Steinbeck Travelled America and Designed a View of Society of 1960s' Throughout Travels with Charley

Steinbeck travelled America and designed a view of society of 1960s' throughout Travels with Charley

As Chaplin's Tramp roamed the world with the pleasure of wanderlust deep-rooted in his mind, returning on the road after every stop all the time, similarly John Steinbeck returned home from his European journeys with the intentions to criss-cross his homeland to get to know the nature of the people the country was settled by. Steinbeck felt he lost the connection with the country and the people he wrote about, and most of all it was only his mere nature to wander, as he mentioned in the beginning of the book. The story is based on Steinbeck's experience with people he met and it matures throughout the book as his view changes gradually. The fact that Travels with Charley reached #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list just a few months after its release in 1962, showed that society actually related with this topic to great extent. However, another later discovered fact is that he made up some, or most of the story. Nevertheless, he made his points on the society and they were spot-on. This essay will examine Steinbeck's own view of American society and his findings, as well as the reason why a human nature is so cursed by travelling.

Right from the beginning, Steinbeck meets with the strong craving to wander as he begins his route. He is visited by friends and all of them want to join him. Also, later on, when he is already on the road and he makes a stop to visit his son in a school in Massachusetts, he clearly mentions that "It can be imagined what effect [a traveller's car] had on two hundred teen-age prisoners of education […]" (25). Like everybody who Steinbeck meets in the book, all the students want to go with him. This is one of many characterizations of the American folk. Tramps and roamers were always a part of Europe, long before America was settled. Thus because it was settled with the greatest of explorers, who were basically tramps with the hunger for traveling, it was only natural that the USA became a nation of travellers. Nowadays, for a typical European, it is rather hard to imagine that even though they were born in one state, they will move to live in another and then to study in another. For American, this is just normal and they like this style of life. This, of course, is slightly different kind of travelling, but the spirit of wandering is in it.

When leaving New York, Steinbeck represented the typical spirit of a strong-minded traveller. The later interview with his older son Thomas disclosed that by the time he was leaving, he knew he was seriously ill. Steinbeck wanted to travel at all costs and he did, he was trying to recapture his youth, the spirit of the knight-era he once had. This, although not mentioned in a book, is a fact about the travellers all around the world, not only in America. They want to roam around the