Going Westward, or Living on the Road

Migrants on the RoadIt is interesting to notice how Steinbeck describes motion on the road, the exodus, the journey dictated by the cadency of the ideal, of the myth California, which leads, also, to the emergence of a community of travellers who share the same desire, the same vital necessities, the same relation to the land. In this sense, all becomes one, as writes Steinbeck, all becomes one dream, one goal, one family, and the quest and the longing are shared by all, “the twenty families became one family, the children were the children of all.” And most of all, every family, every individual seems to be drawn into the shared, collective memory, “The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was one dream.” Steinbeck thus describes a moving, individual family during the day, and a united collective family at night thus creating a nightly community, perhaps, in this sense, also creating an ideal community in which the common good, common entente is dominant. He mentions a self regulating community, with its laws, with its labor division, “each member has his duty and went to it without instruction.” Perhaps is this ideal community a response to the government's inability to help the marginal migrant population?

Steinbeck describes, then, what seems to be an equal and caring community in which food is provided to all, in which the concern of one is the concern of all, as reminds Reloy Garcia in The Rocky Road to Eldorado, “Steinbeck's rage for travel-- he saw mobility and restlessness as American traits in America and Americans-- was a rage for order, for each element in the natural and social schemes to vibrate in harmony.” This harmony is flagrant in Steinbeck's nightly community centered around a collective consciousness and also based upon communication such as music, “(...)and the songs, which were of the people, were sung in the nights. Men sang the words, women hummed the tunes.” Singing then seems to be a way in which migrants are able to reconnect with their identity, with their memories and has the soothing appeasement of an enchantment before leaving the migrants to the difficulties of the day, of the road. Thus appear two disctinct and opposed worlds, the world of the road, of the heat, of the seemingly unending quest, and the world of appeasement, the world of presence and warmth.

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