Racism
“Atque Vale” opens with an ironic litany of the character traits which white American expected from black Americans—identified as negroes—at the time. The irony lies in the fact that those traits which Steinbeck described are not even irregularly displayed by the “superior” white race so how could they be expected from a wrongly stereotyped “inferior” race. The undoing of racist ideology continues with imagery pointing out that that all the fears instilled in white America about blacks are paradoxically manifested in the actions of white:
“In the Alabama bus boycott we knew there would be no Negro—and there wasn’t. The only violence was white violence. In the streets we expect courtesy from Negroes even when we are ugly and overbearing. In the prize ring we know a Negro will be game and will not complain at a decision. In Little Rock we knew that any brutality would originate among the whites.”
The Model-T
In more than one essay, Steinbeck writes with love of the Model-T. He owned more than one and recalls them with a mixture of frustration and pride that can probably only truly appreciated and shared by a fellow devotee of the automobile. The description of his second card in “Jalopies I Cursed and Love” contains a particularly memorable bit of imagery:
“My second Model T was a sedan. The back seat had a high ceiling and was designed to look like a small drawing room. It had lace curtains and cut-glass vases on the sides for flowers. It needed only a coal grate and a sampler to make it a perfect Victorian living room. And sometimes it served as a boudoir.”
Scopio del Carro
“Florence: The Explosion of the Chariot” is a thrilling account of an event described as the high point of Easter week in Florence, Italy. It involves a three-story high wooden tower on wheels loaded up with fireworks. But that isn’t the high point of the high point of the high point:
“At the altar, an artificial dove hangs from the wire, but such a dove as you can’t imagine—a jet-propelled dove…the dove is a kind of rocket. It whooshes along the wire, giving off smoke and flame; darts out the great doors, and strikes the tower, which erupts with fireworks exploding upward finally they ignite a large Catherine wheel on the very top, which whirls with a screaming sound, spinning colored fire in a great circle.”
Americans
A collection of essays published under the title America and Americans presents a corrosive portrait of who we are. Steinbeck is consistently amazed at the genius displayed by Americans and persistently alarmed by their ability to direct that genius against their own self—interest. The closing paragraph of “Americans and the Land” offers what is only barely arguably his definitive portrait his kinspeople through the power of imagery:
“But we are an exuberant people, careless and destructive as active children. We make strong and potent tools and then have to use them to prove that they exist. Under the pressure of war we finally made the atom bomb, and for reasons which seemed justifiable at the time we dropped it on two Japanese cities—and I think we frightened ourselves. In such things, one must consult himself because there is no other point of reference...I am horrified and shamed; and nearly everyone I know feels the same thing. And those who loudly angrily justify Hiroshima and Nagasaki—why, they must be the most ashamed at all.”
