The theme of Cannery Row, in short, is nothing more than a poetic statement of human order surrounded by a chaotic and essentially indifferent universe, and this is a of the reasons why the structure of Cannery Row the book seems so "loose" - why Steinbeckian digressions and interchapters so often interrupt the flow of the narrative. A wandering, mysterious Oriental makes his way through the story with no "purpose" other than to remind us of the emptiness, pathos, and loneliness we all share, the things that make our cruelty or ambition useless. The face of a drowned girl appears as a paradoxical vision of "immortal death"; a chaos of marine life and food receives order and form from a shadowy scientist-observer, who realizes that he himself is part of the processes he catalogues; a serious-comic painter dedicates himself to a job that inevitably ends in nothing - and we recognize an allegory of our labors; there is suicide, loneliness, joy, love and isolation mixed together in a peculiar and random way that somehow results in emotions that are neither peculiar nor random; recognition of ourselves. The symbolism of chaos and order is central to Cannery Row; various characters, each in their own way, try to fix and observe what cannot, in any essential aspect, be changed. As Steinbeck says in one of his "interchapters" or digressions, it is the task of the World - of human communication - to create through faith and art an Order of love which is humanity's only response to that destiny which all men, and all others, indeed, all of life, in the end, must share. And if John Steinbeck turns to the "outcasts" of society as symbols of this vision, it may be that only the outcasts of the machines