In the opening chapter of a novel called Cannery Row, author John Steinbeck describes a street lined with sardine canneries utilizing all the human senses. Steinbeck creates a negatively toned, even a repulsive, image of the milieu with literary devices and colorful language. Cannery Row opens up with a sentence: “Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.” Whatever it means, the author utilizes sense of smell, sense of hearing and sense of sight to describe what the novel is about. Expressions full of senses don’t stay behind to the first sentence. Throughout the opening chapter the author utilizes senses to build an image of the milieu. Steinbeck uses various adjectives to describe voice: grate, rumble, groan, scream, rattle and squeak. This kind of vocabulary gives rather unpleasant image of the environment. According to the text, flophouses and splintered wood can be seen around the Cannery Row. Thus, the author creates a seedy image of the place. In addition to the senses, choice of words bring a huge difference in …show more content…
Through the chapter Steinbeck reflects different matters in genius ways. He utilizes analogy when he compares two relationships: the way “flat worms are crawling of their own will onto a knife blade” and the way to write this particular book. Steinbeck compares two objects together when he describes how the street light makes perpetual moonlight in Cannery Row. In that way the author created a metaphor. Personification can be found when the author describes the sardine fishing. Canneries don’t tend to dip their tails or mouths into a bay. Steinbeck parallels Henri the painter and an Airedale terrier, and thereby creates a simile. Alliteration is used in sentence: “fish is cleaned and cut and cooked and