Travels with Charley Themes

In Travels with Charley, Steinbeck is traveling through the U.S. in the early 1960s, when race relations and civil rights were a hot topic, so it's no wonder that race comes up quite a bit. We shou...

In Travels with Charley, Steinbeck is a bit of an enigma when it comes his views on masculinity. On the one hand, he seems kind of traditional when he first broaches the subject, since he's getting...

Because he was a correspondent in World War II and the U.S. is now involved in the Cold War, Steinbeck actually has war on the brain a lot of the time in Travels with Charley. Sure, he's mainly foc...

What a surprise—Steinbeck is fascinated with writing and books! Okay, we aren't actually surprised; a lot of writers are pretty interested in talking about their craft and musing about art. Stein...

This theme is definitely the not-so-evil fraternal twin of the "Literature and Writing" theme, since some of Steinbeck's observations on "truth" and how to access it are also musings on representat...

Steinbeck sets out to have a party in the U.S.A., but really, there's actually a lot of talk about foreigners and foreign countries in Travels with Charley. Russia comes up a lot because the U.S. i...

Change: it's what's for breakfast… and lunch… and dinner in Travels with Charley, it seems. Everywhere Steinbeck goes, we get his observations and thoughts about the way American life has been...

In Travels with Charley, Steinbeck hits the road with only his dog for company, so yeah, he gets a lot of alone time (at least, the way he tells it). He seems to want it that way—otherwise, why w...