The "failure" as a hero in Cannery Row It is Doc, in Cannery Row, who provides the objective and non-teleological point of view that can be found in many works of Steinbeck. For Doc, himself liberated from the get-get-get philosophy of the machine world by virtue of his science, his detachment, his kindness, and his personal refusal to be thrust into social importance or the role of social judge, insists so that the boys at the Palace Flophouse are universal symbols rather than mere evildoers. And what they symbolize is simply this: the madness of a world in which those who enjoy life most are those the world deems "failures." For Mack and the boys they are surely failures, in everything except humanity and life itself: Mack and the boys. . . they are the Virtues, the Graces, the Beauties of the hasty madness of Monterey and of the cosmic Monterey where men in fear and hunger destroy their stomachs in the struggle to secure certain food, where men hungry for love destroy everything that is lovable in them. . . In the world ruled by ulcerated tigers, plowed by stenotic bulls, devoured by blind jackals, Mac and the boys dine delicately on tigers, pet frenzied heifers, and wrap crumbs to feed the seagulls of Cannery Row. What advantage does it have for a man to conquer the entire world and find himself on his property with a stomach ulcer, a swollen prostate and bifocals? Mack and the boys avoid the trap and step over the poison. . . .I think they survive in this particular world better than others. In an age where people tear themselves apart with ambition, nervousness and greed, they are relaxed. All our so-called successful men are sick men, with stomachaches and bad souls, but Mack and the boys are healthy and strangely clean. They can do whatever they want. They can satisfy their appetites without calling them anything else. And the final paradox, Doc continues (a paradox that amuses Ethan Hawley in The Winter of Our Discontent), is the fact that virtues like honesty, spontaneity and kindness are - in the world of the machine - almost