Cannery Row: Chapter 20 Summary & Analysis

When Mack and “the boys” get back to Cannery Row, they have roughly one thousand frogs. Doc isn’t home yet, so they start preparing for his party. Going to Lee’s grocery store, Mack says, “I and the boys are pretty short and we’re pretty hungry. You know the price of frogs is twenty for a buck. Now Doc is away and we’re hungry. So what we thought is this. We don’t want to see you lose nothing so we’ll make over to you twenty-five frogs for a buck. You got a five-frog profit there and nobody loses his shirt.” At first, Lee declines, but Mack reminds him that this is all for Doc, urging him to accept frogs as payment, since he will be able to simply sell the frogs back to Doc when Doc returns. After going to the Palace Flophouse to inspect the frogs—and to have a drink—Lee agrees.

As soon as Lee agrees to accept frogs as payment, Mack and “the boys” go crazy buying items from the store. First, they purchase things they’ll need for the party, which Lee marks up in price because he knows no other store will take frogs instead of money. Soon, though, “the boys” lose sight of what they’re supposed to be buying and start purchasing things like “silk arm bands” and other unnecessary items. Despite the fact that Lee keeps raising his prices, the gang doesn’t get too upset, for “financial bitterness [can]not eat too deeply into” them, since they don’t “measure their joy in goods sold, their egos in bank balances, nor their loves in what they cost.”

As the day goes on, Mack and “the boys” revel in their ability to purchase goods at Lee’s. They also lounge in the Palace Flophouse and play with Darling, their new puppy. Sitting in the Flophouse and waiting for Doc to return, they decide that the party—which will take place in Doc’s laboratory—should have decorations, so they return once again to Lee’s store and buy “miles of crepe paper.” Meanwhile, Eddie—who once used to work as a “fry cook”—tries to bake a cake, though it turns out to be a disaster, and Darling eventually eats some of it and then throws up in the leftovers.

By the time the evening comes around, “the boys” are drunk because they keep buying “half pints of Old Tennis Shoes at fifteen frogs a crack.” Finally, they spend the last of their frogs on Old Tennis Shoes and two jugs of wine, since they believe Doc loves wine. They then make their way into the laboratory—which Doc never locks—and start trying to decorate it, eventually deciding that they should place the crate of frogs (which now belongs to Lee) in the center of the room so that Doc will immediately see the bounty.

Soon enough, Mack and “the boys” finish the rest of the whiskey, and people start filtering into Western Biological and getting quite drunk. Lee, for his part, drinks so much that he has to go home. At this point, a number of men at the Bear Flag think that Western Biological is a “rival house,” so they enter “whooping with joy.” “They were evicted by the outraged hosts but only after a long, happy, and bloody battle that took out the front door and broke two windows.” Later, a drunkard says something that Mack interprets as an insult to Doc—who is still absent—and so he hits him so hard he “crashe[s] through the packing case in among the frogs.” Meanwhile, “someone trying to change a record” breaks the stylus.

“No one has studied the psychology of a dying party,” Steinbeck writes. “It may be raging, howling, boiling, and then a fever sets in and a little silence and then quickly quickly it is gone, the guests go home or go to sleep or wander away to some other affair […].” This is what happens now, as the partiers stream out of Western Biological, leaving the laboratory “littered with broken glass” and snapped records and food smeared on the floor. Then, “through the broken end of the packing case,” the first frog jumps out, followed by another, and another, until all of the slimy creatures have sprung out into the streets, never to return.