Travels With Charley

Travels with Charley Travels with Charley, written by famous American author John Steinbeck in his later years, is a travelogue of his almost four-month-long trip with his poodle, Charley, on a cross-country journey to try to regain his connection with America. His reason was that he wanted to be recognized as an “American writer,” but not just have the title put upon him because he lived in America and was a writer. In order for him to earn that title, he felt he needed to broaden his knowledge of America more than what he knew about New York, where he lived, or major cities like Chicago and San Francisco, where he had visited. Steinbeck and Charley travel cross-country in his custom-made pickup truck camper named Rocinante, which he named in …show more content…
He describes not only the scenery but the people and interesting events. He especially notices dramatic changes when he stops back in his hometown of Salinas, California. He can hardly recognize the place and is surprised at how much it has changed over the years. He remembers it “as a narrow, twisting mountain road where the wood teams moved, drawn by steady mules” (173). His hometown, Salinas, was exactly like “former America” which was on its way to becoming a once-great memory. In Part Four, he experiences Thanksgiving with his wife and her family in Texas and travels through the Deep South. In New Orleans and Louisiana, he experiences first-hand the impact that racism had in the South and the rest of American society. Disgusted, he heads east through Mississippi and Alabama, only to encounter more racism. By the time he reaches Virginia, he realizes that in his heart, his journey had already been over for him, and he was just watching the miles wind down until he was back home in New York. He concludes that America is lost and heading in a direction of an uncertain