Steinbeck, the American-4

47 CHAPTER III THE AMERICAN In ​Americans​, Steinbeck begins the chapter entitled “Paradox and Dream” by saying that “one of the generalities most often noted about Americans is that we are a restless, a dissatisfied, a searching people” (32). Steinbeck has reason to believe this. After all, he himself is one of these people, one who restlessly ventured across America. For Steinbeck, Americans are a people built by myth, by the frontier. "We believe implicitly that we are the heirs of pioneers; that we have inherited the ability to take care of ourselves, particularly in relation to nature" (33), Steinbeck writes. He believes the problem is that Americans have let go of these things; they believe that they have inherited these abilities, this self-sufficiency, when they are actually deeply materialistic. Recall Ethan Hawley from ​Winter​. For what did he go searching for, if not for riches and gains? Where was his self-sufficiency in nature? Ethan believed he was entitled to owning New Baytown by virtue of being an heir to it. Steinbeck's claim, that Americans believe they’re heirs, also harkens back to the frontier. They believe they have these abilities because the frontier myth is so deeply ingrained in their national identity. Steinbeck is aware of this, admitting "in nothing are we so paradoxical as in our passionate belief in our own myths" (​Americans​ 33). I will demonstrate that Steinbeck believes Americans’s reliance on these myths, and the satisfaction of having survived the Great Depression, encouraged Americans toward materialism and waste, away from the American Dream. Steinbeck first begins with their dream. He says, "One of the characteristics most puzzling to a foreign observer is the strong and imperishable dream the American carries“ (Steinbeck 34). At the moment 48 Steinbeck writes, he observes that the dream is “either in a small town or in a suburban area where grass and trees simulate the country. This dream home is a permanent seat, not rented but owned” (35). There's a lot of distance from the old American Dream. The grass and trees are to "simulate the country." They are false, idealized versions of what they poorly attempt to emulate. The home is also included here. Nowhere in the old Dream does it mention anything about homes, as it objected to material. Home here is "permanent," it's someplace where generations will continue on. More and more, this dream begins to sound like the experiences of Ethan in ​Winter​. The focus on being rooted to a place. If the ending to ​Winter​ is anything to reflect on in light of this dream, rootedness is nothing to strive for. Lineage, rootedness: these things are ruinous. "The dream of home [...] persists," Steinbeck writes, "in a time when home is neither required nor wanted" (38). It's neither required nor wanted because it's a false version of the dream he wishes to reinstill in Americans. "A national dream need not, indeed may not be clear-cut and exact" (41), but the dream Americans have is a sick one. One of the problems Steinbeck diagnoses is that the American is not the frontiersman any longer, but an American of capital, living in a capitalist society, whose life is dictated by capital and status, like Ethan. Steinbeck expands on this, with what he calls the Corporation Man: In America we have developed the Corporation Man. His life, his family, his future -- as well as his loyalty -- lie with his corporation. His training, his social life, the kind of car he drives, the clothes he and his wife wear, the neighborhood he lives in, and the kind and cost of his house and furniture, are all dictated by his corporate status. [...] The pressures toward conformity are subtle but inexorable (​Americans​ 87). This is the American as Steinbeck sees him (note the "him"). This is a very 49 bleak view of the American, one consumed by corporations. Even his family is subject to the corporation. Loyalty, something one might call an admirable quality, is for the corporation. The corporation dictates the materials the American has. In fact, material looks to be a big part of what the American is now. The corporation dictates the American's status. If one's inclination toward achievement is measured through success for a corporation, as well as the material one gets based on their position within that corporation, then the dream isn’t dependent on one’s innate ability. Both the dream and the identity is dictated by corporations. The importance of lineage comes back in children. Steinbeck thinks that Americans have a kind of "child sickness." Much the same way the parents, grandparents, and back and back passed along the frontier myth onto their lineages and country, the parents of Steinbeck's 1960s are passing along anxieties, even disillusionment. This sickness is something that "runs parallel, it would seem, with increasing material plenty" (​Americans​ 113). Steinbeck builds on the ills of material wants, suggesting that by making this the new dream, Americans are destroying their future. "No longer was it even acceptable that the child should be like his parents and live as they did," Steinbeck writes. Here, the false dream is forced onto young Americans by their parents. Steinbeck goes on, suggesting that "since the parents were and are no better than [their children] are, the rules they propounded were based not on their experience but on their wishes and hopes" (113). Which is to say that this dream doesn't really exist because it's not a justifiable experience. Their parents didn't experience it. Much like Ethan Hawley's pursuit for something he never ever had, these children are being set up for failure. Steinbeck makes the bold accusation that "if it is indeed the result of the parent's dissatisfaction with his own life, of his passionate desire to give 50 his children something better or at least different, it is doubly apparent that he has failed at both" (115). Steinbeck feels this is because Americans no longer offer children the option of being children. American parents don't offer children the experience of traversing their own unknown. The physical environment is deeply important to Steinbeck. Recall from Travels​, the awe he felt at the pastoral beauty of America. Steinbeck writes in "Americans and the Land" that he often wonders about "the savagery and thoughtlessness with which our early settlers approached this rich continent" (144). In much this same vein, Steinbeck talks about the historical treatment Americans have given the land that is America with a kind of violence. Of the settlers, he says that "when they had cropped out a piece [of land,] they moved on, raping the country like invaders" (146). "Rape" is a horribly strong word. He continues with this history, recounting how "they came at [nature] as though it were an enemy [...] They burned the forests and changed the rainfall; they swept the buffalo from the plains, blasted the streams, set fire to the grass, and ran a reckless scythe through the virgin and noble timber" (Steinbeck 144). These images are filled with violent verbs: raped, burned, blasted. His vivid and passionate depiction feels almost personal, accusatory. For all this violence, he feels similarly toward his contemporary Americans, writing, This tendency toward irresponsibility persists in very many of us today; our rivers are poisoned by reckless dumping of sewage and toxic industrial wastes, the air of our cities is filthy and dangerous to breathe from the belching of uncontrolled products from combustion of coal, coke, oil, and gasoline. Our towns are girdled with wreckage and the debris of our toys (144). Again, there is an incredible amount of violence in the descriptions of this passage. The environment is poisoned, the air is filthy, our towns are girdled. 51 It's the sewage and toxic industrial waste. It's the "belching," the combustion. The environment he sees around America is a dirty one, a filthy, ruined one. It's something for which Steinbeck feels both "horrified and ashamed" (149). How can we possibly chase the American Dream -- how can we be both of civilization and of nature -- if nature is wasted, stripped, and gone? Ultimately, all of this is a cry for conservation. Steinbeck writes that "all these evils can and must be overcome if America and Americans are to survive" (144). Without overcoming these evils, we will lose the environment. With it, too, the American Dream. The truth of the matter is that we have too much. Steinbeck says the reason for all of this is because "we are also poisoned with things. Having many things seems to create a desire for more things, more clothes, houses, automobiles" (​Americans​ 172). He calls American "a national kennel of animals with no purpose and no direction" (172), echoing his animalistic sentiments from ​Travels​. Before, we had to work to survive. Americans were born of struggle, of trying to survive in a land that was dominated more heavily by the environment. Now we live in a land of plenty; we survive easily now. Effectively, "we have food and shelter and transportation and the more terrible hazard of leisure" (​Americans​ 172). Steinbeck cherishes struggle. He built his career mythologizing the struggles of working class Americans searching for the American Dream. In a letter to Jackie Kennedy, he says, "the greatness of our country resides in the fact that we have not made it and are still trying. No -- I do believe that strength and purity lie almost exclusively in the struggle -- the becoming" (​Letters​ 795). He believes not only strength, but also purity lies in struggle. If morality can only come from struggle, it does, in some ways, diminish or fetishize the struggle. Steinbeck believes we have nothing to work for. We aren't struggling; we 52 have nothing worth struggling for. Steinbeck says we have "nothing to do, nowhere to go, no direction, no purpose, and worst of all no needs. Wants [we have], yes, but for more bright and breakable 'things.' We are trapped and entangled in things" (​Americans​ 173). Without struggle for our needs, we have become selfish through the Almost unlimited new power took the place of straining muscles and bent backs. Machinery took the heavy burden from our shoulders. Medicine and hygiene cut down infant mortality almost to the vanishing point, and at the same time extended our life span. Automation began to replace our workers. Where once the majority of our people worked the land, machines, chemistry, and a precious few produced more food than we needed or could possibly use. Leisure, which again had been the property of heaven, came to us before we knew what to do with it, and all these good things falling on us unprepared constitute calamity (​Americans​ 174). We struggled and automated until we created leisure. Steinbeck seems to think we aren't mature enough for it, as if we haven't reached our biological maturity to have the right to these kinds of opportunities. We are a confused, young country, whose equality is a false one and whose system is imperfect. Yet, we managed to perfect leisure before equality. In the vacuum of having to work for these things, we become selfish, sedated. Steinbeck expands on this further, saying, We have the things and we have not had time to develop a way of thinking about them. We struggle with our lives in the present and our practices in the long and well-learned past. We have had a million years to get used to the idea of fire and only twenty to prepare ourselves for the productive-destructive tidal wave of atomic fission. [...] To allow ourselves the illusion of usefulness we have standby crews for functions 53 which no longer exist. We manufacture things we do not need and try by false and vicious advertising to create a feeling of need for them. [...] we have not had time to learn inside ourselves the things that have happened to us (​Americans​ 174-175). Here, Steinbeck is "asserting that a discovery of oneself is the necessary beginning point for the knowledge of other places, other people, and the world" (Heavilin 46)8. Which is to say that we don't understand ourselves. We don't have a way of thinking about Americans in a situation where all these things are possible because we have not found ourselves. Much the same way the frontier prioritizes individualism, we must understand ourselves to understand our country. We have nothing to work for, no desires or goals. We're after material only. Steinbeck now turns to morals, which is where he becomes the most pessimistic he's been ever. "Perhaps one can judge the health of a society by the nature as well as the incidence of crimes committed against it" (Americans 175), Steinbeck writes. If this is the case, then we are truly sick: "There are of course the many crimes against property, but increasingly these are destructive rather than for gain. But the greatest increase is in crimes against people, against the physical bodies of people. The rapes have little to do with sexuality and much to do with destructive murder. The mugging in the streets and the violence which has turned our parks into jungles have little to do with robbery, although, as in the modern rape the ritual of sex is added, so in mugging there is robbery but its purpose and its drive seem to be destructive, the desire to hurt, to maim, to kill. Where need for money is the motive of the violence, the 8 Heavilin, Barbara A. “‘A Love for Joseph Addison’: Wit, Style, and Truth in Steinbeck's America and Americans.” ​The Steinbeck Review​, vol. 6, no. 2, 2009, pp. 38–54. ​JSTOR​, www.jstor.org/stable/41582114. Accessed 11 Dec. 2019. 54 reason is again sad and sick and destructive, this time self-destructive, the need for drugs to abolish consciousness or stimulants to give shape and substance to a schizoid twin, hallucinatory aids in the creation of another world to take the place of this hated one. This too is a kind of murder" (​Americans​ 175-176). This quote is very dark. Steinbeck's suggesting that all crime is meant to destroy, to hurt. Americans aren't after gain. We want to destroy, we want to hurt. Even bystanders are complicit. You are silent in the face of violence. "If our will to survive is weakened,” (​Americans​ 176), “if our love of life and our memories of a gallant past and faith in a shining future are removed -what need is there for morals or for rules” These are our ailments. In response to a lack of needs, we have been consumed by wants, and the need to destroy. Steinbeck concludes this in saying "we have succeeded in what our fathers prayed for and it is our success that is destroying us" (​Americans​ 177). Steinbeck calls Americans "a dying people [who] tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half-remembered glory" (​Americans​ 177). In a brief moment of self-reflection, Steinbeck almost admits that the frontier is an incomplete idea. It is an idea of white success. Americans only half-remember this myth, cherishing the rugged individualism, the democracy, the idea of a "wild" and won America. But we forget those to whom the frontier didn't apply. We wallow in that half-remembered glory instead of pushing forward with it. But after all this bleakness, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Steinbeck turns to the future, and he looks to it with a little hope. Steinbeck writes that it is "in the American negation of these symptoms of extinction that my hope and confidence lie. We are not satisfied. Our restlessness [...] is still with us" (​Americans​ 177). Naturally, Americans are restless. They are 55 inclined toward movement, toward progress, towards seeking the unknown. The upshot of all this is that "Americans do not lack places to go and new things to find. [...] Far larger experiences are open to our restlessness -- the fascinating unknown is everywhere" (​Americans​ 178). Which is how the frontier continues to exist within Americans. The unknown is everywhere. Because the individual is so important to the frontier myth, anything unknown is worth seeking. Steinbeck has some optimistic words, writing, We have not lost our way at all. The roads of the past have come to an end and we have not yet discovered a path to the future. I think we will find one, but its direction may be unthinkable to us now. When it does appear, however, and we move on, the path must have direction, it must have purpose and the journey must be filled with a joy of anticipation (​Americans​ 176-177). Because there is always an unknown, because of the frontier spirit that exists within Americans, we can survive. We can find our way out of the dark. What might be the most interesting about all this, though, is the image of the road in Steinbeck's advice. Steinbeck found his own road, and took that road all the way across the country, suggesting Americans do the same now. He's telling them to give up the material, to let go of the false roots, and to wester, to move, to go into the unknown. In order to escape this discontentedness, in order to leave behind the violence, we must embrace our the true American spirit: the old American Dream, to be one of nature and of civilization, to let go of roots, to move and to seek out the unknowns. But there are many other kinds of Americans, those outside the mythically white bubble of the Frontier. There are Americans who came here yesterday. Some maybe snuck in. Others have waited for a long time to be here. Others might not know how they got here at all. None of this makes any of these types of people 56 more American than the other. Steinbeck believes in these Americans, writing, "our land is of every kind geologically and climatically, and our people are of every kind also—of every race, of every ethnic category -- and yet our land is one nation, and our people are Americans" (​Americans​ 12). The problem with the frontier is that this doesn't apply to everyone. The frontier was a space in which certain kinds of people were not allowed to exist or prosper. It’s because of this that I cannot help but think that there is a piece missing from all of this. Steinbeck absolutely wants the frontier spirit to apply to everyone. He wants everyone to succeed by chasing after their own unknown, by forgoing rootedness and material. He seems cognizant of the shortcomings within the American system. Steinbeck is aware that it is much more difficult to be successful in America if you are a minority or an immigrant, writing, The national dream of Americans is a whole pattern of thinking and feeling and may well be a historic memory surprisingly little distorted. Furthermore, the participators in the dream need not have descended physically from the people to whom the reality happened. This pattern of thought and conduct which is the national character is absorbed even by the children of immigrants born in America, but it never comes to the immigrants themselves, no matter how they may wish it; birth on American soil seems to be required (​Americans​ 38). Truthfully, if you’re an American, born here on U.S. soil, then you probably have certain advantages over those who aren't. But he believes the dream is still within all Americans, somehow, something absorbed into the national character. Concerning the struggles of minorities, Steinbeck writes, From the first we have treated our minorities abominably […] All that was required to release this mechanism of oppression and sadism was that the 57 newcomers be meek, poor, weak in numbers, and unprotected -- although it helped if their skin, hair, eyes were different and if they spoke some language other than English or worshiped in some church other than Protestant (​Americans​ 14-15). It's good of Steinbeck to be aware of this sort of thing. He's at least conscious that non-white people are at a strong disadvantage. However, I think the use of the term "our minorities" is discomforting. While he probably means "our" as in "America's minorities," but it comes off like "white people's minorities." The reason I bring any of this up at all is due to the photographs that are featured in ​Americans​. There's a relationship between the Americanness Steinbeck is writing about and the photographs littered between essays and sections. It's not like they're random or anything, either. Steinbeck begins his Foreword by saying, "In text and pictures, this is a book of opinions, unashamed and individual" (​Americans​ 8). Steinbeck calling the book one of "opinions" feels more like deflection than complete truth. Steinbeck makes clear proclamations about the American spirit. These are assertions. To shy from them and call them opinions seems like Steinbeck's playing coy. In the Afterword, Steinbeck says, "The pictures in this book are of our land, wide open, fruitful, and incredibly dear and beautiful. It is ours and we will make of it what we are -- no more, no less" (​Americans​ 221). There’s a lot to this quote. One of the things that’s interesting is the change in tone. If you remember from the opening pages of ​Travels​, Steinbeck said, “I discovered that I did not know my own country” (​Travels​ 5). But here, Steinbeck’s come to the end of the road with that journey. Now he knows his country. Only now, he knows it isn't his. The photos are of "our land." He reiterates that twice. Which brings the discussion round to the photographs. The very first 58 photograph appears before any of Steinbeck's essays. It's of a Native American woman, profile, taken by Emil Schulthess. I think about this photo a lot, actually. I think about this photo a lot, actually. The woman's elderly, with soft wrinkles that curve up her cheekbones. She has braids, a head wrap, an earring. She's also smiling at something out-of-frame. I'm appreciative that this photo is the one that comes first, before anything else. Before even Steinbeck. It is a kind of acknowledgement of the presence of Native Americans. Her age, the placement of the photo, it's all nodding to the fact that they're a people who were here first, a people with a long history. But she's also looking to the right, towards the end of the book, as if she's looking at the future. I can't help but think maybe she's looking forward to the future, to a future where Americans are connected. But I also think -- if she is first, if she is excited for the future -- why Steinbeck talks of Americans in a masculine sense. I wonder why he doesn't ever talk to any Native Americans on his travels. The only time Steinbeck ever deals with Native issues is in ​Americans​. But he has a kind of shortsightedness that bothers me. He says, "For a time it looked as though the Indians might completely disappear, but then about fifty years ago something -- or perhaps a series of things -- happened. The Indians developed an immunity to extinction. [...] at the same time it ceased to be a hidden disgrace to have Indian blood, and people began boasting of grandparents who were Cheyenne or Cherokee, even if it wasn't true. [...] The Indians survived our open intention of wiping them out, and since the tide turned they have even weathered our good intentions toward them, which can be much more deadly. The myth of the Indian as a savage, untrustworthy, dangerous animal, wily, clever, and self-sufficient as an opponent, gave way to the myth of the Indian as 59 a child, incapable of learning and of taking care of himself" (​Americans 19). He's certainly right about the way white folks have developed myths about Native Americans, and even white folks lying about having Native blood in them. But I don't like his statement that they "developed an immunity to extinction." Yes, they are a strong people. But this statement doesn't do Native issues justice. Some reservations were not, and still aren't, providing basic human rights, such as clean water. Steinbeck's writing during two eras of Indian policy, called Termination (1945-1961) and Self-Determination (1961-Present)9, respectively. During Termination, the U.S. government pulled out of a significant number of programs governing Native American reservations, the "termination" of their involvement, per se. But they also passed Public Law 280 in 1952, which allowed local law enforcement to take over reservation legal affairs, ultimately contributing to a decrease in Native sovereignty. However, from 1961 on, the U.S. the era of Self-Determination, which ultimately increased Native sovereignty significantly. The U.N. recognized the rights of indigenous peoples, Public Law 280 was repealed, and states were increasingly forced to get the consent of tribal governments. The Self-Determination era also saw an softening to the image of the Indian on behalf of the public, as it saw the rise of Indian activist groups, like AIM, which won over public support. It seems like Steinbeck is talking within this view, appreciating Native Americans, but not necessarily acknowledging their current state, which was not the best. Now I'd like to turn to the photos of children, and there's a bunch of them. But there are two that strike me the most are ones that are in a museum. 9 These are given a brief overview, but for a more in-depth exploration (and my source), see: Deloria, Vine, and Lytle, Clifford M. “American Indians in Historical Perspective.” ​American Indians, American Justice​, University of Texas Press, 1983, pp. 1-24. 60 The first one appears on page 59, and is taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt (See “Two Girl Scouts Looking Up at Marble,” 61). It features two young Girl Scouts. They look upwards, up-up at a state of Abraham Lincoln, who looks down at them, motioning toward them. The second photo is on page 128, photographed by James Drake (See “Children in the Museum,” 62). This one features a small girl accompanied by a toddler. They both are alone in a museum, looking off at something toward the right, their mouths open in awe. These photos feel really symbolic. In the second photo, the kids are surrounded by history, by knowledge. And they're in awe of it. They look to the right, to the end, to the future. One kid is even disappearing at the edge of the photo, as if they're already moving towards that future, being imbedded with the history that surrounds them. The first almost speaks for itself. She looks up to history, to the moral code of Lincoln, and yet he motions to her. Another thing that's wonderful about these photos is that all the children appear to be women. For talking a lot about American men, these photos are signaling a feminine future, one where these young girls will surpass history. Steinbeck's essays had a testy relationship with children, if you remember his anger about parents passing on ridiculous, materialistic goals. He thought we were ruining children, setting them up to fail. These photos show perhaps the perfect example of what kids ought to be: surrounded with knowledge, with the recognition of history, of struggle, and taking that into the future, the past giving up its firm grip on the national myth. There's one more photo I'd like to look at. There are roughly 116 pages of photos in ​Americans​, but only four photos show African-Americans. Likewise, they show only one African-American apiece. But the one that strikes me most is on page 68, photographed by Declan Haun (see “Black child at Civil Rights protest march, North Carolina, 1961,” 63). It's of a young African-American 61 “Two Girl Scouts Looking Up at Marble” 62 “Children at the Museum” 63 “Black child at Civil Rights protest march, North Carolina, 1961” 64 girl in a sort of raincoat, holding an American flag. It obscures the lower half of her face, and she peers over the blurry stripes with big eyes and a serious expression. There's something powerful in the photo. Behind her, we can kind of see shapes of people moving around, telling us she's in a crowd. But she's separate from that. All of that's blurry. It's intensely focused on her, and some of her is obscured by the American flag. It's almost like her face, her identity is being covered by America. But she holds it, reclaiming the flag, looking over it. It's a very striking image. John Steinbeck supports rights for African-Americans. He makes this clear in ​Americans​, when he writes, "The force of Negro pressure, backed by a majority of white Americans, will not allow us to retire civil rights to the limbo in which the Constitutional amendments hid their heads for a hundred years" (​Americans​ 50). However, he has a very insensitive way of talking about it. First, he uses the word "negro," which is real unpleasant. Then there's the fact that here, he almost minimizes the power of African-Americans. Congress could succumb to pressure by the African-American community -- but only with backing of a white majority. The wording is really off-putting. He says other things that are inappropriate. For example, Steinbeck writes, "In the antebellum South, it was generally known that the Negroes were, by and large, physically strong and virile, and that, as with most physically strong people, they were sexually potent and active. This made for one more stage in the tower of fear; it was generally considered that Negroes were just that way -- strong and sexy -- and the fact that this strong, resistant breed had been developed by selection never occurred to the Southern whites" (​Americans​ 72). What Steinbeck seems to be saying is that slavery produced a paradox where a group of people was enslaved, only to be made quite physically strong. But his 65 sexualization and fetishization of the bodies of slaves is quite disturbing. More than what I've said above, I think Steinbeck has a very narrow, almost gullible understanding of the struggles of African-Americans. This is expressed here: "There is no question that Negroes will get their equality -- at law; not as soon as they should, but sooner than pessimists believe. But legal equality is only the smallest part of being equal. It is one of the less attractive of human traits that everyone wants to look down on someone, to be better than someone else; and, since this is symptomatic of insecurity, humans in general do not seem to be very secure. The hurt in the Negro and the deep-seated suspicion of the white is matched only by the fear and suspicion of the white toward the Negro; and while there remains any vestige of such feeling, true equality cannot be achieved" (​Americans​ 77). While I appreciate Steinbeck's optimism of the direction of minority rights, it clearly hasn't gone this way, so what he says lands flatly. But there's also his understanding of why minorities don't have rights, which doesn't make a lot of sense. He chalks it up to human insecurity -- not even a white, racialized insecurity, which makes more sense. This seems completely unfair and impractical. It's as if he doesn't understand that the reason for African-American discomfort -- a gross generalization in itself -- is systemic oppression. Instead, he thinks it's because white folks are suspicious of African-Americans and vice versa. It seems to completely ignore history. It is both reductive and narrow-minded. In one fell swoop, the image of the girl holding the American flag loses much of its power. No longer does it look like an image of control, but one in which she's obscured. Her identity hidden by the big American flag taking over 66 the frame, swinging wildly, telling itself that it's just a suspicion that stands between her and equality. I will give Steinbeck credit for saying that "legal equality is only the smallest part of being equal," though. That much, at least, is true, as evidenced by Steinbeck's own tactlessness. In ​Travels​, the only minorities Steinbeck encounters are African-Americans and it doesn't go over very well. He picks up a hitchhiker, whom he makes really uncomfortable. When Steinbeck mentions the Cheerleaders, "a weight and a darkness fell" on the man (​Travels​ 232). Steinbeck asks if there's an end. “Oh, certainly an end," he says, "It’s the means -- it’s the means. But you’re from the North. This isn’t your problem” (​Travels​ 232). His response is kind of haunting. The means. The means are violence, are systematic laws meant to smother them out. But Steinbeck doesn't understand this. He makes another hitchhiker uncomfortable, too. Steinbeck interrogates the man, who tries to answer, "but he squirmed with restlessness" (​Travels​ 236). The man begs to be let out, that he lives just down the road, but "he took up his trudging beside the road. He didn’t live nearby at all, but walking was safer than riding with me" (​Travels​ 237). It's as if Steinbeck has an awareness of his privilege, of the notion that there's such a thing as African-American struggles. But he can't come to grips with his own position in the problem. It's because of this view that Steinbeck is held back. The photographs in Americans​ show mostly all kinds of Americans. Most of them are white, but all of these Americans are doing different things. They're moving. They're in cities, in small towns. They're out in the wild, surrounded by people, alone. But all of them are individual. Every photo has a single focus. The individual. Even the nature shots -- and there's only a handful or so, all stuffed in at the end -- show nature as individual. It reminds me of the hills in Wisconsin that Steinbeck was such a fan of. The one thing these Americans aren't doing is 67 destroying. They aren't buying things or tearing apart. Some of them are actually making things. But what they're all doing is participating in a frontier. Seeking unknown, forgoing the roots. They're participating in the American Dream, one with nature, with civilization. These photographs show Steinbeck's America the way he sees it. Even minorities are singled out, hidden, telling of his own biases and blindness. In ​Americans​, Steinbeck has diagnosed the American spirit as a corrupted thing, one weighed down by wants, by a lack of struggle and need. Following his speculative ​Winter​, and his inquisitive ​Travels​, Steinbeck concludes by suggesting the only way we can save ourselves is by reconnecting with the old American Dream, by chasing our own frontiers.