Amelia's blog

I read the WPA Guide about Massachusetts, where I am originally from. I have to tell you, I think they were on to something! The guide even made me want to go back to Boringtown, Massachusetts. In school, we never learned anything about Massachsuetts, so the WPA guide piqued my interest in the very town I had grown up in my whole life! 
 
Who knew that Look Park was given to Northampton by a widow of Mr. Look, renowned prophylactic toothbrush maker! Even more shocking is the knowledge that Jonathan Edwards (not to be confused with John Edwards), in response to the impending violence became one of the foremost preachers in New England and help to start The Great Awakening!
 
Even more intriguing is the thought that The Daily Hampshire Gazette – still our most prominent paper – was started to try to help and settle some of the turmoil after Shay’s Rebellion. Or how about the fact that Massachusetts, with all of its universities is thought of to be one of the most potent education centers of the country!
 
It does make me wonder, what would writers write about Massachusetts and Northampton today?
 
So I checked out their website, and figured out that not much has changed – another characteristic key to the identity of Western Massachusetts! The restaurant at the hotel is a suggested attraction as its name bears the original hotel name. It even looks pretty similar to the way it did  in the 1930s. One big change though? Northampton’s claim to fame of basically being the gay capital of the world. This was an interesting contrast to the WPA guides that really barely touched upon social movements at all. All social movements they documented has something to do with gaining independence or something else  very American. There is also a lot more documentation of artists and writers.  It is sort of easy to see through the WPA’s manipulation of what is interesting, and what is relevant to a town these days but I wonder if their motivations of kickstarting the economy were as obvious in the 1930s.
 
It got me thinking about what the modern tourist does. I either use the NYTIMES travel section or the Internet. Websites like Yelp and Lonely Planet now do all the work for us, going so far as to even connecting with airlines to purchase tickets and whatnot.
 
The WPA guides are fascinating because they essentially make every American State, and even down to the city and some small town lever, seem like a special place. There is a rich history everywhere! All you have to do is look around!
 
Were there to be WPA online guides today, I could see a potential resurgence in American tourism of America. I can picture Northampton’s web page, with the historical sigts in the WPA guide from the 1930s, plus some claim to fame about the Slow Food movement or the locavore movement. The WPA mentality plus a little exploration of what is trendy could do a similar thing to what the introduction of the WPA guidebook said – create jobs! There is a certain nostalgia happening right now that makes us want to get to know our roots a little bit better, I could see the resurgence of camping, of traveling about on a dime, of seeing America. 

Berkowitz and Agee both discussed the changes in America that occurred in order to not only enable but facilitate the tourism of America. To me, this one of the most fascinating ad campaigns of all time – Discover the land that you call your own! And simultaneously be patriotic! Oh, and don’t do it by meeting others from those places, but instead play a huge game of swap with your fellow Americans as you all tour around, on your paid vacations and see the commoditized natural resources our  country has.
 
The Grand Canyon is a perfect example. The Grand Canyon will never be anything BUT the Grand Canyon. I have never been, yet I know what it looks like – and I have known what it looks like since BEFORE the rise of the internet. I saw postcards! Yet I still want to go and see it. And I am pretty sure, I am still going to be shocked by the view. Somehow, America in the 1930s created this unbreakable image of America.
 
My guess is that with all of the movement towards Green trends and a back to nature approach, combined with the rising tensions of American Tourists abroad – Americans will go back to exploring their own country  a bit more. The road trip is still romantic!
 
On a completely different note – throughout our entire discussion of the hobo, this article did not present itself but I feel it is crucial to the conversation now. Here is a link to an interview of a homeless man who has both an iPad and a laptop. He uses them to find jobs, places to stay (couchsurfing etc) and more. It is how he keeps in touch with people.
 
I was FASCINATED when I read this because I read the word “homeless” and automatically assumed, poor, crazy, etc. He discusses some homeless people he knows who put Bluetooth pieces under their hair so they just LOOK like they are talking to themselves! He goes to the south of France when it gets cold! It is the life!
 
Does this demean the homeless experience of modern day hobos that are on the down and out? Could technology revolutionize the fight against homelessness by providing people with the resources they need to find a job? There are so many questions posed by this guy! Does moving towards a world of complete connectivity and wirelessness mean we will have nothing tying us down? When it comes to travel, will the iPad be the new hitchiker’s thumb?! 

Nathanael West’s A Cool Million was by far one of the most enticing readings I have had to do for a class probably in the entire time of my time at NYU. There are so many incredible writers out there that take the work of writers before them and pay homage. They copy them, they recreate them, but how many actually satirize them? West does an incredible job of highlighting the American dream, the American writer, the American struggle, in a way that makes the reader smile and cringle simultaneously.
 
West was able to, in a relatively short story, touch on politics, race relations, economics, the role of art in society, the love story, etc. There were so many quotes I read aloud to others in the room (at their behest) . The irony of Lem having an honest face, and then ruined by toothless-ness, an eyeball disaster – it is so witty. The way every event in the story lines up the next and then circles back around for that perfect amount of irony – it is West commenting, so intelligently on the formulaic approach of storytellers with an agenda.
 
And what does it all mean? Lem dies in the end, a hero, but still dead. Betty, the ever-violated heroine ends up just fine as West would suggest. He highlights the unfortunate nature of beauty in her respect. He brings characters back into the story so that they recur so many times, the average scholar would be searching endlessly for reason or motive or meaning. The coincidence of character is so glaringly deliberate. West creates, or documents chaos, but what does it mean for the audience member?
 
Does he write A Cool Million as a cautionary tale against the American Dream, the hope of an unattainable fortune, whether spiritual or material? Or is A Cool Million the attempt to harness the chaos that is real life and inspire the reader to go beyond the romantic ideas of The American Dream and make it as best they can?
 
Or is A Cool Million just for entertainment, is it the burlesque equivalent to literature – a satire intended to make us laugh at ourselves, while simultaneously recognizing our unfortunate condition of being human?
 
West touches upon every single cliché about American life as it stretches through time - the women in Wu Fong’s “Laundromat”, the race mobs, even the pickpockets represent “quintessential America” at its very worst.
 
Lem just cannot catch a break, yet he strikes the perfect balance of being an active hero and a complete victim to the world. His numerous incarcerations become almost playful!
 
It seems counter-productive to analyze West’s work to death, as if that is the very response he wants – and wants to make fun of. It is a story to be read in jest, and to be taken seriously as it clearly defines the American expectations of its fellow man and citizen. West makes us question what it is we are fighting for, and if we are really fighting. 

Ah the freedom of the rails. American teenagers in the 1930s had it all going for them. Sure it was dangerous and not the cleanest experience, but darn, were they free!
 
I know that romanticizing the Depression is looked down upon. I know I am not supposed to, but I just can’t help it. Isn’t there something liberating about not having any money, any ties, or any destination? I don’t know about you, but sometimes I sit in class and dream about leaving it all behind – it’s corny, I know, but it’s enticing! All of that government propaganda and deliberate infrastructure building worked on me. I want to rent a car and go across the country (I know we haven’t gotten to the tourism sectional yet, but I am anxiously awaiting it).
 
It just isn’t the same. There isn’t that sense of adventure any more. It isn’t safe for a young girl to hitchhike.
 
When I was living in Italy, we used to ride the trains without buying tickets because nobody ever came around to check. One time, we were leaving a small town and the conductor came around asking us for our tickets. We pretended like we didn’t understand his Italian and they ended up kicking us off the train at a closed down station with one line running out of it. There was not a train in sight. We had to hitchhike back home and everything turned out fine. (Photo is mine. On the train there)
 
This experience, while such a small scale (and awfully romantic) sample of the lifestyle in the 1930s whet my appetite for excitement. I love to meet new people and I try to strike the balance between seeing the good in others and being open to them, and endangering yourself. Granted, this experience was in Europe, and I was with another girl so it was safer. But I want to do this in the United States. I want to see the Grand Canon and camp along the way and drive out there. I want to meet people in diners and hear their stories.
 
 I think there is so much to learn about America. It’s possible that the 1930s sparked this interest and that the excitement is just a long lasting residual from harsher times. I know I have it easy, but it hasn’t taken that excitement away.
 
Maybe in these familiar and somewhat precarious economic times, we need to revive the attitude of the 1930s. Maybe we need to look at America as a yet undiscovered land rich with people, even when resources dwindle and we need to take to the highways and explore! 

Tom Kromer’s Waiting for Nothing was a stark contrast to the travel literature we have been reading so far. While there has certainly been struggle (Grapes of Wrath) there has always been a sense of hopefulness, of light at the end of the tunnel, or at least some kind of eventual goal. Kromer’s novel/autobiography (because, which is it really?) has no end point, in fact, the story barely even follows a linear narrative, unconstrained by time, or any other typical story telling technique. This idea of hopelessness without any brightness at all taps into our human emotions but breaks the norms that storytellers – like Hollywood – use to keep us coming back for more. Kromer’s book is not something you want to read over and over again.
 
What was particularly interesting to me was the description of CH 4 in the Afterword and what it meant, socially, for them to remove the chapter due to its sexual tones. The almost shamelessness with which Kromer describes his actions to the reader could be shocking to the audiences of this book and therefore, they emitted it, because it undermined the rest of the story. This chapter, however I think is the most telling. As we explore ideas of travel and the entire uprooting of a person, their identity comes into question.
 
To me, Kromer’s book boiled down to what a human truly is. When all categories of identity are sloshed away (homosexual, heterosexual, rich poor, etc) there is jut basic humanity left, and the way that aligns you with others. He has to deal with fight or flight in the chapter about the fight in the box car, and the very first chapter when he almost hurts a man, and the chapter when he almost robs a bank – he never fought unless he had to, otherwise he ran. As the Afterword mentions as well, Kromer embodies Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This principle outlines that all of the physiological needs (breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, etc) need to be fulfilled before the other needs can be met, and as we climb the pyramid, we become more fulfilled human beings. Kromer fluctuates throughout his tale, particularly with the Yvonne, the young prostitute. It is the most hopeful moment that readers see, because it is his connection to another human being, at least, for now, until his physiological needs are no longer met.
 

In terms of travel, this idea of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is so crucial because it brings in to question, what can humans truly survive on? Do the travelers and hobos of the 1930s live at the base of the pyramid? Can they find happiness there? How does this compare to Boxcar Bertha who felt her self-actualization (or claimed to) by her lack of responsibility and tired down-ness?
 
I think this question persists in travel today as well, as our generation strives to leave college and go backpacking for a year, what satisfaction are we looking for? Is it the mentality of the 1930s that we strive for, where we only need the very base level of the pyramid, or is it a façade where we are actually searching for the hardest level to achieve – self actualization? 

Ben Reitman's excerpt from Sister of the Road was a truly awesome account of gender dynamics in the 1930s. Not only does it document the roles of women in this time but it challenges them as well. While Bertha grew up in sort of a free-love environment, looking up to her mother, the anti-traditional woman, she ended up rebelling against that, at the end of the excerpt and returning to the natural calling she felt to be a mother. Her initial position on women and their roles in society was skewed by her mother. America in the 1930’s for women was an interesting place as they entered the work force and started to feel the “liberation” that came with that. The pendulum would them seeing back the other way as the women in the 1950s had to be perfect suburban housewives, however women of the 1930s were able finally to start asserting their identity. Boxcar Bertha is an incredible example of the highly sexualized and gendered idea we have of freedom as she is portrayed as sort of a dangerous floozy.
 
The trailer for the movie Boxcar Bertha boasts AMERICA WAS A FREE COUNTRY in the 1930s and Boxcar Bertha was freer than most. What does it mean then, that she chose to finally settle down and raise her child. Was she a hypocrite who fell subject to the system? Even more so, was she a hypocrite because of her convincing Lowell to use money to prove his message to those that have never previously been constrained by money (even though their identities have been defined by it)? What does Bertha represent that she was not a “real” hobo at times, with the financial backing she had?  I think all of these questions come up as a function of the 1930s and what it meant for people outside of the agricultural system to explore their freedoms that have been enabled by the financial situation. Check out the movie trailer!

Trilling’s piece “Greatness with one fault in it” provided a perspective on the documenting of struggle in the 1930’s that turned the focus back on the viewer and asked important questions about the place of art in society. These photo-books, designed to inspire action and create awareness, often instigate pure pity. This issue, of the subject and the viewer, has always been present in art and brings up endless debate about what is art (is it only art when it is presented in an institution? Does the viewer decide it is art? The creator?) however Trilling frames the conflict in a social sense:
 
Christian pity is not enough. Liberal concern and good will are hopeless; lack of passion is here an insult. The "social consciousness” of the Thirties which flowered in Hemingway and Steinbeck, in Odets and Irwin Shaw, which millions found so right, proper and noble, did indeed have a kind of passion, and perhaps it had the virtue of being better than nothing. But how abstract and without fibre of resistance and contradiction it was, how much too apt it was for the drawing-room, how essentially it was a pity which won- derfully served the needs of the pitier.
 
Here, Trilling discusses the need of the viewer. This same need still exists today. When natural disasters hit, the first thing we do is take pictures and blast them all over the news. It poses the question, how much can “awareness” help? At what point does the documentarian need to put down the camera and help?
 
The image at the top of this blog post exemplifies that question. The photographer who took this (Kelvin Carter) left the girl who was crawling to a UN food camp in Sudan during the famine of 1994 to die. He later committed suicide. While this is a drastic example, we still have so many examples of this type of behavior today. Hurricane Katrina was just one more example of photographers staying a safe distance behind their lens to “spread the message” and “promote awareness”. I think it is appalling that they could use this defensive barrier of “ART” as armor against participating in the evils of the world.
 
In regards to travel, this same issue is present. As people move across the country either out of despair and last resort, or to “Discover America”, the same sort of disaster tourism occurred in the 1930s.  Agee said, “Every fury on earth has been absorbed in time as art, or as religion, or as authority in one form or another”. Travel in the 1930’s was either as a direct result of the fury of the Depression, or an exploitation of it.
 
It also poses the question of what is real? How many of these images we saw are posed and how many are off the cuff “true” renderings of what was going on at the time. An even more complex question is does it matter? The artists (both photographers and writers) that were trying to convey a certain image were doing so because they thought it was necessary so does it matter if they have posed their subjects in a particular manner? At the end of the day, the picture exists as it is, and a photograph (even though it is perceived as a true rendering is just as subjective as a painting or a drawing. The artists’ eyes and hands are responsible for what you see. If anything, photography is even more malleable and therefore more influential over the viewer when it comes to perspective. By using a medium that so closely replicates reality, the manipulation of that is not as obvious as it is with a rending that is very obviously human creates. Maybe it is the presence of a machine that makes the viewer think the image is more reliable than that of human rending, yet we forget that photography is still a human creation and that it can be manipulated to convey a message just as with any other art form. It is more dangerous because we attribute reality to the camera and therefore we refuse to acknowledge the human interaction with the subject. In a sense, this creates an even more profound message by artists who documented this travel in the 1930s because we ignore the manipulation that may be present. Photography is so powerful as a way to capture not only the subject, but also the viewer as well in the way that they react, perceive and think about the image they are viewing.
 
In American Exodus, the discussion of statements made about statistics regarding the 1930s and the agriculture and metropolitan changes occurring were reflective of the artists’ mind versus the anthropologist mind.  Anthropology is an institutionalized way to track the changes that were occurring at the time – the information is often delayed and of very little use to the people it quantifies. Art, instead, is the more free form way to make a statement, a declaration, a documentation of a personal story that may or may not represent a whole, and in some cases it can inform and inspire change in the moment  - the second the shutter clicks, the data is collected.
 
In one of the Nonstatistical Notes from the Field, art is compares to statistics, “I think no curator would choose his specimens that way”. That Way, being the way a statistician gathers numbers and data and passes judgment based upon this basic information that has been stripped of all humanity.
 
To me, the most fascinating part is what we do now. In a world saturated with words and images and media, how do we make change? Is it up to the statisticians or the artists? Do either one of these influences really have any power any more?
 
Whether or not you believe that history repeats itself, we are in a similar economic situation as were in the 1930s (obviously there are many differences and this is a generalization) however can we look to the past to see how to form the future? Are these photographs and words the story that we are reliving now? In 80 years, what will students say about this period of time and what will they look at to tell them the story? 

Both Adamic and Hickok present fascinating accounts, almost schizophrenic vignettes of what it is like to be on the road as an artist documenting America. Adamic’s trail through the life of Hazel is an insight into the unknown in travel – it is exciting, slightly dangerous, and we never know what is real. Hickok on the other hand feels more realistic, and therefore, more pessimistic.
 
The theme that arose between the two (among many) was one of Pride. Hickok talks about the boys who were boasting about whose father had been on relief longer; Adamic makes it clear that Hazel wants so desperately to be seen as tough and pulling herself up every time she falls (even though she asks for help). This immense feeling of pride in situations that can so rough was sort of surprising to me as it kept coming up.
 
It made me wonder if the pride was actually there, or was a façade put on for writers, or other people of privilege at that time – For Hazel anyone who picks her up so they think better of her, and just how empty that pride really is.
 
I also saw roots to one of the main issues we have in society today which is that idea that you have to be down and out in order to make it. We all hear people play those games about who is worse off; almost all real New Yorkers had to live somewhere terrible at one point and watch budget for food – does that weird sense of pride that we all  have from almost, but not quite failing stem from the attitude in the 1930s?
 
I am also constantly reminded of the very apparent presence of artists as documentarian. Adamic’s piece actually talks about him being a writer and possibly writing about this girl’s struggle. He even offers her part of the profit! I think there is a question of morality here as the way he plans to help her is something she could never do herself, but she is the key ingredient in. I was wondering the entire time, Why did he pick her up anyway? He went back and forth in the car about the intentions of this girl when he could have dropped her off anywhere. It didn’t seem like he kept giving her a ride out of kindness, it felt like he was in it for the thrill.
 
So often artists do just stand by the sidelines and make commentary however, and I was impressed by both Hickok and Adamic’s personal decisions to make change in the environment they were seeing, even if it was just one small thing, like buying a girl breakfast. 

In the last class we had an interesting discussion about Steinbeck’s intention and what it means to be a “communist” or a “socialist”, we discussed the value of the family and the greater community and what Steinbeck was truly fighting for. While it would be impossible for us to know, there is an aspect of this discussion that, for some reason, got the whole classroom fired up. I would venture to throw yet another approach into the mix. We have discussed a lot of “Romanticism,” and I think it is crucial to Steinbeck’s writing and the argument of what is paramount to him.
 
To be clear, the Romanticism that I speak of is not the colloquial description of the ideal, or a lovable fantasy, but the Romanticism of the Shelley/Frankenstein era – the return to the Natural.
 
As we discussed in class, this idea of the natural is just another way for Steinbeck to show his resistance to organized theology (whether it be religion, government, etc).
 
McEntyre, in her discussion of Casy in Steinbeck’s Men of Nature  as Prophets says,
 
"The idea of the holy has expanded for Casy since his rejection of the church. It springs from an awareness of nature honed and trained by his frequent retreats, his attitude of receptivity, and a habit of mind that links what he knows of the unconscious natural world to a deepening intuition about the ways of human nature. To be in the wilderness "without no campin' stuff" is to be in more direct sensual contact with the earth than those for whom the multilayered insulations of clothing and shelter dull the raw sensate experience of nature. Casy's reflection here also traces a line of thinking that begins in Christian typology and ends in a rejection of that tradition in favor of a universalistic mysticism removed from the claims of any institution. Like Emerson, the transcendentalist who left his pulpit and went out among the people, and like Thoreau, who turned eccentricity to high purposes, Casy opens his heart to a wider calling than the pulpit afforded--to return to the earth and live close to it and the people who till the soil and to learn from them:

'I ain't gonna baptize. I'm gonna work in the fiel's, in the green fiel's, an' I'm gonna be near to folks. I ain't gonna try to teach 'em nothin'. I'm gonna try to learn. Gonna learn why the folks walks in the grass, gonna hear 'em talk, gonna hear 'em sing. . . . Gonna lay in the grass, open and honest with anybody that'll have me. Gonna cuss an' swear an' hear the poetry of folks talkin'. All that's holy, all that's what I didn' understand'. All them things is the good things.'"
 
Casy’s distinct rejection of all things organized reflects Steinbeck’s own view which he presents as an option for real people (readers) to get out of the “grind.” Yet Steinbeck goes a step further to not only present this way of thought as a way out, but instead to declare this way as the best way to deal with reality. By setting up the events at the end of the book as a way to elevate Casy to the ideal, Steinbeck portrays his perspective as the one that has worked for him. It is a cause so noble, it is worth dying for. The philosophy lives on in Tom Joad and while the person is dead, it is the ultimate metaphor for the return to nature, since it is an out of body experience. For Steinbeck that opportunity to free Casy and himself from the confines of organization, to return to the natural, was the answer. One of the main themes of the book, in my eyes, is what is really left when everything is gone? Is it family? Is it this greater sense of community? I think Steinbeck would argue that the nuclear family unit, expanded to the greater community, is just another facet of the return to Naturalism. It is the connection with all things, that can only be realized once everything is lost.
 
Casy’s natural metaphors and prophesying leaves McEntyre to refer to him actually as a Prophet.  Casy’s death is different from all of the others in the novel as it is violent and almost voyeuristic. It is particularly informative to watch the evolution of Casy’s purpose as he comes and goes with the Joad family and as they deteriorate as a unit and become something else entirely. To extend it even further, I think each member of the Joad family represents groups of people  in society, and value chains, and the way they interact with Casy is representative of a social movement in conversation with transcendentalism. Ma’s relentlessness to hold the family together, while she has her rejection of religion, Tom’s furthering of Casy’s mission, Pa the hardworking “American” fellow, Uncle John who lives in constant guilt, Rose of Sharon, the young girl torn between her cross-roles in society as a young girl and a homemaker with nothing  - all of these dynamics are relatable because they are representative of true dynamics in America, real people who struggle in similar ways that have to deal with the loss of everything. 

“The women worked over the fire, hurrying to get food to the stomachs fo the family – pork if there was money in plenty, pork and potatoes and onions. Dutch-oven biscuits or cornbread, and plenty of gravy to go over it. Side-meat or chops and a can of boiled tea, black and bitter. Friend dough in drippings if money was slim, dough fried crisp and brown and the drippings poured over it.
Those families which were very rich or very foolish with their money ate canned beans and canned peaches and packaged bread and bakery cake; but they ate secretly, in their tents, for it would not have been good to eat such fine things openly. Even so, children eating their fried dough smelled the warming beans and were unhappy about it” (Steinbeck, 198).
 
The passage about the food is so telling to me because the rest of this chapter is filled with ideas of community and the universal being that these migrant workers became. It is amazing to me how much the foodways of people can reveal about the culture of the time. For instance, after the narrator explains the single mind of the community and the rules that have formed for the greater good of all, many of them surrounding the way to feed oneself, one’s children and others. Usually class and status issues become a part of this argument, however the people on the road in the 1930s, the people that Steinbeck discusses, are all starting from the same place – they all have nothing.
 
Interestingly enough, after the narrator explains the sound sense of unity amongst these travelers, he mentions the one secret they keep from each other, the one thing they hide – eating luxurious foods like bakery bread. Those who had the money to buy bread from a bakery daily were surely well off. This kind of divide is the only hint at a split in this cohesive culture and it is fascinating to me that it surrounds food.
 
It is also intriguing to me, the choices that are made about what to make on the road. The meal is almost exactly the same as the meal we witnessed at the beginning of the book back Home. To me, this is an integral part of the Travel Habit is experiencing the food that is different, exotic, very much the other. By making the same foods as they did back home, the Joads, and Ma Joad especially, are preserving where they came from. This is essential to the concept of travel and the travel habit because the food was a way for the migrants to feel comforted, to feel home, like everything was not lost.
 
Food in the 1930’s for some, was still not an issue, but for those who were not on one of the polarized ends of the eating spectrum (bread lines or fresh food daily) felt the changes in the way they had to eat.
 
An article in the Chicago Sun Times, Waste not (want not), features “Mary Owlsley, who spent the early '30s in Oklahoma.
Quoted in Studs Terkel's 1970 oral history of the Great Depression, "Hard Times," the Uptown resident says, "A lot of times, one family would have some food. They would divide. And everyone would share.
‘Even the people who were quite well-to-do, they was ashamed. 'Cause they was eatin', and other people wasn't.’”
 
This very mentality is reflected in the Grapes of Wrath and poses some interesting questions about class and shame, gender roles, and what travel does to disrupt those norms. 

Steinbeck’s Grapes Of Wrath provides a visceral insight into the challenges of living in the Dustbowl and the migration West that occurred for so many individuals in the 1930s. By switching the focus of adjacent chapters from the characters and then to their environment, Steinbeck provides the reader with a 360-degree view of the time period. The setting becomes dynamic and profound as a turtle works it’s away across the hot pavement, setting in motion events beyond itself. Almost like movie scenes, these vignettes have enough of a common thread, mostly to the land, which continues to make it feel connected.
 
Steinbeck starts by establishing the Home. By focusing on young Tom Joad, coming from a four year period, he is familiar enough to show the power of the home, yet distant enough to observe the changes in a way that is not unlikely or unbelievable. By establishing this idea of Home, Steinbeck can show just how jarring it is to be displaced, and he can ask the question of what is home? When so many people were abandoning, or forced out of the place they knew and built, where was home? Was home the promise land of California? Was it the land left behind, now changed forever?
 
On Page 72, the preacher says, “’It’s a thing to see, when a boy comes home. It’s a thing to see.’
‘Home’ Pa said.
‘To his folks,” the preacher amended quickly, “We stayed at the other place last night’” (Steinbeck, 72).
 
This short interaction reveals that home is already disrupted and Pa, the rock of the family (keep in mind, Ma stands behind him!) is out of his element. Home is represented so poignantly by Steinbeck as a cacophonous, plentiful place. The picture he paints of hammer and nails clinging in a slightly riotous but still pleasant fashion, with the breakfast of biscuits and gravy, enough for even strangers to come in and eat. This idea of the plenty, the harmonious picture of home, is turned on its head in the coming chapters as the characters are forced to become home.
 
Through the careful consideration of faces, behaviors, and specific description, Steinbeck outlines the roles that each member plays on the road. He introduces the harsh familiarity of struggle (Tom Joad’s imprisonment for homicide) and the nobility that comes with that struggle. He sets the characters up for the test of a lifetime that will kill some physically, some spiritually and others will flee. The journey begins by leaving home.

In Anderson’s piece, “Puzzled America,” the author focuses on the artist’s role as documentarian, the rich as the advocates for extravagant living, and the lost. The lost is the focus of this piece, not only lost in relation to their destination, but their possessions, their security, their concept of home as all, lost. The grim hope that Anderson poses with the two girls awaiting the death of their father is paradoxical. The girls want nothing more than to believe, yet the choice is seemingly not theirs. While it is an interesting philosophical conundrum, I am more interested in this idea of belief when all else is lost. While it is a lofty question, it is not the first time it has been asked – Is religion the ultimate possession that cannot be removed by poor economy, force, or unpredicted disaster? Was religion created so that when all else is gone, belief remains? This question I believe is key to formulating a habit of travel. If one has lost everything, they can go on the road with nothing but the guidance of their belief.  All of one’s things fit in a trailer and an entire family can go on the road in pursuit of a dream, an optimistic belief, only if all else is lost.
 
“I want belief, some ground to stand on,” is presented as a common feeling in the experience of the writer. It seems so fitting that when a home, a savings account, one’s family and job are all taken away, the only stabilizing factor is the ground to stand on, the only thing that is still unique to you, the belief.
 
Anderson claims that cynicism is too real, too pessimistic. What is there to be cynical about when the world we live in is at its worst?
 
I would argue that not much has changed. In the wake of 9/11 we, Americans, have adopted the mentality that Islam is an evil terrorist religion. Some of us believe so strongly in this that they violate the very pillars that make them American, the identity they are trying so hard to protect. In times of utter devastation, belief is the only ground to stand on. It is the only thing that can be measured against others.
 
In Asch’s "The Road", the belief is that there is an America to be discovered. The belief I in the comradery of the American people, the friends to be made and the important places to be explored. It is the common man’s “manifest destiny,” and it is a result of the most powerful American belief of all time, “The American Dream.” When all things seemingly American crumble, the American Dream is the belief at the bottom of the bucket. It is the last resort and for many Americans in the 1930s it became their entire lives, if even just for a little while, until things (and I mean material, things) got better.