“Travels with Charley,” by John Steinbeck, is a travelogue about Steinbeck and his french poodle journeying through the country. To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light-these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years. With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, and encounters old friends in San Francisco. Steinbeck reflects on the American character, racial hostility, on a particular form of American loneliness he finds almost everywhere, and on the unexpected kindness of strangers that is also a very real part of our national identity. Throughout the story, Steinbeck’s journey becomes a curveball. The people of New England develop to his understanding and his ideas of this region of…show more content… Steinbeck is a wishful thinker, he is just a person wishing for someone to start a conversation with him at the diner. The excerpt states, “An early morning waitress in New England leads a lonely life, but I soon learned that if I tried to inject life and gaiety into her job with a blithe remark she dropped her eyes and answered “Yep” or “Umph.” Still, I did feel that there was some kind of communication, but I can’t say.” This shows that Steinbeck was trying to be nice and start a conversation, but the people wouldn’t want to talk to him.
The people are influencing his ideas about New England and his experiences there when the people in the bar didn’t talk that much so he chose his second option, the social media. the people in New England showed Steinbeck that they would rather have climate than weather. In New England, Florida is, “a golden word.” The people in New England try to influence Steinbeck. When he had no one to talk to he turned to local media: the radio. That is what drove him to knowing about
