In John Steinbeck's novel, Cannery Row, there are many examples reflecting the author's principles of life. One of these principles being that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions", which simply means the things that a person may do in life could be intended on good, but can result in the exact opposite. It is quite obvious to see Steinbeck had similar experiences, and they seem to come to life and show themselves throughout the book. Here are some examples from excerpts in the book.
Steinbeck describes Lee Chong's grocery, a tiny shop where one can buy just about anything. The grocery store is particularly important to the community as a place to buy cheap whiskey or "Old Tennis Shoes" as the people of Cannery Row portray it. Lee Chong has done well by being clever and serving the people of Cannery Row. He is a fairly generous man, who uses credit as a way for the poor to pay for groceries at his store. Chong only stops the credit system if it happens to get under one circumstance, and that is when the debt of the customers gets truly out of hand. This very thing happened to Horace Abbeville. Horace was a man of a wife and six children, and was quite in debt to Lee Chong. One day, he came to Lee Chong's and offered to settle the debt by signing a fishmeal storage shed that he owned over to Chong. He agreed to Horace's offer, and so it was. The fishmeal shed was now in Chong's name and Abbeville was freed of his debt. Abbeville, now be away from his financial obligations, shot himself in the head. This is definitely a good intention gone bad, because all that Chong was trying to do was give Horace an opportunity to clear his payments, and the result is Horace shooting himself, and Chong feeling that the suicide is because of his wrong decision making.
It is obvious to see it in the text what is really being said in this excpert from the book.
"They finished the deal with dignity and Lee Chong threw in the quarter pint of Old Tennis Shoes.