A Journey in the United States of America

…moving about his own country with his dog Charley, he rediscovers

America and the Americans…

a literary criticism by

Juliana Pereira

Juliana Neves Norte Pereira, group 4 julianapereiratravels@gmail.com

Autonomous University of Barcelona

T r a v e l s W i t h C h a r l e y

J o h n S t e i n b e c k

P e n g u i n B o o k s , 1 9 9 7 , U n i t e d S t a t e s o f A m e r i c a

“In the beginning of this record I tried to explore the nature of journeys, how they are things

in themselves, each one an individual and no two alike. I speculated with a kind of wonder on

the strength of the individuality of journeys and stopped on the postulate that people don’t take

trips – trips take people”.

John Steinbeck always had a thirst for travel. He wrote several travel essays in periodicals

such as The Saturday Review and Newsday’s and he travelled in many parts of the world, but

he realised he didn’t know his own country and what the Americans were like, so even despite

his heart condition, he starts his journey of 10,000-miles around the United States of America,

from Long Island to Maine, Seattle, California, New Orleans and back to New York City,

accompanied only by his French poodle, Charley. Steinbeck was very observatory and during

his journey he takes several notes of what he sees, his encounters with locals, nostalgia and

changes. On the way back home, he realises that journeys are unpredictable, and the Americans

he sees and talks to are individuals, each ones different from the others.

Travels With Charley is a nonfiction travelogue written in first person, and although

Steinbeck was not a travel writer as Paul Theroux or Bill Bryson, he used to write about his

travel experiences. Travels With Charley would become his most recognised travelogue,

reaching the first place on the New York Times Best Seller list, in 1962. According to Parini,

an American writer and well-respected critic, Travels With Charley is more a work of fiction

than nonfiction, that the writer would have invented freely to make the book a readable and

vivid narrative, because Steinbeck was at heart a novelist. Steinbeck was an American novelist,

short stories writer and war correspondent, with a realistic writing. He was also a social-protest

writer because he didn’t like injustices and violence. In Travels With Charley, he writes about

the Negro-white subject, which makes sense because this travelogue was published in 1962,

during the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954-68). He also shows some

disappointment with his country because of the amount of waste and crazy consumption.

Steinbeck didn’t want to be recognised during his trip, so he bought a pick-up truck with a little

house on it, which he named Rocinante, the name of Don Quixote’s horse, and he takes his dog

Charley with him, because he was afraid of feeling lonely and being attacked while sleeping.

He prepared his trip weeks before, studying maps and drawing lines along the way he wanted

to go, and he took several writing materials from paper to notebooks, encyclopaedias and

reference books. Later on, he realised he took too many things with him. During his journey,

he avoids highways, cities and sightseeing, he stays in camp sites, auto courts and motels and

he goes to churches on Sundays.

First, Steinbeck travels to the north in Vermont and then east in New Hampshire in the White

Mountains. Here, he describes the villages as the prettiest, “unchanged for a hundred years”.

Then he goes to Deer Isle because a friend had recommended it, “All I knew about Deer Isle

was that there was nothing you could say about it, but if I didn’t go I was crazy”. Somehow he

wants to show us here how much influence the opinions of others have on us when we travel.

Juliana Neves Norte Pereira, group 4 julianapereiratravels@gmail.com

Autonomous University of Barcelona

T r a v e l s W i t h C h a r l e y

J o h n S t e i n b e c k

P e n g u i n B o o k s , 1 9 9 7 , U n i t e d S t a t e s o f A m e r i c a

As he gets far north, he refers the customs, attitudes, myths, directions and changes as part of

the structure of America, and he gives the example of hunting as an attitude inherited from

recent ancestors, believing that “every American is a natural born-hunter”. Along the way he

observes the changes of language in highway signs. He enjoys Niagara Falls, which he

describes “like a large version of the old Bond sign on Times Square”. As he drives to

Michigan, he observes the changes in the people’s ways of life, living in houses that can be

moved, called mobile homes “It seemed to me a revolution in living and on a rapid increase”.

Here he is invited for a diner by a family living in a mobile home. He passes through what he

calls “the great hives of production”, Youngstown, Cleveland, Akron, Toledo, Pontiac, Flint,

and later South Bend and Gary. He meets a guardian and goes fishing with him. He meets his

wife in Chicago, which delights him but he considers it breaks his continuity in writing. He

moves northward heading for Wisconsin, where he had never been but always had heard about

it and eaten its cheeses. He describes it as “…The land dripped with richness, the fat cows and

pigs gleaming against green, and, in the smaller holdings, corn standing in little tents as corn

should, and pumpkins all about”. Then he crosses the Mississippi river which he claims he

never sees “All I saw was a river of trucks; all I heard was a roar of motors”. He drives to

Fargo which he considers “brother to the fabulous places of the earth, kin to those magically

remote spots mentioned by Herodotus and Marco Polo and Mandeville”, and the coldest place

on the continent, “hotter than any place else, or wetter or drier, or deeper in snow”. He meets

an actor in a camping site. He crosses the Missouri River at Bismarck, North Dakota which he

names “the Bad Lands” because of its dangerous roads, and he drives to the state of Montana,

which he falls in love. “It seems to me that Montana is a great splash of grandeur. The scale

is huge but not overpowering. The land is rich with grass and colour, and the mountains are

the kind I would create if mountains were ever put on my agenda”. When crossing California

and Salinas, where the writer was born, he observes the changes, which cause him confusion.

One of the last places he went was Texas, which place he knew he would go sooner or later.

There he meets his wife again and stays with a rich family in a ranch.

During his journey, the writer expresses his feelings of loneliness, his nostalgias and his

frustrations. America seemed too big to cross and difficult to understand. He can’t take a clear

conclusion of the Americans. He can’t write five hundred pages as he wished.

But the truth is, in one way or another, he rediscovers America. Because travelling is about

observing with our own eyes and taking our own conclusions, whether they are clear or not. A

good traveller is very curious about the world around him. What makes us take the decision to

leave? Curiosity. Steinbeck was curious about his country, its people, and its origins. He could

have travelled with his wife, but he decided to go alone, because he knew this was a journey

he had to do by himself, in order to write what he sees, and get involved in a way he couldn’t

accompanied. Although melancholic sometimes, Steinbeck’s writing is very touching in a way

that makes us think about our needs, our fears and our learnings, when traveling.

So, in order to relay a travel, this book could give us three advices, be curious, travel by yourself

and discover with our own eyes, be observatory.