Danny

Character Analysis

Rebel without a Cause

Like James Dean, Danny doesn't conform to his family's standards, and after a while, the whole thing starts tearing him apart. He comes from an important family in Tortilla Flat, but doesn't seem to want to follow in their footsteps:

He was related to nearly everyone in the Flat by blood or romance. His grandfather was an important man who owned two small houses in Tortilla Flat and was respected for his wealth. If the growing Danny preferred to sleep in the forest, to work on ranches, and to wrest his food and wine from an unwilling world, it was not because he did not have influential relatives. (Preface, 6)

This introduction to our hero lets us in on a lot of information. First, because he's related to just about everybody in Tortilla Flat, Danny represents the entire community: what happens to him tells us a lot about what might happen to the community itself.

On the other hand, because he comes from an important, well-off family (at least by Tortilla Flat standards), Danny, unlike a lot of other people in his neighborhood, isn't interested in moving up in society. He's already in the upper crust of Tortilla Flat, and he doesn't really care about it.

What Danny likes is a wilder, freer life, one where he can enjoy himself outside and come and go as he pleases. He's not really into the idea of being a rich man; he'd rather steal or scavenge to find his living than work an ordinary job. Danny is rebelling against his society and his family, who could have helped him to live a really comfortable life, by choosing to do everything the hard way.

The Weight of the World

So what's Danny's beef? Why does he have such a problem with being part of an influential family and living a regular, conventional life? He seems to be weighed down by responsibility, and rather than face it, he'd rather buck it and run out into the woods.

But what kind of responsibility is he bucking? Is it a responsibility worth having in the first place?

When Danny finds out that he has inherited his grandfather's two houses, he doesn't exactly have the reaction you'd expect. Instead of being happy that he's got a place to stay—and that he could even make some dough by renting out some rooms—he's worried about the burden of the whole thing: "[H]e was a little weighed down with the responsibility of ownership. Before he ever went to look at his property he bought a gallon of red wine and drank most of it himself. The weight of responsibility left him then, and his very worst nature came to the surface" (1.2).

You might think that it would be awesome to have not one but two houses to do whatever you wanted with, but Danny doesn't see it that way. He feels "weighed down" because he would prefer to be free of responsibilities like fixing leaks in the roof or keeping the lawn mowed.

But it's not just that. Danny seems to be afraid of what owning a house means symbolically: it means that you're an adult, that you've left childhood and adolescence behind, and that you have to, you know, grow up, get a job, let go of your dreams, and just be like your parents.

At least that seems to be how Danny sees it.

Notice that Danny's first step is to get drunk (did we mention that the dudes in the book drink literally gallons of wine at a time?). Naturally, getting tanked isn't going to free Danny from responsibility; it just helps him forget about it. But forgetting about responsibility comes at a cost: for Danny, this means that his "very worst nature" starts to show up.

Danny's worst nature isn't pretty. On an average day, he might shout racist slurs at the fishermen and then walk down the street breaking windows until he's finally taken to jail. It's almost like good ol' Dr. Jekyll turning into nasty Mr. Hyde here. Drunk Danny's not a guy we'd like to run into on a dark street, that's for sure.

Now, this may seem like standard drunk guy routine, but in Danny's case, it's also a whopping dose of foreshadowing. After all, his angry drunk antics are what lead him to his (spoiler alert!) sticky end. And that end pretty much had to come: there's no way Danny would have been able to go on just drinking away his responsibilities. Something had to give.

Now, before you go getting on your high horse about Danny and his Peter Pan syndrome, notice that, even though he isn't happy about growing up, he does faces up to it and, heavy-heartedly, take on the responsibility of the houses. He just isn't able to take on this responsibility consistently—and Steinbeck actually makes us question the nature of that responsibility in the first place.

Born to Be Wild

Okay, okay, so Danny isn't able to grow up all the way. Sure, he takes on the responsibility of homeownership, and sure, he manages to cobble together some sort of fake rent agreement with his friends. But it's pretty clear he's not taking any of this too seriously. For him, the houses are less of an investment and more of a party and death-match arena.

One day, when Pilon has some girls and wine in his house, Danny joins the fun in what can be called a typical night for him and his pals:

Danny, walking by, heard the noise and joyfully went in. Pilon fell into his arms and placed everything at Danny's disposal. And later, after Danny had helped to dispose of one of the girls and half of the wine, there was a really fine fight. Danny lost a tooth, and Pilon had his shirt torn off [...]

After that Pilon felt better about the unpaid rent. Had he not been host to his landlord? (3.6-14)

You can see that, even if Danny has become Pilon's "landlord," he doesn't behave like a regular, grouchy landlord might. Imagine that you were renting a house out to some dudes who partied like it's 1939 every single night. You might worry about your walls, floors, and windows, right? But not Danny. He's just happy to join in the party. And, hey, in the code of friendship between him and Pilon, showing Danny a good time is just as good as paying him rent money, anyway.

So it's all good, right?

The Bigger They Are…

Yeah, it's all fun and games until someone falls off a cliff and dies.

Toward the end of the novel, this whole homeownership thing really starts to weigh Danny down. Why? Because the dude's a wanderer at heart? Because he's just not built for the white-picket-fence routine? Because he's got no opportunities? What's up with this guy?

One thing is for sure. Whatever the reason for his issues, Danny definitely becomes one big bummer:

Danny began to feel the beating of time. He looked at his friends and saw how with them every day was the same. When he got out of his bed in the night and stepped over the sleeping paisanos, he was angry with them for being there. Gradually sitting on the front porch, in the sun, Danny began to dream of the days of his freedom. He had slept in the woods in summer, and in the warm hay of barns when the winter cold was in. The weight of property was not upon him. (15.5)

The first hint we get at what's eating Danny is "the beating of time." That could mean that he realizes he's getting older, that he's closer to death, that time is running out. But there's also the problem of monotony: "every day was the same." Living in his house in Tortilla Flat is like water torture for Danny, with the drip-drop beating out the passage of time on his forehead.

What's funny, though, is that even though Danny thinks he's irritated by the weight of property, he's also starting to act like a real, live landlord. He totally wants his space, and he's sick of his friends sleeping on his floor and being around all the time. (If you haven't had a roommate yet, just wait—you'll understand Danny soon enough.) So Danny's house is changing him; it's making him less of a happy-go-lucky young buck and more of a disgruntled homeowner.

Danny looks back on the time before he owned the house with rose-colored glasses. We can think of some real downsides to having to sleep outside or in barns all the time, but Danny can only remember the good parts of his wild and wooly days. He wants to break free, but he doesn't know how.

Unfortunately, all that restlessness leads to Danny's ultimate demise. He goes kind of crazy toward the end of the novel, acting out at everyone and everything. He starts running off to sleep in the woods, coming into town only to steal and pillage. He even starts stealing from his own house. Finally, at what turns out to be his farewell party, he tries to fight the devil himself:

Danny drew himself up. It is said that his head just missed touching the ceiling. "Then I will go out to The One who can fight. I will find The Enemy who is worthy of Danny!" [...]

Outside the house they heard his roaring challenge [...] They heard his footsteps charging down the yard. And then, behind the house, in the gulch, they heard an answering challenge so fearful and so chill that their spines wilted like nasturtium stems under frost. (16.78-79)

This sort of supernatural ending, with a larger-than-life Danny fighting some capital-letter Enemy, is also the end of Danny. He falls down into a gulch, and there's nothing to be done for him. Danny's wild nature, having been tamed for so long in the house, has finally burst out and brought him to his end.

That supernatural aura that Steinbeck tacks onto Danny's death makes the whole thing feel like a Really Big Deal. It's not just some no-good, out-of-work veteran who got drunk and died in Tortilla Flat we're talking about. This is the end of a holy friendship; it's like King Arthur dying and the Knights of the Round Table breaking up and going their own ways.

The point is that Steinbeck isn't really taking sides here. You can't be like Peter Pan and stay young and free forever, he seems to be saying—but responsibility and adulthood may also not quite be what they're cracked up to be. Danny's looking for meaning in his life, and the fact that he doesn't find it in having a house and owning a job shows us that having a job and owning a house, in and of themselves, may not give us any meaning in life once we get them.

The real tragedy here is that Danny is unable to figure out where to find meaning. The happy freedom of youth is fleeting; once you grow up, you can't go back. Danny tries to do this and fails spectacularly. At the same time, adulthood doesn't necessarily bring meaning, either, especially if you're living in a depression when opportunities are few and far between. If Danny is an attractive character, it's because he senses something bigger and better out there. He wants it, but he can't figure out how to find it.