How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Mack and the boys were under a cloud and they knew it and they knew they deserved it. They had become social outcasts.
A community isn't just about who's in it, it's also about who's out of it. You know, like Mean Girls.
Quote #8
Perhaps some electrical finder could have been developed so delicate that it could have located the source of all this spreading joy and fortune. And triangulation might possibly have located it in the Palace Flophouse and Grill (25.5)
So, things go badly for everybody in Cannery Row when things are going badly for Mack and the boys. And when things turn around, it somehow all comes from their pad. Without Mack and the boys, would they even have a community?
Quote #9
Mack and the boys—the Virtues, the Beatitudes, the Beauties. They sat in the Palace Flophouse and they were the stone dropped in the pool, the impulse which sent out ripples to all of Cannery Row and beyond, to Pacific Grove, to Monterey, even over the hill to Carmel (27.1)
In Cannery Row, community has some mystical, woo-woo aspects. Mack and the boys aren't just some bums who live in the center of town, they are the center of town. Hmm. Maybe community is the true religion of Cannery Row.