Steinbeck's Travels With Charley Question....?

Question

What did John Stienbeck Learn about america during the course of writing this book

Answer 1

Well, I'll try again:
"Steinbeck began his trip traveling by ferry from Long Island to Connecticut, passing the Naval Submarine Base New London where many of the new nuclear submarines were stationed. Steinbeck noted that the “submarines are armed with mass murder, our silly, only way of deterring mass murder” (21). He talked to a sailor stationed on a sub who enjoyed being on them because "they offer all kinds of – future" (22). Steinbeck credited uncertainty about the future to rapid technological and political changes. He mentioned the wastefulness of American cities and society, and the large amount of waste as a result of everything being "packaged".
He had a discussion with a farmer in the White Mountains about Khrushchev’s visit to the United Nations and the approaching presidential election. The two concluded that a combination of fear and uncertainty over the future limited their discussion over the election. Steinbeck enjoyed learning about people through local morning radio programs, although he noted that: "If Teen Angel is top of the list in Maine, it is the top of the list in Montana" (35), showing the ubiquity of culture brought on by mass media technologies.


Travels with Charley, 1962 Viking Press Cover
Steinbeck next took US Highway 1 to Maine. On the way he noted a commonality between most of the “summer” stores. They were all closed for the winter. Antique shops, that bordered a lot of the roads up North, sold old “junk” that Steinbeck would have bought if he thought he had room for it, noting that he had more junk at home than most stores. He stopped at a little restaurant just outside the town of Bangor where he learned that other people’s attitudes can greatly affect your own attitude. Steinbeck then went to Deer Isle, Maine, deciding to go because a friend of his went there every time he had traveled to Maine. His friend always raved about it, but could never describe exactly what about it that was so captivating. While driving to Deer Isle, Steinbeck stopped and asked for directions. He later learned not to ask for directions in Maine because locals don’t like to talk to tourists and tend to give them incorrect information. When Steinbeck arrived at the house where he was supposed to stay, he met a very terse cat and ate the best lobster he had ever tasted, fresh from the local waters and un-traumatized by travel. He next went to northern Maine, where he spent the night in a field next to a group of French-speaking migrant potato pickers from Canada, with whom he shared some French vintage. Steinbeck's descriptions of the workers was sympathetic and even romanticized, a clear nod to his works such as The Grapes of Wrath which made him famous. For the final part of his visit to Maine, Steinbeck traveled around several towns throughout the state and visited popular outdoor clothing stores such as Abercrombie and Fitch.
Steinbeck next traveled to Niagara Falls and some Midwestern cities. Before reaching those destinations, he took a detour and discussed his dislike of the government. He said that the government makes a person feel small because it doesn't matter what you say, if it’s not on paper and certified by an official, the government doesn't care. As he traveled on, he described how wherever he went people’s attitudes and beliefs changed. All states differ by how people may talk to one another or treat other people. For example, as he drove through Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois, there was a great increase in the population from state to state. The small villages that he had once seen were now growing into big cities and the roads, such as the U.S. 90, were filled with traffic. Also, everywhere he went, people's views changed. For example, when he went to New England, he saw that people there spoke tersely and usually waited for the newcomer to come up to him and confront him. However, in Midwestern cities, people were more outgoing and were willing to come right up to him. He explained how strangers talked freely without caution as a sense of longing for something new and being somewhere other than the place they were. They were so used to their everyday life that when someone new came to town, they were eager to explore new information and imagine new places. It was as if a new change had entered their life every time someone from out of town came into their state.
Traveling further, Steinbeck discovered that technology was advancing so quickly as to give Americans more and more instant gratification. For example, Steinbeck was very intrigued by mobile homes. Mobile homes showed a new way of living for America. They also reflected the attitude that if you don't like a given place, you should be able to pick up and leave. Steinbeck also discussed this change in America when he traveled through cities of great production such as Youngstown, Cleveland, Akron, Toledo, Pontiac, Flint, South Bend, and Gary. He compared what he saw to the Ufizzi in Florence and the Louvre in Paris.
[edit]
Part Three
Steinbeck traveled across Wisconsin towards North Dakota, much in the way that the 5th century traveler, Herodotus, traveled through Greece and Persia writing about the people he encountered and the ground that he trod. He traveled along U.S. Highway 10 through St. Paul on an 'Evacuation Route,' "a road designed by fear" (129). This instance introduced one of Steinbeck's many realizations about American society, the fact that it is driven by fear. Once through St. Paul, he went to Sauk Centre, the birthplace of writer Sinclair Lewis, but was disheartened to talk to locals at a restaurant who had no understanding who Lewis was.
Upon visiting the center, he lamented at being forced to leave behind the wondrous W.P.A Guides To The States. He stopped at a diner for directions and realized that our American society is oblivious to its surrounding, life, and culture. Steinbeck mentioned that Americans have put "cleanliness first, at the expense of taste" (141) (as he travels through Fargo, North Dakota), and that the mentality of our nation has grown bland. Allowing his thoughts to slip back to his time in Minnesota, he lamented, "It looks as though the natural contentiousness of people has died" (142) implying the seemingly political ignorance that the society seemed to cling to, and bringing before our eyes the lack of risk our once rebellious nation now embraces. Throughout the section Steinbeck used simple, symbolic entities he encounters in his travels to express his views of the mindset of the country. For instance, he goes on at one point to speak of a rafter of turkey, and after casting criticism and ridicule at the source of Thanksgiving dinner, ends the string of insults with an unexpected transition to American life. He stated, "And suddenly I thought of that valley of the turkeys and wondered how I could have the gall to think turkeys stupid. Indeed, they have an advantage over us. They are good to eat."(129)
"I am in love with Montana," said Steinbeck. He explained it as a place unaffected by television, and a place with kind, laid-back individuals. "It seemed to me that the frantic bustle of America was not in Montana (158)." He went to the battlefield of Little Big Horn. He traveled through the "Injun Country" and thought of an author who wrote a novel about war against the Nez Perce tribes. Steinbeck and Charley then traveled to [[[Yellowstone National Park]]], a place that "is no more representative of America than Disneyland." Here the gentle and non-confrontational Charley showed a side of himself Steinbeck had never seen, Charley went crazy barking at a grizzly bear in the road. They next visited the Great Divide in the Rocky Mountains. He imagined the American explorers Lewis and Clark, and early French explorers, and wondered whether or not the men were impressed with what they found in America.
Steinbeck then visited Seattle, Washington, and California. Steinbeck grew up in the region, so much of the narrative is him revisiting the area and seeing its changes and progression, particularly the population growth. Steinbeck reflected on seeing the Columbia River and how Lewis and Clark must have felt when coming west. After this he noted the changes the west had undergone since then (p. 180): “It was only as I approached Seattle that the unbelievable change became apparent... I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.”(181) Rocinante, Steinbeck’s truck, then had a flat tire on a remote back road and in his retelling of the unfortunate event, he writes “It was obvious that the other tire might go at any minute, and it was Sunday and it was raining and it was Oregon.”(185). Though the specialized tires were hard to come by, the problem is solved in mere hours by the unexpected generosity of a gas station attendant. The episode, occurring to the wealthy Steinbeck in an enormously well-equipped and self-contained camper, is a send-up of similar desperate scenes in The Grapes of Wrath; but the episode seems to mean something beyond comedy to the author anyway.
Steinbeck then visited the giant redwood trees and ancient Sequoia trees that he had come to appreciate and adore in his lifetime. He said, “The vainest, most slap-happy and irreverent of men, in the presence of redwoods, goes under a spell of wonder and respect.”(189) When Charley refuses to urinate on the trees (a "salute" for a dog, as Steinbeck remarks), Steinbeck opines: “‘If I thought he did it out of spite or to make a joke,’ I said to myself, ‘I’d kill him out of hand.’”(193) He then visited a bar from his youth where he met and caught up with many friends, learning that a lot of regulars and childhood chums had died (many names from previous novels are mentioned and seen, or suggested to be, real people). He then seemed to say goodbye to his hometown, on pages 205 to 208, for the last time, and making an allusion to a book by Thomas Wolfe You Can't Go Home Again. He then concluded with, “I printed once more on my eyes, south, west, and north, and then we hurried away from the permanent and changeless past where my mother is always shooting a wildcat and my father is always burning his name with his love.”(208). wrong pages...
[edit]
Part Four
Steinbeck then made his way through the state of Texas, which he came to dread. Steinbeck felt that "people either passionately love or passionately hate Texas," referring to people who are just passersby like himself.
He mentioned a book by Edna Ferber about a tiny group of rich Texans, and related it to his own experience with a family similar to the one in the book at his Texas Thanksgiving. He elaborated more on his Thanksgiving and then went on to talk about the black and white relations in the south compared to the relations in the north and in his hometown of Salinas, California, sharing the theory of "separate but equal’ (248). Steinbeck wrote about the desegregation of schools and how there was a change in the north. In the southern states, such as Texas, he discussed about how when people are not proud of something they have been involved in, that they don't like to welcome witnesses, because they believe the witnesses may be the ones causing all the trouble. This enabled him to revert back to his childhood in California, writing about an African-American family that he knew, the Coopers, and never seemed threatened by them or noticed much of a difference, relating back to black and white relations during that time. Throughout his passage through Texas, he stayed in Amarillo, Texas, where his faithful dog companion, Charley, became ill and had to stay at a vet for a couple of days, where he realized what it would be like without him before going on to his Thanksgiving. Steinbeck then discussed his ideas of a strong "difference between an American and the Americans" (243). He referred to previous experiences where people have described Americans badly and then turned to him in telling him that he/she was not speaking about him, but the others. If true, then he assumed it is true with every other country's people such as the British, or the Frenchman and the French. So even though he dreaded to see and hear the events of his travels through Texas, he took a lot from it.
Steinbeck was drawn to the “distortion of normal life” (249) and left Texas in search of the so-called "Cheerleaders"(256) who were protesting the integration of black children in a school in New Orleans.
Before he reached the city, Steinbeck welcomed in the “singing language of Acadia” (252) while recalling the memory of an old friend, Dr. St. Martin, who healed children and Cajuns. Upon entering New Orleans, Steinbeck encountered the racism of the South and soon found that racism was not only towards blacks, but also towards Jews, “ It’s the goddamn New York Jews cause all the trouble” (254). Steinbeck then experienced the “bestial and filthy” 256) show that the Cheerleaders put on while the black children entered school. The applause and praise of the crowd brought Steinbeck to realize that there were no thoughtful people like his old friends Lyle Saxon and Roark Bradford, in the city and that they had “left New Orleans misrepresented to the world” (259). After the incident, Steinbeck no longer desired to visit some of his favorite places, like Gallatoir’s Restaurant, fearing more racially divided ideals. In search of a secluded place, he sat beside the "Father of Waters", or Mississippi River, and encountered a man who looked similar to Greco San Pablo. They ate together and talked of Lewis Carroll and the “queer” (261) epithet by Rober John Croswell. After giving a ride to both a wary black man and a racist white man, Steinbeck became aware that Southern people were afraid to change their way of life just as the Cockney children in London were and that they will accept that fear despite the Gandhi inspired works of Martin Luther King."

"What are the constants during Steinbeck’s trip? What doesn’t change from place to place?
Wanderlust is everywhere in evidence in Travels with Charley, from beginning to end.
Steinbeck feels it. The people he meets feel it. He begins to feel it is a national characteristic:
“Could it be that Americans are a restless people, a mobile people, never satisfied with where
they are as a matter of selection? The pioneers, the immigrants who peopled the continent, were
the restless ones in Europe. The steady rooted ones stayed home and are still there” (p. 103).
Some people in the book seem only to want to move to the city, but because to them the city
represents a brave new world full of possibilities, it too demonstrates a desire to wander and
explore, albeit in the streets of New York instead of the wide open spaces of the West.
Political discussion is kept quiet. Steinbeck notices it at the first and finds that
throughout his journey, no one is talking about upcoming elections and politics in general (p.
31). One man in Minnesota does discuss the American love of bashing the Russians and
channeling other hostilities into that bashing: “’Man has a fight with his wife, he belts the
Russians,’” the man says, to which Steinbeck replies “’Maybe everybody needs Russians. I’ll
bet in Russia they need Russians. Maybe they call it Americans’” (p. 144).
The beauty of the American landscape is reflected in Steinbeck’s travels too, no matter
where he goes. Even in unexpected places, Steinbeck finds himself shocked by the natural
world. Initially, he does not like the Bad Lands, and says so outright: “They deserve this name.
They are like the work of an evil child. Such a place the Fallen Angels might have built as a
spite to Heaven, dry and sharp, desolate and dangerous, and for me filled with foreboding” (p.
154). But even there, he is shocked to discover beauty: “I went into a state of flight, running to
get away from the unearthly landscape. And then the late afternoon changed everything. … It
was so beautiful that I stopped near a thicket of dwarfed and wind-warped cedars and junipers,
Page 6
and once stopped I was caught, trapped in color and dazzled by the clarity of the light” (p. 156).
“In the night” he decides, “the Bad Lands had become Good Lands. I can’t explain it. That’s
how it was” (p. 157).
Why does Steinbeck get lost all the time?
Steinbeck gets lost a lot on his journey. He admits using it as a strategy for meeting
people, as he writes, “I knew long ago and rediscovered that the best way to attract attention,
help and conversation is to be lost” (p. 9). Asking directions does seem like a good way to meet
people, but he already has Charley as an ice-breaker, and since he gets lost even in his own
hometown as he tries to get home, it could be that more is at work here. Steinbeck says early on,
“I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found, nor much identification from shapes which
symbolize continents and states. Besides, roads change, increase, are widened or abandoned so
often in our country that one must buy road maps like daily newspapers” (p. 71). Is this a
philosophical stance against the tyranny of maps (“There are map people whose joy is to lavish
more attention on the sheets of colored paper than on the colored land rolling by,” he complains
[p.70]), or perhaps a man with a fallible sense of direction making excuses for himself?
There seems to be at least some philosophical basis for Steinbeck’s inexact plotting of his
course and unwillingness to rely too heavily on maps. He wants to discover America as it truly
is, and that may not be along the best-traveled and easiest roads. The most meaningful
encounters he has in the book are not planned, but chance meetings that lead to conversations, or
unexpected beauty in the landscape around him. Travels with Charley does not set out to show
us the expected sights (which may be one reason the Yellowstone visit is cut short), but to take
us on a journey of discovery where spontaneity and the unexpected are valued highly. Getting
lost keeps his trip from becoming too easy to predict and too clichéd, and indeed, many odd
moments in the book seem to exist solely to surprise and delight. Why, for example, does
Steinbeck include the motel in New England which is open and unattended when he arrives and
just the same the next morning when he moves on (pp. 74-76)? "

What is this book about besides America’s people and its landscape?
As if exploring America were not task enough, there are quite a few other musings in
Travels with Charley, some of which appear repeatedly in Steinbeck’s discussions. For example,
Steinbeck questions the nature of truth in the many passages he writes about the unreliability of
memory. He sets out to rediscover America because he feels he has lost the truth of it with time:
“My memories were distorted by twenty-five intervening years” (p.5). He reflects on the ways
memory distorts the past to reflect a truth it needs today, as when he recalls visiting Salinas and
being described as a boy walking in the freezing cold with his little thin overcoat fastened with
horse-blanket pins: “This in its small way is the very stuff of myths – the poor and suffering
child who rises to glory, on a limited scale of course. Even though I didn’t remember the
episode, I knew it could not be true. My mother was a passionate sewer-on of buttons” (p. 81).
He adds that there is no reason to try to correct the misconception: “If my hometown wants me
in horse-blanket pins, nothing I can do is likely to change it, particularly the truth” (p. 82).
The subjectivity of individual experience plays a part in the elusiveness of the truth too.
Steinbeck recounts an incident in which he and another man, both Americans, both returning
from visiting Prague, came away with completely different impressions of the city:
It just wasn’t the same place, and yet each of us was honest, neither one a liar, both pretty good
observers by any standard, and we brought home two cities, two truths. For this reason I cannot
recommend this account of America that you will find. So much there is to see, but our morning
eyes describe a different world than do our afternoon eyes, and surely our wearied evening eyes
can report only a weary evening world. (p. 77)
He makes a similar comment near the end of the book, when thinking of how to characterize
America, that he feels uncomfortable with the “truths” he had discovered: “I discovered long
ago in collecting and classifying marine animals that what I found was closely intermeshed with
how I felt at the moment. External reality has a way of being not so external after all” (p. 209).
Another issue Steinbeck ponders repeatedly in Travels with Charley is the nature of
change, and in particular its relationship to age. Age is discussed sometimes in terms of how
people should live their lives, but often Steinbeck finds himself looking at change in his native
land and wondering if things seem foreboding to him simply because the world that is evolving
is not for him. When he meets the young sailor stationed on a submarine, he finds himself
heartened by the contrast between his fear of the subs and the young man’s acceptance of them:
And could be he’s right and I’m wrong. It’s his world, not mine any more. There’s no
anger in his delphinium eyes and no fear and no hatred either, so maybe it’s all right. It’s
just a job with good pay and a future. I must not put my memories and my fear on him.
Maybe it won’t be true again, but that’s his lookout. It’s his world now. Perhaps he
understands things I will never learn. (p. 23).
At other points he is not so accepting, as when he says he cannot recognize Seattle at all any
more (p. 181), but he seems to be working through his feelings he is confronted with new things
in the country and things he recalls from his past which have changed and trying to decide what
it all means for him personally, and us as a nation.
Page 10
How do Steinbeck’s travels reflect the importance of individuality?
Steinbeck’s Americans certainly have features in common – their curiosity about
Rocinante, their oft-expressed desire to go on a similar journey themselves, their disinclination to
discuss politics, etc., – and yet, their individuality seems to take up almost as much space in the
story as their similarities do. While many encounters may seem structurally similarly (Steinbeck
stops for directions; Steinbeck invites someone in for coffee), most of these quick character
sketches are quirky and distinct. The joyless waitress outside of Bangor is (pp. 45-48) is
completely different from the waitresses in Ohio (p.105-6) or the Minnesota waitress whom
Steinbeck describes as “either a young and troubled girl or a very spry old woman, I couldn’t tell
which” (p. 130).
One reason Steinbeck presents a variety of people along the way is that they are meant to
reflect a cross-section of American society. Just on the trip out of New Orleans and through the
Deep South, Steinbeck meets Monsieur Ci Gît, a soft-spoken black man who seems
uncomfortable taking a ride from a white man, an obscenity-shouting racist, and a young black
activist. That seems a very obvious attempt to represent various forces and opinions at work in
the South, without actually stopping the story to describe any other cities or incidents along the
way. They represents types, and Steinbeck must hope that added together, these representative
types combine to depict the South.
It could also be argued that despite the seeming paradox, Americans, as a group, embrace
individuality. Nowhere does Steinbeck find himself ostracized because of his unusual dress
(complete as it is with rubber boots, army surplus trousers, and a British naval cap with a lion
and unicorn on it), his unfamiliar means of transport (Rocinante is, after all, custom-made for
Steinbeck) or his unusual quest. It may be that they identify with his desire to roam, but
additionally Steinbeck depicts the American people as tolerant of the odd picture he presents and
of each other. Robbie’s father, bleak as his opinion seems to be of his son’s dream job as a
hairdresser, has allowed his son to take courses and pursue his dreams, in a limited way, and it
takes only a bit of Steinbeck’s speech about the noble profession of hairdressing to begin
changing his opinion (p.172-75). The remote population of North Dakota embraces the itinerate
actor and his Gielgud impersonations, in no small part because he embraces them (p. 149). The
South is perhaps an exception, but since Steinbeck focuses his attention on race relations, the
scope of his discussion there is somewhat limited. Otherwise Steinbeck’s Americans seem to
like an American original, or at least a non-threatening one.

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

Travels With Charley Rocinante

Answer 4

PETA should have gotten hold of Steinbeck. He had his truck exterminated without checking to see that the chemicals were safe for dogs; Charley's lungs were burned. When Charley did to a redwood what dogs always do to trees, Steinbeck scolded him. Steinbeck threw a pail of water at Charley. Those are the parts of the book that I remember. RIP, Charley

Answer 5

If you just obtained a home and you have no price range for a skilled landscaper you just come to the correct place https://tr.im/XFJJL so that you discover how to deal with landscaping even if is your very first experience because is always a initial for every thing.
Ideas4landscaping is a digital downloadable collection of 300 stage-by-stage guides, themes and video tutorials and involves above 7250 higher resolution images for those individuals who are hunting for inspiration and suggestions to boost their landscaping demands. The package comes as a Pc CD ROM as well.
Full with images and simple diagrams, this program will make you appear like an expert in this world of landscaping in front of your pals and family members.

Answer 6

2

Answer 7

To say everything he learned about America would take another book or at least an essay. He did learn that racism still existed.