Travels With Charley

“He prefers negotiation to fighting, and properly so, since he is very bad at fighting.”

Steinbeck describes Charley in almost human terms throughout the book. This quote comes during his introduction, as Steinbeck discusses the foolishness of bringing Charley on the trip as a guard dog.

“Among nearly forty I didn’t see a single state that hadn’t a good word to say for itself.”

Even the lowliest of places Steinbeck visits have historical markers and signs celebrating major historical events. This amuses him, but he appreciates the pride locals take in their homelands.

“In establishing contact with strange people, Charley is my ambassador.”

Charley loves to approach strangers on the trip. He often helps Steinbeck connect with the people he encounters. This passage is another example of how Steinbeck personifies Charley throughout the story.

“I guess this is why I hate governments, all governments. It is always the rule, the fine print, carried out by fine print men.”

Steinbeck has trouble with American immigration officials at the Canadian border, even though they can see that he only crossed the border and immediately turned around. He thinks the refusal to bend the rules makes the officials feel powerful.

“When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.”

Steinbeck hates freeways but increasingly uses them as his trip progresses. Despite their convenience, however, he considers them a factor in the country’s homogenization.

“Could it be that Americans are a restless people, a mobile people, never satisfied with where they are as a matter of selection?”

An increasingly mobile society is a common thematic thread in the book. Steinbeck sees many drawbacks to an unrooted culture but regards such progress as somewhat inevitable.

“But if Charley was aware of his deep-down inadequacy, he gave no sign.”

Like Steinbeck, Charley is old. However, while Steinbeck is embarrassed by his decline, Charley sits proudly and appears not to notice his shabby characteristics.

“Only through imitation do we develop toward originality.”

Steinbeck is concerned about the decline of original ideas he feels the country is experiencing. However, he considers it on some level an integral part of how human culture develops.

“If this people has so atrophied its taste buds as to find tasteless food not only acceptable but desirable, what of the emotional life of the nation?”

Consumerism signals blandness and boredom in American culture, and food becomes a symbol for this. When Steinbeck finds the rare roadside stand or restaurant with freshly made food, he sees it as an exception to the generally stale, packaged fare across the country.

“Someone must have told me about the Missouri River at Bismarck, North Dakota, or I must have read about it. In either case, I hadn’t paid attention. I came on it in amazement. Here is where the map should fold. Here is the boundary between east and west.”

Steinbeck visits Fargo, North Dakota, partly because it lies on the fold of most American atlases. He finds it disappointing, however, and considers the real national dividing line the Missouri River, which has very different landscapes on either side.

“Yellowstone National Park is no more representative of America than is Disneyland.”

Steinbeck doesn’t understand the appeal of national parks. He thinks that really seeing a place involves visiting the typical landscape and average towns, not the enclosed “freaks” like the Yellowstone hotspots.

“I wonder why we think the thoughts and emotions of animals are simple.”

Steinbeck describes Charley as somewhat simple yet also elevates him to the level of almost human. This quote is near the end of the book, after Steinbeck has fully decided that Charley can understand and interpret everything around him.

“I only saw two real-man fights, with bare fists and enthusiastic inaccuracy, and both of them were over women.”

American Masculinity is a major theme in the book. Steinbeck laments the lack of real masculinity that he sees across the nation.

“The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always.”

The redwoods are a special place to Steinbeck, but he considers their specialness objective. They’re so unlike anything else on Earth that he can’t imagine them not leaving an impression on a visitor.

“I find it difficult to write about my native place, northern California.”

While Steinbeck writes about most places based on just a few days there, he realizes that northern California occupies too vast a place in his mind to easily synthesize. This is especially true because the northern California he visits isn’t the same place as the one from his childhood memory.

“To the sequoias everyone is a stranger, a barbarian.”

Sequoias are the last vestige of an ancient era and are older than any human. When lamenting that northern California has become inhabited by newcomers, Steinbeck realizes his foolishness when he considers the perspective of the Indigenous tribes that were there before his family—and then that of the sequoias, which were there before anyone.

“I discovered long ago in collecting and classifying marine animals that what I found was closely intermeshed with how I felt in the moment. External reality has a way of not being so external after all.”

This passage shows that Steinbeck was aware of his narrative’s subjectivity. He expresses this view during a particularly bleak scene, as he’s realizing that the trip hasn’t really taught him anything important.

“There is nourishment in the desert for myth, but myth must somewhere have its roots in reality.”

Steinbeck describes the desert as a mysterious and lonely place. He recalls several legends associated with deserts and believes that anything is possible in the arid, unwelcoming landscape.

“Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word.”

While Steinbeck characterizes everyone else in the US as Americans at heart, he sets Texans apart in his mind. Above everything else, their first loyalty is to Texas and all it symbolizes.

“In Europe it is a popular sport to describe what Americans are like.”

Steinbeck somewhat mockingly notes the European tendency to stereotype Americans. However, given that this quote appears just before he describes the New Orleans protest, it suggests that some of the worst stereotypes are rooted in fact.

“Because they were not hurt or insulted, they were not defensive or combative. Because their dignity was intact, they had no need to be overbearing, and because the Cooper boys has never heard that they were inferior, their minds could grow to their true limits.”

The Coopers were the one Black family Steinbeck knew growing up. They were successful and well-integrated into his community, so he has trouble understanding why white and Black people in the South can’t get along.

“In a long and unprotected life I have seen and heard the vomitings of demonic humans before. Why then did these screams fill me with a shocked and sickened sorrow?”

The shouts of the “Cheerleaders” are worse than Steinbeck even expected when entering the fray. Watching the scene makes him understand the true depth of Southern racism and the uphill battle that civil rights activists face to fight it.

“He doesn’t belong to a species clever enough to split the atom but not clever enough to live in peace with itself.”

Charley seems disappointed in humanity just as Steinbeck is reeling from what he sees in New Orleans. Steinbeck wonders if dogs are really mentally inferior to humans. They may not think abstractly, but they’re naturally without prejudice.