Comparison Of John Steinbeck: A Life In Letters And Travels With Charley

The 1962 Nobel Prize for Literature and Pulitzer Prize recipient John Steinbeck, is famous for many classic works of the Western literature. From Grapes of Wrath (1937) to the Pearl (1947), Steinbeck’s works depicts themes of social injustice, greed, and etc. In the books Steinbeck: A Life in Letters and Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck gives vivid “description of the American life” (Prentice Hall 159) as he traveled around the United States. Steinbeck’s writing style, word choice, and tone in both short stories are similar in many ways, but they also have their differences. The books Steinbeck: A Life in Letters and Travels with Charley are similar in many ways. The writing style of both stories are descriptive. In both stories, the

The word choice and sentence length and rhythm from Steinbeck: A Life in Letters, are in contrast to Travels with Charley. In Steinbeck: A Life in Letters, there were more frequent usage of conversational and informal words, such as “You would have oohed quite a lot, aahed some” (Steinbeck, “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters” 4). On the contrary, Travels With Charley displays more usage of formal, mature words. For example, “Such a place the Fallen Angels might have built as a spite to Heaven, dry and sharp, desolate and dangerous, and for me filled with foreboding” (Steinbeck, “Travels with Charley” 3). Also, Travels with Charley included many long and complex sentences such as “We stayed and it didn’t snow and no tree fell, so naturally we forgot the whole thing and are wide open for more mystic feelings when they come. And in the early morning swept clean of clouds and telescopically clear, we crunched around on the thick white ground cover of frost and got under way” ( Steinbeck, “Travels With Charley” 3). In the story Steinbeck: A Life in Letters, it uses informal, choppy, and conversational phrases and sentences such as “I guess Wisconsin is the prettiest state I ever saw—more kinds of country—hills and groves like Somerset, and the Dells a strange place of water and odd mushroom-shaped rocks” (Steinbeck, “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters”