Essay Questions

What item does Steinbeck identify as the ultimate symbol of reconciliation of the paradox lying at the heart of the American dream?

Steinbeck points toward the paradox inherent in the deep emotional investment Americans make in owning a home as a symbol of being American and the fact that most people really spend very little time there. This mythic element of nationalism is stoked from the vocabulary used in reference: people don’t have houses constructed, they have homes and the ultimate example of this routinely termed a “dream house.” Americans are constantly on the move: commuting to work, fleeing the cities to the suburbs, relocating to the other side of the continent to take a better job, two-week vacations, weekend getaways, etc. The myth of the importance of hearth and home is undermined by the reality of how often Americans take advantage of the opportunity to be anywhere else. As such, the ultimate reconciliation of this paradox would be home that one can take with them: mobile homes on wheels.

What pastime does Steinbeck declare to be neither sport nor game nor contest but a state of mind that can’t be learned? And how is this assertion ironic?

Steinbeck was a prolific writer who published who was published multiple times in many of the most famous magazines and periodicals in the country. Sports Illustrated is not ranked near the top in terms of most essays and articles published. The final lines of “Then My Arm Gassed Up” which was published in the December 20, 1965 edition of the magazine ends with him forwarding that very submission as evidence that it was a bad idea for anyone to ask him to write for Sports Illustrated in the first place. The irony of Steinbeck’s description of baseball as a state of mind rather than simply a game or sport or contest is one which is explained in the rest of the essay which suggests that for Steinbeck, baseball was none of those things, but merely something to be endured for the sake of his wife, the family's real baseball fanatic.

What 1966 essay contains a specific description of American citizenry that aligns so closely with followers of contemporary movements based on political discontent?

As part of the collection America and Americans, “Genus Americanus” offer an overview of the state of the American electorate at the midway point of the most volatile decade in American history since the Civil War. He argues that the corporation is the defining contributor to conservative conformism as well as the fact that most of the nation’s population will eagerly march in a parade for any cause or day of celebration, but getting them to learn to march for military reasons is akin to puling teeth. And then midway through, comes a descriptive paragraph of a very specific demographic within the American body politic which half a century later in the middle of the another volatile decade, rings eerily familiar:

“The desire and will to spy on, to denounce, to threaten, and to punish...inflames a goodly number of Americans. The one I have inspected at close range are people just past middle age, both men and women, who feel that life has cheated them or passed them by...They seem to believe that the blame for their own unhappiness lies in the nature of the society in which they live…those who have failed or not succeeded in business become convinced that a great wrongness directs our economy. Feelings of social inadequacy emerge in hatred of society.”