Travels With Charley

Steinbeck wrote Travels With Charley at a transitional period in his life; his career as an author was winding down, and he felt the rapid advance of old age. He embarks on the trip as an attempt to delay this inevitability and to reconnect with his country as a whole after years of skipping over the American interior in favor of living in coastal areas and traveling abroad. During his travels, he finds that his country’s landscape and culture have changed even more than he expected: The huge technological and industrial advancements of the post-World War II era turned formerly small towns into bustling cities, and the growing interstate highway system bypasses the rural landscapes he loves. In every place he visits, he finds that people are always in a rush, driving quickly, moving away from their hometowns in search of better opportunities, and eating bland convenience foods. He worries about these changes, yearning for a time when life moved at a slower pace and people made time to enjoy their surroundings and build communities. He eventually decides that the changes are inevitable, though, and by the time he arrives in his unrecognizable hometown, he has accepted that the America he longs for is already well in the past.

Throughout the book, Steinbeck offers examples of change and vacillates on his opinion of progress. When stopping in travel plazas by the interstate, he likes the array of foods instantly available in vending machines, particularly the soup dispensers, but worries that boring food is making Americans into boring people. He appreciates mobile homes and sees great potential in them. As a Depression-era writer, he was profoundly familiar with how established families could become displaced at a moment’s notice when economic opportunities dried up. Although he’s skeptical about a fully mobile future and the damage it may do to human relationships, he’s glad that future families may have more choice about where or whether to plant roots. He has a particular disdain for interstate highways because they keep travelers away from the real culture of places they pass and instead subject them to high-speed driving and a series of identical rest areas. He considers highways critical for American progress, however, because high-speed transit is the only way to fuel the high-speed economy the country seems determined to create.

Physical change isn’t the only change Steinbeck discusses. He also notes significant social changes that both concern and delight him. Although he mourns the loss of regional dialects, he knows that this loss results from better access to education for all. He wishes that politics weren’t so complex that most people avoid talking about them, but after arguing with his sisters, he decides maybe that’s a good thing. He’s hopeful for the future of the South and the rights of Black citizens but can’t fathom how the region will ever heal its deep wounds.