Where It All Goes Down
The Good Ole U. S. of A., 1960
Steinbeck is traveling all over the U.S. in this tome, so our setting switches up a lot throughout the story. However, we've divided the kind of descriptions he gives into three main categories for your edification and amusement. Check 'em out.
The Good (a.k.a. the Picturesque)
Steinbeck comes across a lot of super-pretty scenery in his travels, and he's often taken off-guard with how gorgeous the country is. For example, when he gets into New England in time to see the fall colors coming out, he's pretty blown away:
To find not only that this bedlam of color was true but that the pictures were pale and inaccurate translations, was to me startling. I can't even imagine the forest colors when I am not seeing them. I 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 it always comes as a surprise." (2.1.116)
In Steinbeck's view, the reality of the fall foliage is even better than pictures make it out to be—and how often does that happen? We're talking #nofilter for sure.
But don't think Steinbeck just sticks to the superficial stuff in giving us an idea of what a place is like. Sometimes, the beauty or "warmth" of a setting for him has to do with both the physical landscape and its people. For example, as he heads west, he observes:
I had forgotten how rich and beautiful is the countryside—the deep topsoil, the wealth of great trees, the lake country of Michigan handsome as a well-made woman, and dressed and jeweled. It seemed to me that the earth was generous and outgoing here in the heartland, and perhaps the people took a cue from it. (2.5.79)
Steinbeck speculates that the people in the Midwest take their cues in warmth and kindness from the land, "generous" and "outgoing" like their "heartland" home. It sounds pretty good—sign us up.
The Bad? (a.k.a. The Modern)
Unfortunately, Steinbeck is less happy with some of what he finds further west, particularly when he sees that the march of progress has been marching all over the landscape around Seattle. In his opinion, Seattle has not changed for better with the influx of industry and technology:
The highways eight lanes wide cut like glaciers through the uneasy land. This Seattle had no relation to the one I remembered. The traffic rushed with murderous intensity. On the outskirts of this place I once knew well I could not find my way. Along what had been country lanes rich with berries, high wire fences and mile-long factories stretched, and the yellow smoke of progress hung over all, fighting the sea winds' efforts to drive them off. (3.7.116)
Yikes, that's a pretty bleak picture, if you ask us. Nature (in the form of the sea winds) is battling against the "yellow smoke" of pollution, but it's all dirty highways and "murderous" traffic. It sounds unpleasant, and not really much like progress. Steinbeck himself finds a paradox in the way supposed innovation can wreck a landscape, musing, "I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction" (3.7.117).
So, it's not all flowers and fall foliage for Steinbeck in his journey—there's ugliness out there, for sure. Again, you get the sense that the landscape might seep into the emotional life of the land and its people when Steinbeck uses words like "uneasy" to describe the area around Seattle.
The Ugly (a.k.a. Racism)
Okay, Steinbeck seems to have a lot of reservations about modernity and technology (and their effects on the land and its residents), but later he finds something even worse: the pervasive racism going on in the Deep South during his visit there (and the violence that comes with it). Even before he goes to check out the hateful atmosphere that protestors called the "Cheerleaders" are creating outside of a local school, Steinbeck is aware that the environment he is stepping into is electric (and not in a boogie woogie kind of way): "Even I know better than to drive a car near trouble, particularly Rocinante, with New York license plates. Only yesterday a reporter had been beaten and his camera smashed, for even convinced voters are reluctant to have their moment of history recorded and preserved" (4.3.7).
Even though Steinbeck's skin color isn't likely to cause him problems, the fact that he's an outsider—and a Yankee one at that—is likely to raise eyebrows and potentially cause some problems. So he tries to go into observation mode anonymously—and with an awareness that he's dealing with people whose commitments and sensibilities are completely foreign to his own.
Yeah, Steinbeck really covered the highs and lows of America, its setting, and its people through his travels, and he relays it all to us pretty freely—no filter.