John Steinbeck: A Life In Letters And Travels With Charley

John Steinbeck was a very successful author. He wrote many books and short stories, including Steinbeck: A Life in Letters and Travels with Charley. Both of these short stories are about Steinbeck’s travels around America and the journey he takes in the process of reconnecting with it. Steinbeck’s purpose for writing both of these stories is to inform and entertain readers about the places he visited while trying to reconnect with America. There are many similarities and differences that are shared by these two stories including the tone, sentence length, use of literary devices, word choice, and how Steinbeck has reconnected with America. The short stories Steinbeck: A Life in Letters and Travels with Charley have differences in the tones
However, he used similar and different literary devices. In Steinbeck: A Life in Letters, Steinbeck wrote using shorter and choppier sentences throughout the majority of the story. An example of the short sentences that are used in this story is on page 162 where it states, “Then I got into St. Paul and Minneapolis. There must be some way to avoid them but I didn’t make it. Crawling with traffic. Took a good time to get out of that” (Steinbeck, “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters” 162). In Travels with Charley, Steinbeck writes using longer and more complex sentences. For example, on page 164 it states, “The grieving sky turned the little water to a dangerous metal and then wind got up--not the gusty, rabbity wind of the seacoasts I know but a great bursting sweep of wind with nothing to inhibit it for a thousand miles in any direction” (Steinbeck, “Travels with Charley” 164). In both stories, Steinbeck used one similar literary device. He used a simile, which is a comparison between two things that are evidently not similar, but share at least one of the same characteristics. From Steinbeck: A Life in Letters it uses a simile on page 163 where it states, “The long distances ones are exactly like sailors” (Steinbeck, “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters” 163). In Travels with Charley on page 164 it states, “. . . their sense of what should be that the whole thing was brushed quickly away like dirt under a rug” (Steinbeck, “Travels with Charley” 164). The different literary device that Steinbeck used was in Steinbeck: A Life in Letters where he used onomatopoeia, however, he did not use this in Travels with Charley. On page 164 it states, “You would have oohed quite a lot, aahed some” (Steinbeck, “Travels with Charley” 164). Steinbeck chose to travel around America for the purpose of reconnecting with