Travels with Charley, a book of exploration and self-discovery, does not follow the usual Steinbeck manner of writing. Steinbeck, at the age of fifty-eight, living in the 1960s, decides that he wants to take a three-month trip around America to try to connect and re-discover the vast country that he often writes about. John also suggests that another motive for the trip is to prove himself an able man, free of his wife's spoiling habits. In a "three quarter ton" pickup truck that John dubs "Rocinante" (after Don Quixote's horse), John sets off with his supplies and a sole companion, a blue French poodle named Charley. While traveling around the nation that John adores, he starts to make observations about the American way of life that can still pertain to today's society. Man's constant dissatisfaction is a recurring theme in the novel, which John notes in every region of the country. As in many a Steinbeck novel, John exposes the dangerous faults and failures of a nation, yet he still rejoices in the good and noble ways that coexist to create the country. Overall, Steinbeck develops his common theme of social justice, yet he is more relaxed and in essence the story is just of a man on a trip with his pooch.
             Throughout the story, John remarks on how Americans are dissatisfied with their lives. He comments that there is a restlessness that he observed in almost every place he went. " I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation-a burning desire to go, to move, to get underway, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not towards something, but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every state I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move" (9). Although this is a very broad statement, it also captures the idea that people are rare...