of time!"

This story was beautiful........need i say more :D

The language the author used enables people with less ability within imagination to paint a vivid picturesque scene. The descriptions are well articulated and well structured.

The author applies human emotions to the animals in the story, I assume to create the potential human pathos, for maybe later on in the story.
This is always a technique that either works or makes the book terrible to read. In this excerpt of the book, it has enriched the story, but maybe in other contexts it would be a bit too “flowery” language.

Although I agree that this author is talented, personally, I don’t like this style of writing, it consists of too much detail, which tends to deter the readers attention away from the actual story line.

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I hate the way John Steinbeck describes animals. It's like he took a perfectly normal, easy to describe rock pool and dumped a truckload of nonsensical adjectives and metaphors into it. Although that may just be my taste in books .But that is really nothing because the story is nice all the same. It's nice to read something that isn't very imaginative (sorry if that came out wrong it was meant as a complement) , after reading Perseus Spur and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy for earlier assignments it is good to read something "down to earth". 3 out of 5.

Mitchell gustafsson

This was an excellently writen piece of work - it had some truly amazing inagery, with one of the best sections being the "creeping murder" (murderer, just so you know) and the way that he depicts it getting up and running at it's prey. However, I think that this particular extract was, well, pointless. I mean, sure, it's a great read, and it's really well writen, but it doesn't actually lead to anything, it doesn't seem to link to anything, it doesn't have an underlying moral, nothing. The way that it was written from such a neutral, observational point of view is, well, just short of amazing, except for the comment about the octopus being a murderer - as the origional reply reads "But then again, aren't we all? Even vegetarians are killing to eat."

On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is the best, 2 the worst, and 10 somewhere in the middle, I'd give it pi 

This piece of writing is so creative and has so many describing metaphors. They way that the author describes the 5 senses in such detail using his metaphors is great. He really explains life in the Great Tidal Pool. He also talks about good and bad, and Birth and death. The author makes you realise the food chain and at the end when the octopus kills the crab is suggesting that it is in this Tidal pool the king of the food chain.

Leon Zafry 

I also agree with everyones comments! I thought this was a really great piece of writing which touches on pretty much all the senses, to give the reader a real sense of actually being there.

I loved all the descriptions of the sea creatures, which were greatly detailed and made references to things in "our" world.  I think this is done to help the reader gain a better understanding, and I think this was a really clever thing for the author to do. 

I agree that this text is written very beautifully. The author would have taken a great deal of time to write everything in such an articulated and extravagant way.

Normally, I would cringe at something that has such a large amount of description and little progress. I prefer a story that has enough description to give you the picture but doesnt spend too much time dwelling on this matter instead of progressing through the story.

Seeing as it is a short story and the setting is appropriate, this level of description is perfect. The story would not have the same affect on the reader that the author was attempting to reach if he had written it in another format or made the length any longer than it already is.

David Whitman.

Like many of the people who have left a comment for this short story, I find myself agreeing with everyones response. Many have stated that it was an amazing piece of writing and I must agree. I also found this extremely descriptive piece of writing very interesting as many descriptive words and phrases were used to describe the surroundings and how the creatures were interacting with each other in the rock pool.

The piece of writing was used to describe what it was like for a marine biologist to work with local fisheries. I think that this piece of writing did an excellent job of that.  Many of the phrases that were used to describe the surroundings like "..their skirts waving like the dresses of Spanish dancers...", are really amazing comparisons as it creates a lot of imagery for readers.

I don't think that it would be a good idea for text books to be written like this because we wouldn't have anything to look forward to when we read terrific pieces of writing like this one. 

John Steinbeck is a truly terrific author and I would like to read more of his work.  

this piece of writing is amazing. the way that he describes the scenes, it makes it just jump out of the book and makes you feel as though you are part of it and that any minute an octopus is going to consume you. however i dont think that this would be a good style for a text book because you would spend all of your time being absorbed in the writing instead of understanding it.

The author of this story has a very unique was of portraying the animals in the story "the creeping murderer, octopus, steals out, slowly, softly, moving like a grey mist, pretending now to be a bit of week" I took this quote from the story coz i found this shows the very unique way of telling the audience about the way the animals are moving and the characteristics of certain species. He is a very talented writer but I believe that the story was a bit pointless and a bit bizarre. It was still a good read though.  

I think that this is an excellent piece of writing. It is creative, uses the five senses in describing the Great Tide Pool, and gives the reader a clear idea regarding the marine life involved in this excerpt. John Steinbeck uses images and metaphors to describe any animal in the terms of another living thing while also keeping the reader involved in the story. “Orange and speckled and fluted nudibranchs slide gracefully over the rocks, their skirts waving like the dresses of Spanish dancers.” And “on the reef the whistling buoy bellows like a sad and patient bull.” I agree that scientists could make text books more interesting but wouldn’t go as far to say that this language should be used to the extreme as it was in Cannery Row. I say this because suddenly text books would become much harder to read and this method of writing would get repetitive.

This is an extremely evocative and imaginative piece of writing. It paints vivid pictures in your mind of the beauty of a tide pool. It relates the alien world of the pool to ours by attaching human emotions to the creatures that live there, connecting the concept of murder with an octopus stalking it’s prey: “Then the creeping murderer, the octopus, steals out…”

However, this text contains a lot of subjective information and thus would not be a particularly good objective report. The attachment of human emotions to an octopus in the sentence “It oozes and flows toward a feeding crab, and as it comes close its yellow eyes burn and its body turns rosy with the pulsing colour of anticipation and rage.” is a subjective view rather than an objective observation. Yes, it may turn rosy, but there is no proof that this is attached to any human-like emotion. In fact, Darwin’s theory of natural selection tells us that there should be an evolutionary advantage to any adaptation and the octopus changing colour in response to emotion seems to be more of a disadvantage than an advantage.

The author introduces concepts of good and bad such as the innocence of the “tired and perplexed animal” that is ‘invited’ by the anemones to “lie for a moment in their arms” before the anemone’s ‘evil’ attack on the tide-pool Johnnie during which “the petals whip in, the stinging cells shoot tiny narcotic needles into the prey and it grows weak and perhaps sleepy while the searing caustic digestive acids melt its body down.” The crab is also portrayed as bad when he “tears a leg from his brother.” These concepts of good and evil do not exist in nature, and are just the author’s values that they have applied to a situation where the actually don’t exist.

This is a fantastic piece of writing, but it would not make a good scientific report, as most of the concepts discussed are subjective rather than objective. Thus, I disagree with the comment “If only all scientists used this type of language,” as if they always wrote like this, scientific reports would be a lot less factual, and the whole point of a report is to be a source of information. However, I do agree that a little more creativity in the writing of textbooks wouldn’t go astray.

I see eye to eye with everything that has been written so far. The piece of writing is extremely descriptive making it interning to the reader. The descriptions not only make the book interesting but they are very factual. The author has creatively written descriptions of the sea. This piece of writing is so well written it almost makes you feel like you are there. Eg, “the anemones expand like soft brilliant flowers, inviting any tired and perplexed animal to lie for a moment in their arms…”.

The piece of text in question is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read, I completely agree with this comment the descriptive words really do brighten the text up. But whoever wrote obviously needs to check up on their English. especiually is spelt like this... Especially!