Character Clues

Character Analysis

Speech and Dialogue

Steinbeck tries to let the people he encounters "speak for themselves" by providing a dialogue of his many conversations on the road.

In one example, he kind of gives us the hint that the cook and waitress he's met in a diner—who have been giving him a really hard time for getting lost, mind you—might not be the most culturally-aware people one could ever meet. Discussing Sinclair Lewis, whose hometown Steinbeck would like to visit, it's clear that these two self-proclaimed experts about the Twin Cities area had no idea that this pretty famous former resident had been dead for several years:

The cook said, "I don't think what's-his-name is there any more."

"I know. He's dead."

"You don't say." (3.2.42-45)

Clearly, the fact that the cook can't manage to remember Sinclair Lewis's name even within that same conversation—combined with his blasé attitude of "You don't say"—shows that he's not as interested in that kind of knowledge as he is in, say, claiming such a deep awareness of how to navigate Minnesota that he could drive around blindfolded. Different strokes, we guess...

Actions

With some characters, you can get a sense of what makes them tick by looking at their actions. When Steinbeck goes to check out the Cheerleaders in New Orleans, for example, you definitely get a sense that these are not nice women from what they are willing to do to small children: "No newspaper had printed the words these women shouted. It was indicated that they were indelicate, some even said obscene. On television the sound track was made to blur or had crowd noises cut in to cover. But now I heard the words, bestial and filthy and degenerate" (4.3.44).

Steinbeck doesn't give us the dialogue itself because it's too "filthy and degenerate," but given the fact that they are willing to shout things like that at the two African American children who had enrolled at a New Orleans school, we know that they are a) pretty intense bigots, and b) not nice—come on, who yells at children?

Direct Characterization

Sometimes, Steinbeck just tells us everything we need to know about a person... or, er, a non-person, in the case of Charley:

Actually his name is Charles le Chien. He was born in Bercy on the outskirts of Paris and trained in France, and while he knows a little poodle English, he responds quickly only to commands in French. Otherwise he has to translate, and that slows him down. He is a very big poodle, of a color called bleu, and he is blue when he is clean. Charley is a born diplomat. He prefers negotiation to fighting, and properly so, since he is very bad at fighting. Only once in his ten years has he been in trouble—when he met a dog who refused to negotiate. (1.2.14)

So, as you can see here, Steinbeck gives us the down and dirty on everything we really need to know about Charley: he's dignified, has European origins (and airs), speaks English as a foreign language, and prefers diplomacy to fighting. In short, Steinbeck relies heavily on his own direct characterization to give us the lay of the land when it comes to Charley.

Thoughts and Opinions

Steinbeck goes ballistic when he learns some of the opinions of one of his passengers along the way—and rightly so. After agreeing to let a guy he met at a lunch counter tag along in Rocinante, he very quickly decides to dump him on the side of the road and continue on his merry way solo.

What was the bone of contention, you ask? Well, the dude was praising the uber-racist "Cheerleaders" who had made a name for themselves shouting at and intimidating small children on their way to school in the name of taking a stand (you know, against civil rights). The passenger thought these women were great, gushing, "Does your heart good to see somebody do their duty" (4.4.97). So, we know automatically that he's not a good guy. 'Nuff said.

Physical Appearances

Sometimes, we can get a sense of the characters just from how Steinbeck describes their physical appearance—for example, the hotel proprietor whose "face was red as a ripe raspberry" (3.7.50) after simply hearing that Steinbeck was from New York. The proprietor (whom Steinbeck had previously called an "ogre") has a bad temper, and it shows all over his face.