How Did Steinbeck Decide To Travel To America

In the book “Travels With Charley,” by John Steinbeck, the author decides to travel around America on a road trip in order to write a book about America while meeting unique people, events, and places with explosive detail. Even though he is American, he still believed that “I, an American writer, writing about America, was working from memory, and the memory is at best a faulty, warpy reservoir,” (Steinbeck, 5). The section in which it is in sets up the reasons on why he decided to go on a journey through America and what he wished to obtain from it to start writing the book. Even though it is not clearly stated, it is highly possible to find out that he both was purely curious and yet believed that the culture changed in his perspective,

This was shown when he stated that “I had not heard the speech of America, smelled the grass and trees and sewage, seen its hills and water, its color and quality of light. I knew the changes only from books and newspapers,” (Steinbeck, 5). This sentence shows that he was purely curious, which was reinforced the passage basically stating that he started the journey because he wanted to see and feel what America is out of pure curiosity. However, he did share some feelings with wanting to know what happened because his mind most likely changed the culture and events

One of the occasions of him gaining knowledge he seeked was when he “.. wondered whether constant association could cause inattention , and asked a native New Hampshire woman about it. She said the autumn never failed to amaze her; to elate. ‘It is a glory,’ she said, ‘and can’t be remembered, so that is always comes as a surprise.” (Steinbeck, 37). In this case, he has discovered what he has set to find out. He also figured it out through direct action to obtain the information which he has done through many ways throughout the book. However, later in his adventures in which he met the fancy lady with the fancy dog, he admitted that “Until that moment I never quite knew the meaning of the phrase ‘to make the welkin ring’,” (Steinbeck, 41). This was a learning experience in which he found out a piece of knowledge without knowing that he would learn certain things. There are also many occurrences of him finding out information of which he had not tried to search for at all. To summarise all the stated evidence recently said, he learns knowledge in ways that he would have expected it and in ways he would have not expected