Ali ANALISIS OF THS PROSE STILS OF JOHN STEINBECK

BÏ

MICHAEL K. CROWLEY

A THESIS

Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the Creighton University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Department of English

Omaha, 1967 Y

PREFACE

This thesis grew from an appreciation of the works of John

Steinbeck and enthusiasm for new methods of objective prose

analysis. Since X was not able to locate or find reference to

any stylistic analysis of Steinbeck»s works, it seemed natural

to do this paper.

Dr. Edward P. J. Corbett is responsible for helping me

formulate the method of examination. The thesis took shape

under his considerate and patient tutelage. He read and reread

- many of the chapters an embarrassing (for me) number of times.

The Creighton University Library supplied most of the

background material in the areas of rhetoric and stylistic

analysis. The critical monographs can be found in the library

at the University of Omaha. The five works of Steinbeck used

in the paper are all available in paperback editions.

1 must thank my thesis advisor, Mr. Phillip C. Fenton, for

his help in the final weeks. There were others who have been

generous with time and understanding. I must mention Miss Dianne

Jensen, who aided in the compilation of the endless statistics

and figures, and my wife Joyce, who helped in every way

imaginable. vi

CONTENTS

Page

P R E F A C E ...... v

LIST OF CHARTS ...... v il

Chapter I. INTRODUCTION TO THE METHOD OF A N A L I S I S ...... 1 H . PASTURES OF H E A V E N ...... 10 III. THE GRAPES OF V J R A T H ...... 16 IV. THE P E A R L ...... 22 V. EAST OF E D E N ...... 31 VI, TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY ...... 39 VII. CONCLUDING REMARKS ABOUT JOHN STEINBECK»S PROSE s t i l e ...... k l APPENDIX A ...... 50 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 6l *v vii

LIST OF CHARTS

Chart Page A. LIST OF SPECIFIC POINTS OF COMPARISON ...... 40 B. COMPARATIVE LENGTH MEASURES ...... 50 C. RELATIONSHIP OF THREE FACETS OF D I C T I O N ...... 53 D. CORRELATION OF SIMPLE SENTENCES AND AVSRAffi SENTENCES PER PARAGRAPH ...... 55 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION TO THE METHOD OF ANALYSIS

Efforts to establish a base for making valid generalizations

about prose style must begin -with the printed page. Me freely assign descriptive adjectives to the writing of any author of whom we are knowledgeable, but such subjectivity only compounds our ignorance. Every analysis of prose style must attempt to objectively answer the question, ’»H o w did the author achieve this style?5’

In our time we witness increasing manifestations of a

scientific approach to our every act. Each year the possibility of avoiding this Scientific Age recedes further. This situation enables— perhaps tempts is a better term— us to apply scientific principles, if not the machinery, to problems inherent in the study of literature. Whether we use computers or pencils, this temptation to delve into the methods of writers comes largely from the environment we all share. The question now has become,

’"Precisely what statistics can we produce to substantiate our statements about a writer’s style?”

When we are confronted with pages of prose, we must literally analyze the work. Then, in the light of what we find, the generalizations we make are no longer vulnerable, unless we 2

fail to make a valid judgment from the statistics we have gleaned. For instance, if we feel a piece of prose has a certain "strength*1 about it, we no longer need wonder if the reason is monosyllabic words or simple sentences or both or neither. An actual count quickly resolves the matter. This does not preclude instances when no reason turns up, because this tabulating of elements only offers a basis upon which we can make judgments and not the judgments themselves.

A necessary requirement, I believe, for a stylistic analysis is to examine recognized prose. The writings of John Steinbeck easily qualify in that respect. They have won for him the

Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature. He has long been acclaimed a leading American author.

Steinbeck himself and his works are familiar to many

Americans. The man John Steinbeck has been aptly described, at one time or another, as a Californian, a New Yorker, a naturalist (both literary and scientific), and a man who loathed publicity. During his life, he was a ranch hand, a sporadic student at Stanford, a construction worker (he helped build the old Madison Square Garden), and a caretaker for a lodge in the

Sierras. He claims that Morte d*Arthur and the Kina James Bible had more influence on him than any other books.^ He once wrote

•^Peter Lisca, The Wide World of John Steinbeck. (New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1958), P« 22. 3

of his writing:

I have had fun with my work and I shall insist on continuing to have fun with it. And it has been ray great good fortune in the past, as I hope it will be in the future, to find enough people to go along with me to the extent of buying books, so that I may eat and continue to have fun. I do not believe that I can much endanger or embellish the great structure of English literature.^

Overlooking this modest appraisal, the prose of Steinbeck, as well as the man himself, has been a fixture on the American literary scene for over 30 years. Steinbeck and his writing have been the subject of several books. The earliest critical monograph appeared after Grapes of

Wrath in 1939» Harry T. Moore wrote The Novels of John Steinbeck and \\ias the first ’’ex p e r t ” on Steinbeck. Other major critical works are Peter Lisca’s The Wide World of John Steinbeck. J. E.

Fontenrose’s Giant John Steinbeck, and an excellent anthology of criticism edited by E. W. Tedlock and C. V. Wicker titled

Steinbeck and His Critics. Although style is mentioned in several of these works, this paper represents the first detailed stylistic analysis of Steinbeck’s prose.

In order to place his style in some sort of critical context, we should put Steinbeck in an identifiable group of writers. Such a group is well defined, I believe, in a book by Richard Bridgman

^Steinbeck and His Critics, ed. E. W. Tedlock, Jr. and C. V. Wicker (Albuquerque, N. M., 1957)» P* 47* 4

titled The Colloquial Style in America. In this study Mr. Bridgman attempts to establish a national prose style which has evolved partly in our lifetime. As the book states, Steinbeck participates in this national prose style:

My initial assumption is so broad as hardly to admit dispute; that a change has indeed taken place in American prose style in the last century and a half. Even in the absence of absolute proof ('which in stylistic matters is unthinkable), most readers would agree, I should think, that the prose of Erskine Caldwell, John Steinbeck, William Saroyan, and J. P. Marquand more closely resembles the prose of Ernest Hemingway than that of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Conversely, the prose of George Lippard, Maria Susanna Cummins, Augusta Evans, Susan Warner, and William Ware has more affinities with Hawthorne than it has with writers in the current century.^

Therefore, my findings will be closely related to the current colloquial style in America, and generalizations about this national prose style should also bear upon the writing of

Steinbeck. I make this effort to fix; Steinbeck and his work in a literary history and context, not because I intend to correlate my findings with those of Bridgman, but to make broader application possible.

To avoid making statements about too narrow a portion of

Steinbeck’s work, I have chosen five different books. They are different types and cover a period from about the beginning of his career in the early Thirties to the late Fifties. If in one

% e w York, 1966, pp. 3-4. 5

book, Steinbeck employs a style not like the others, the difference

■will be obvious by comparison with the other books. If his style has changed during the years of writing, that too will become apparent by following the development. Therefore, the main reason for using these five books is to get a sufficient cross- section. It is my contention that a good writer has many styles at his disposal, but he always retains some characteristics of his own particular style. Although Steinbeck*s style will vary in each book, there will be consistent stylistic traits found in all five books. The greater the amount of material considered and the longer the period it is distributed over, the more accurately we can distinguish the stylistic aspects which extend through all the books.

The five books in chronological order are Pastures of Heaven,

The Grapes of Wrath, The Pearl. East of Eden, and Travels with

Charley.^ Pastures of Heaven (1932), Steinbeck’s second book, is now considered one of his best. It is a thematically related series of short stories that is now generally referred to as a novel. The Grapes of Wrath (1939) is a very controversial novel that violently shook the nation right before World War II. It

^Pastures of Heaven, Compass Books Ed. (New York, 1963); The Grapes of Wrath. Compass Books Ed. (New York, 1958); The Pearl, The Red Pony, Compass Books Ed. (New York, 1965); East of Eden, Viking Press (New York, 1952); Travels with Charley, Viking Press (New York, 1962). 6

firmly established its author as a first-rate writer. The Pearl (1947) is a popular novelette which has received little critical acclaim. East of Eden (1952) is a long and somewhat disorganized

novel that, although much criticized, sold well and became a

popular movie. As he has often done, Steinbeck, in the late

Fifties, was traveling and writing newspaper columns. One

cross-country trip resulted in many articles which were later

published as Travels with Charley (1962).

Each of the five books will be submitted to the same type

of investigation. This investigation will begin by examining

the externals regarding each book. The author»s purpose, the

reception the book was given, the author»s comments about the book, influence the process of relating Steinbeck»s rhetorical

strategies.

The next concern will be to determine the average number of words per sentence, the average number of sentences and words per paragraph, and any extraordinary deviations from these averages. For purely arbitrary reasons I will usually consider sentences which are half or double the average as short or long respectively. These figures will vary from work to work, of course, but sentence length and paragraph length will be pertinent and revealing.

In a study such as this, with several hundred thousand words involved, it would not be feasible to count them all. The 7

paragraphs used are consecutive, except where it is otherwise

noted, and they will not include dialogue and transitional

paragraphs. A study of another nature would be necessary to

properly treat dialogue. Dialogue must reflect the characters

and they naturally show great dissimilarities from one book to

another. Because of their nature, transitional paragraphs would

only serve to falsely influence the averages. Therefore,

paragraphs including dialogue and one or two sentence transitional

paragraphs will not be included in this study»

The next step will be to consider the significance of the

percentages of grammatical sentence types (simple, compound,

complex). Frequently, rhetorical sentence types (loose,

periodic, antithetical, parallel) will be examined but not from

the viewpoint of percentages. Functional types (declarative,

interrogative, imperative, exclamatory) and rhetorical types

are important mostly in regal'd to why one is used in a situation,

and not in regard to numbers.

Diction will be the next facet of the study. Diction will be considered with several aspects, such as concrete or abstract,

formal or informal, monosyllabic (usually Anglo-Saxon) or poly­

syllabic (usually Latinate), and common words or jargon. Not all of these aspects will be applicable to each book. Keeping in mind Mr. Bridgman»s comments, the most relevant will probably be monosyllabic and concrete. 8

After a treatment of diction will come what I choose to

refer to as images, I use the term to mean roughly the equivalent

of metaphor, simile, or personification. Images, especially

recurring ones, often give clues to the theme of a book or

insights into how the author feels about a thing. For example,

when Steinbeck uses several animal images in describing the acts

of someone, he may be suggesting that they are not using their

rational powers. He can imply many things, not by saying them,

but with adroit use of Imagery. Images are valuable in prose

analysis, not so much in an objective sense when they are

counted, but lifaen they reveal persistent undertones or feelings

the author has.

The last step will be to examine any unusual stylistic aspects.

This might include -unusual schemes, repetition of words, idioms,

or any obvious rhetorical device which is not included in the

above-mentioned list of things under investigation. Such aspects

will be limited and few, depending usually on external factors.

I have elected to examine only these particular facets of style for several reasons. Most of the points will be objectively observable in all five books. This will make it possible to compare the five sets of figures in order to make further deduc­ tions. In a study of this magnitude, it would be difficult to note the more minute aspects of style, such as variety of sentence euphony. The points that I have selected to investigate comprise what I believe to be the most revealing features of narrative prose style. These points should supply sufficient material to work with; however, the main difficulty will not be in compiling figures, but in making judgments about the rhetorical aptness of the stylistic features. CHAPTER II

PASTURES OF HEAVEN

The Pastures of Heaven is a book of related short stories which center around a valley near Monterey, California. The third story, the portion I have chosen to examine, concerns

"Shark Wicks" and his family. Steinbeck claims the valley, under another name, is real and the incidents which make up the stories are time.

Critics of the book (most refer to it as a book because the stories are so intertwined they serve only as something like chapter divisions) can find little awry. They usually tend to overlook it since it came very early (1932, second book), deals with a seemingly light subject matter, and appears to be just short stories, which, of course, limits critical attention.

Recently, esteem for this early contribution has been mounting, and it has been mentioned as Steinbeck*s best work.

Analyzing the prose in one of the stories will not lead to generalizations about the interdependence and collective satirical impact of the stories, but it will reveal the style employed throughout the book since the stories are homologous.

^Warren French, John Steinbeck. (New York, 1961). «

11

In this third chapter, "Shark" is a local farmer who has gained a reputation as an astute bargainer when he disposes of his annual harvest of peaches and peas. He is thought to be quite rich (a natural deduction if you grant he is a "Shark*1), but this is not true. He keeps a ledger of imaginary monies and gloats over his "profits.** Intentionally nurturing the belief he is wealthy gets Mr. Wicks in trouble. He is quite protective about his attractive young daughter, and when he returns from a brief trip he discovers his prize possession has been seen alone in the woods with a boy from another farm. In the action that follows, "Shark" puts himself in a circumstance where everybody finds out he is practically broke. His demise, although of little dramatic impact, ends the story. Steinbeck intended this incident as just the beginning, so he wanted only a small enough climactic situation to delineate this story without creating too high a point in his overall plot.

Steinbeck»s purpose was to tell the story of the valley, rather than stress the isolated incidents. One family, the

Munroes, moves into the valley and for no known reason brings a "curse" on the lives of the valley»s people. This chapter about "Shark Wicks'» is just the first of several incidents which get progressively more serious. Each time, the cause of the misfortune is a Munroe. Therefore, it would be a mistake to view this passage as just a short story. It more closely resembles 12

a section of a novel.

Examining paragraph and sentence length reveals 'what may well be a characteristic with Steinbeck. The average number of words in a paragraph is 68.1 , and there is a strict adherence to the average. The longest paragraph is 220 words, and only two

others exceed 140 words (double the average). Excluding the one sentence transitional paragraphs, only six have less than

34 words (half the average). This consistency and measured paragraphing indicate the author is a self-assured storyteller who molds the meat of his story into neat and well-balanced units to give the impression of a planned tale.

The average paragraph includes 4»2 sentences. There are two paragraphs with nine sentences and one with eight. With an average of 16.1 words per sentence, this is not a wide divergence. There are only six sentences over 40 and two sentences under five

words. The sentences, like the paragraphs, observe a uniformity

in length.

It might be possible to dispute the statement that rigid

sentence and paragraph length are indicators of a storyteller

about-his-business. The fact is, Steinbeck is telling a story with several smaller stories. There is a great amount of

rigidness and predetermined structure here. The sentences

resemble standardized units as do the paragraphs and chapters.

This conformity is so obvious that Steinbeck must have consciously 13

created them for an effect. Whatever the intended effect, they seem to enhance the logical, planned, structured aspect of the plot. Similar sentences build similar paragraphs which result in similar chapters or incidents. Each incident further incrim­ inates the Monroes. Such style and consistency serve a definite rhetorical purpose.

Most of the sentences are simple (4*$). This seems natural with the uncomplicated and predictable nature of the style so far. It would be out of place to have involved sentence patterns in carefully balanced paragraphs. The other half of the sentences is divided between compound (21%) and complex (31^). The predominant rhetorical sentence types are loose and periodic.

Of course, the primary functional type is declarative. With no point of contention and no urgent message to prevail upon a resisting audience, there is little call for complicated anti­ thetical sentences or the like. Again, the attitude of an unhurried narrative is conjured up by these unpresumptuous rhetorical strategies.

The diction is mostly monosyllabic (5^0. This gives

strength of expression and simplicity to the narrative, which

fits in very well with this tale of country people. A writer purported to belong to the American colloquial style would be

expected to use Anglo-Saxon diction as Steinbeck does.

When diction is predominantly monosyllabic it is usually 14

concrete. The overwhelming percentage of nouns in The Pastures

of Heaven is concrete. This is to be expected, in a story dealing

with farms and farmers.

There is not much use of jargon. There is an area here

(farming) which lends itself to jargon. Steinbeck must have

resisted, because the traces are few («baling wire,« '»prize

bitch,« "bottom land").

Imagery may prove to be the most revealing aspect of all

those examined. The images are excellent in Pastures of Heaven,

and their implications deserve further examination. The predom­ inant image treats of many of the people and things in the book

as cultivated objects. Some of the best examples:

Katherine was not pretty, but she had the firm freshness of a new weed and bridling vigor of a young mare. Alice grew and became more and more beautiful. Her skin was lucent and rich as poppies; her black hair had the soft crispness of fern stems, her eyes were misty skies of promise.

’»S h a r k " is a man of the soil and he regards his wife and daughter as so many more plants. Later there is reference to something happening to Alice*s chastity as her "defloration.** She is also called his "prize bitch," as I mentioned above.

A man loves his wife and daughter in a much different way than he loves his crops. Steinbeck is saying this is not true with "Shark Wicks." He hoards and gloats over his possessions.

He does not love; he covets. Steinbeck ruthlessly incriminates 15

"Shark®* with imagery referring to his wife and daughter as

soulless flora and fauna.

Twice in this excerpt from Pastures of Heaven Steinbeck divides the story by leaving a large space between paragraphs. T h i 3 seenis to indicate the passing of time and changing of setting.

About the only remaining stylistic device is the way the author constructs the book. It is difficult to imagine a series of independently excellent short stories which combine to make

such a fine novel. The normal continuity between chapters is a little lax, but the persistence of the theme serves as the necessary thread. CHAPTER III

THE (21AP.ES OF WRATH

Few books have shaken the United States as fiercely as The

Grapes of Wrath. This long novel about the migrant farm laborers searching for the means for bare existence electrified Americans just recovering from the depression. It placed Steinbeck at the pinnacle of authorship and also made him very rich. Generally speaking, Grapes of Wrath is the brightest spot in Steinbeck» s career. Warren French comments:

Steinbeck has written nothing else as successful as this novel, nor does it seem likely he will. Few writers, however, have even written one such work— one that looking back we can see marks not only the high point of its author»s career but the close of an era in American history and literature.

Another critic, Dorothy Parker, called Grapes of Wrath »»the greatest American novel I have ever read.”

Adverse criticism was mostly aimed at the controversial material in the book. A Congressional inquiry was held, and an

Oklahoma Congressman called Steinbeck a »»damnable liar.” Arch­ bishop Spellman publicly denounced the book.

Steinbeck»s motivation in Grapes of Wrath is comparable to

Swift»s in A Modest Proposal. The big Californian wanted attention

farren French, John Steinbeck (New York, 1961) 17

focused on the migrant farmers, not solely the riches of literary

acclaim. He repeatedly refused to plug the book or temper its

reception with use of his well-known name. He wanted the book

to speak for itself.

The Grapes of Wrath is one of the more widely known American

novels. The Joads are the literary epitome of downtrodden people.

»•Okies” is a term made famous by Steinbeck. With credentials

such as these the findings w i l l be of particular interest. We

will be looking into Steinbeck*s best.

I have chosen SO paragraphs including about 10,000 words

•from which to make objective observations about the book. These

paragraphs average 116.6 words each. This is long for Steinbeck,

and the reason lies in the nature of the book. Much of the book

is commentary and somewhat philosophical. The paragraphs are

twice as long as those in Pastures of Heaven, and this is because

the two books are so little alike. The message in Pastures of

Heaven is contained in the simple plots, while there is no effort made to comment on the happenings. The interchapters in Grapes

of Wrath are mostly rambling commentary and furnish much of the

extra length.

Occasionally, Steinbeck creates irregular sentences and paragraph patterns by drifting into a monologue, narrative style.

He uses an unorthodox style which consists of omitting ordinary

dialogue punctuation to achieve a type of free-flowing, rapidly 18

moving monologue. This, of course, disrupts the regular length patterns. I have chosen not to include any such passages in the

80 paragraphs. Here is a typical example:

The big car was cruising along at sixty. I want a cold drink. Well, there»s something up ahead. Want to stop? Do you think it would be clean? Clean as you are going to find in this God­ forsaken country. Well, maybe the bottled soda will be all right. The great car squeals and pulls to a stop. The fat worried man helps his wife out. Mae looks at and past them as they enter. A1 looks up from his griddle, and down again. Mae knows. T h e y ’ll drink a five-cent soda and crab it a i n ’t cold enough.

-Although this is definitely a stylistic feature, it 'would have to be considered separately. To mix these passages in with the regular prose would create an imbalance with the figures. The excerpts must be considered dialogue for the purpose of this paper.

The sentences in Grapes of Wrath average 17.5 words. This figure is comparable to the other selections. With such long paragraphs the sentences might be expected to be longer also, but Steinbeck uses more of the same length sentences instead of longer ones. With 6.6 sentences in the average paragraph, Grapes of Wrath has 5051 more sentences per paragraph than Pastures of

Heaven, and sentence length remains a consistent aspect.

Simple sentences are numerous. They make up 7 of the 531 sentences examined. Compound sentences comprise 18$, and the last

8$ are complex. The only rhetorical significance here is probably 19

the high number of simple sentences. This seems to be explained

by the type of person the book deals with. The Joads most likely

speak in grammatically simple sentences. Steinbeck has just

transferred these simple sentences into his prose about the Joads.

The diction in Grapes of Wrath is mostly what is expected

from a book about a hard and dirty side of life. An overwhelming percentage of the words are concrete and 57/» are monosyllabic. Again, this preponderance of Anglo-Saxon diction is a sign that

the thesis of Mr. Bridgman might be interesting to pursue. If

Hemingway and others have the tendency toward monosyllabic diction

as Steinbeck does, it could easily be the chief characteristic

of the current colloquial style.

To tell a story of hardship and defeat at the hands of an unmoved land would call for language that was hard-hitting and that would leave little to the imagination. To tell about people

with no education or even exposure to literate culture requires

language on their part that is as realistic as the dust storms.

Vivid, concrete terminology cased in one syllable words fits the

situation eocactly.

Other noticeable aspects are the lack of either jargon or

formal language. Jargon might easily have a place if the setting

was more agricultural. There is no need for much talk of farming when travel, work, and hunger are the main interests. The dialogue

is packed with bad grammar, but the author does not continue the 20

use in his narrative.

Only in a few descriptive passages does Steinbeck use imagery to any extent. This example comes early in the book, ’»A large

red drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over

and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a t o m cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going.”

Imagery implies an effort on the writer»s part to create a

special effect in the reader. Although an image can be horrible, its presence still says the writer made a positive effort to achieve the effect. Steinbeck lets the situation speak. He does not feel he needs figures of speech to illustrate what a literal description can fairly do. The lack of imagery is most likely due to the earthy, simple approach Steinbeck chooses to take. Knowing he normally tends to tie imagery in with the theme of the book, we can see he has made an effort to remain direct in

Grapes of Wrath.

The obvious device Steinbeck uses in this long book is what

I called similar to unpunctuated dialogue. In many places he drops punctuation proper to quotations and lets the words flow from unknown mouths prompted by an unseen commentator. Many of the sentences are in conversational style, but many times we do not know who speaks them or what is going on. The result is something like being there and hearing everything said. The 21

sense of -what is happening is conveyed, and the reader is unfettered by nJoad said,” s,T o m replied,” etc. This passage about the used car dealer is typical:

Piles of rusty ruins against the fence, rows of wrecks in back, fenders, grease-black wrecks, blocks lying on the ground and a pig weed growing up through the cylinder. Brake rods, exhausts, piled like snakes. Grease, gasoline. See if you canft find a spark plug that a i n ’t cracked. Christ, if I had fifty trailers at a hundred, I’d clean up. What the hell is he kicking about? We sell ’em , but we don’t push’era. home for him. T h a t ’s good!.. Don’t push’em home. Get that one in the monthly, 1 bet. You d o n ’t think h e ’s a prospect? Well, kick’im out.

Another example:

Danny in the back seat wants a cup of water. Have to wait. Got no water here. Listen— that the rear end? C a n ’t tell. Sound telegraphs through the frame. There goes a gasket. Got to go on. Listen to her whistle. Find a nice place to camp an’ I ’ll jerk the head off. But, God Almighty, the f o o d ’s gettin’ low. When we c a n ’t buy no more gas— what then?

Steinbeck must have chosen the rambling, unpunctuated dialogue with a special purpose. He probably wanted to let the story tell itself and be free from literary conventions where feasible. Using this unhampered form shifts emphasis from the speakers to the larger theme of their problems. CHAPTER IV

THE PEARL

The Pearl is a popular rendition of a legend -which Steinbeck

heard idhile in Mexico collecting material for a book. It is

often criticized because the original legend was far less romantic

than, this story of Kino. Steinbeck made the mistake of mentioning

the original legend in a book and then composing a version for

a woman*s magazine. When The Pearl appeared (1947), it was

obvious this was an altered legend, and it reaped criticism for

being adulterated and popularized.? According to this type of

criticism the book might be suspected of containing expanded

and unnecessary passages.

Since the publication of The Pearl was followed by Cannery Row, many critics saw the work as merely a diversion from the more

serious work the author had been about. This charge could be

supported by finding indications of quality sacrificed for mass

appeal; however, such indications might he difficult to find in

an analysis of this type.

The book adapts w e l l to investigation. There is little dialogue because the characters are not vociferous types. It would not be feasible to have the natives relate the history,

^Peter Lisca, The Wide World of John Steinbeck (New Brunswick, New Jersey, 195&). 23

circumstances, and action of the plot. Brevity enables treatment

of the entire work excepting only those paragraphs precluded in

my introduction.

The Pearl is the simple story of Kino and his wife Juana

and their baby Coyotito. Peacefulness and serenity rule their

lives on the sunny beaches of the Gulf until Coyotito is bitten

by a scorpion. K i n o ’s request for help from the doctor is

refused because, as Kino is aware, for many years his people

have been oppressed and treated as animals by the doctor’s people.

The distressed parents go out to sea, and Kino searches for

a great pearl which w i l l enable them, to pay for care of Coyotito.

Kino does find a great pearl, and immediately new friends emerge

from all directions. The doctor comes and treats the baby, even though it had shown signs of being past danger. Juana had

prayed for the pearl, and now all her problems seemed to have

passed.

The day comes when Kino goes to the town to sell the pearl

to one of the pearl-buyers. W i t h a large following of townspeople

he offers the gem to each buyer. He is enraged when none w i l l

offer him much money, saying that his pearl is a mere curiosity,

too big to be valuable. He realizes they have collaborated and

knows he is defeated here.

Life grows unbearable as Kino is beaten by mysterious men,

and once he even strikes and kicks Juana when she tries to throw \ 24

the cause of their misfortune back into the sea. Although

Coyotito is now fully recovered, Kino s t i l l dreams of great

riches from his pearl. He kills a man who has accosted him,

and returns home to find their brush house on fire. They hide

in the house of his brother, and then they leave by night for a

large city where someone w i l l buy the pearl. They are tracked

across the desert and into the mountains. There Kino attacks

and without mercy k i l l s the pursuers, but a stray shot during

the fracas kills Coyotito. Subdued, Kino and Juana w a l k back

to their village and with little ceremony throw the great pearl

'into the waiting sea.

W i t h the variety of situations it is obvious the style must

change or vary frequently in order to successfully convey the

action. The plot is packed with emotions and simple themes.

Since the story is such a simple, "uncomplicated narrative, there

is a possibility the consistent and balanced style of Pastures

of Heaven might be repeated. Moreover, the characters in The

Pearl closely resemble those in Pastures of Heaven.

The 180 suitable paragraphs comprise about 90% of the book.

They average 4*99 sentences and 95*9 words each. The longest

paragraph in sentences is 17 sentences, with 212 words. This

average is 12.5 words per sentence. The longest paragraph in words contains 320 words in 13 sentences. This is 24.6 words in

each sentence. This large discrepancy from the average sentence has some rhetorical significance. 25

The paragraph with the longer sentences describes a beautiful scene in the mountains. In their flight from the trackers, Kino and Juana have reached the mountains, which represent a degree of security arid achievement. They can relax and catch their breath. Steinbeck uses long rambling sentences to indicate he is in no hurry and is not now worried about the pursuers. This haven is one of beauty and serenity, with none of the "evil music*1 Kino knows.

In the paragraph of short sentences the action moves quickly.

Hearts beat rapidly as Kino climbs back into his boat. He has collected the oysters in which they will look for pearls.

Anticipation mounts as they prepare to open the oysters. The short, quick sentences match the mood of the young couple.

Differences in sentence length can mean other things.

Two later paragraphs, almost consecutive, offer an interesting parallel. The first contains two sentences with 82 words. The second is four sentences with 56 words. They average 41 and 14 words per sentence respectively. These are the two paragraphs:

The sun was hot yellow that morning, and it drew the moisture from the estuary and from the Gulf and hung it in shimmering scarves in the air so that the air vibrated and vision was insubstantial. A vision hung in the air to the north of the city— the vision of a mountain that was over two hundred miles away, and the high slopes of this mountain were swaddled with pines and a great stone peak arose above the timber line.

The neighbors, watching Kino*s door through the crevices in their brush houses, were dressed and 26

ready too. There was no self-consciousness about their joining Kino and Juana to go pearl selling. It was expected, it was a historic moment, they would be crazy if they d i d n ’t go. It would be almost a sign of unfriendship.

The first has long sentences, again, to show peacefulness and n a t u r e ’s beauty. The second paragraph with its short sentences represents the buzzing, bustling activity of a town coming to life. The neighbors break the quiet scene depicted in the first paragraph. As the people change, the sentences change.

The group returns after trying to s e l l the pearl, and

Steinbeck uses similar short sentences to get the effect of a buzzing crowd:

K i n o ’s neighbors whispered together. They had been afraid of something like this. The pearl was large, but it had a strange color. They had been suspicious of it from the first. And after a l l , a thousand pesos was not to be thrown away. It was comparative wealth to a man who was not wealthy. And suppose Kino took a thousand pesos. Only yesterday he had nothing.

Here the short sentences symbolize more than the activity of the people. Steinbeck has put their words into a narrative in a manner which makes them a collective whole speaking out with one mind.

I mentioned above that the style of The Pearl closely resembles that of Pastures of Heaven. The b o o k ’s average paragraph has 95*6 words. There are nine paragraphs over 200 words, and one over 300. There are nine paragraphs under 30 words. 27

This is a good balance and hints at no propensity for either long

or short paragraphs.

There is a great amount of constancy in the paragraphs.

As an entirely arbitrary division, if the 180 paragraphs are

separated into eighteen consecutive groups of ten, and the

average sentences per paragraph figured for each group, the results are startling. Nine of the unit averages f a l l between

4*5 and 5.5. This means that half of the paragraphs vary less than lCp> from the cumulative average which is 4 . 9 9 sentences per paragraph.

All the sentences taken together average 19.2 -words and are well-balanced, with no large number of long or short sentences.

There are only a few sentences over 45 words or under 7 words.

Just as everything else shows a balance between the parts rather than an abnormal portion of anything, the grammatical types of sentences are also evenly spread. Compound (38$) and simple ( 3 7 / 0 are only slightly more common than complex ( 25%). The rhetorical significance of this w i l l be difficult to judge until the findings of all five books can be compared.

Particular rhetorical sentence devices are not easily found in a straightforward story like The Pearl. And, almost for the same reasons, functional sentence types are largely restricted to declarative. With the narrative style this is almost a necessity.

Concrete diction is the rule, as the opening paragraph verifies: 28

Kino awakened in the near dark. The stars still shone and the day had drawn only a pale wash of light in the lower sky to the east. The roosters had been crowing for some time, and the early pigs were already beginning their ceaseless turning of twigs and bits of wood to see whether anything to eat had been overlooked. Outside the brush house in the tuna clump, a covey of little birds chittered and flurried with their wings.

A preponderance of monosyllabic words also turns up in this first paragraph. A quick count shows 53/5 of the words are monosyllabic

and just over 6QSfo are concrete. The words are common and a

junior high student could handle the vocabulary.

Images give the most interesting insights. Steinbeck often

.gives animate qualities to groups of people, such as a village

or even the world. An elaborate image refers to the village in

Which Kino lives or any town:

A town is a thing like a colonial animal. A town has a nervous system and a head and shoulders and feet. A town is a thing separate from all other towns, so that there are no two towns alike. And a town has a whole emotion. How news travels through a town is a mystery not easily to be solved. News seems to move faster than small boys can scramble and dart to tell it, faster than women can call it over the fences.

And later:

It is wonderful the way a little town keeps track of itself and of all its units. If every single man and woman, child and baby, acts and conducts itself in a known pattern and breaks no walls and differs with no one and experiments in no way and is not sick and does not endanger the ease and peace of mind or steady unbroken flow of the town, then the unit can disappear and never be heard of. But let one man step out of the regular thought or the known and 29

trusted pattern, and the nerves of the townspeople ring with nervousness and communication travels over the nerve lines of the town. Then every unit communicates to the whole.

These towns are alive, acting and reacting to things around them.

The other people in the book have some security because they are a part of this unit, while Kino is the focus of this thing*s attention. Images like these bring down labels such as 1’biological naturalism.”

A series of animal images is very effective. The strong materialistic note is enhanced when the characters in their efforts to capitalize on the pearl, act like wild beasts. 'They were the trackers, they could follow the trail of a big horn sheep in the

stone mountains.” ’Th e y scuttled over the ground like animals and found a sign and crouched over it while the horseman waited.”

"The trackers whined a little, like excited dogs on a warming trail.” ”An d Kino ran for the high place, as nearly all animals do when they are pursued.” It is a strong and persistent image which adds impact to the simple, uncomplicated nature of the story.

Steinbeck maintains a strong thread of continuity throughout the book by relating some of the thoughts of Kino. From the very beginning Kino is infatuated with the "music” of the things around him. The peaceful life described in the first pages of the book brings the "Song of the Family” to his mind. It is the beautiful and natural harmony of their simple way of life. Later he hears 30

the strains of a different song. The scorpion is slowly heading

down the rope toward Coyotito when Kino hears the ”Song of Evil.”

These songs battle each other in Kino’s mind throughout the book.

Eventually Kino knows the «Song of Evil” as the «Song of the Pearl.”

In the beginning of this chapter, I mentioned criticism of

The Pearl, which held that the book was too long for the story

and message involved. The total words (17,260), average words per paragraph (95.9), and average words per sentence (19.2), indicate that if the book is drawn out for one reason or another,

it does not show up in this analysis. An examination of the plot

-or characterization might reveal verbosity. On the whole, the

style employed coincides well with the author’s purpose and the

material he dealt with. There are no glaring aspects or special

devices used that add to or clash with current critical opinion.

The critical remarks about oven-inflation seem to be directed

toward this version of the great pearl as compared with the first

version CHAPTER V

EAST OF EDEN

East of Eden, published in 1952, was much more of a financial

success than a literary achievement. This rambling novel about

Cathy Ames and her association with the Trask family lacks the message of Grapes of 'Wrath. The two books are, however, similar

in many respects. The plots are equally involved and complicated.

The characters in each are from the seamy side of life. Dialogue is a principal means of telling the stories. Both books sold many copies, and each was sold to the movies at a premium. The

film of Bast of Eden featured the idol of the younger set, James

Dean, in one of his last roles. All in all, East of Eden was a well-known and highly popular book, but literary value has seldom ft been attributed to it.

Steinbeck centered the book on the life of a beautiful young girl who believed she could connive anything she wanted or needed from life by using her knowledge of people and their sexual impulses. The author succumbs to a rare streak of directness and, I believe, builds the entire book from this passage:

Cathy learned when she was very young that sexuality with all its attendant yearnings and pains, jealousies and taboos, is the most disturbing

s^Steinbeck and His Critics, ed. E. W. Tedlock, Jr. and C. V. Wicker (Albuquerque, N. M., 1957)« 32

impulse humans have. And in that day it was even more disturbing than it is now, because the subject was unmentionable and unmentioned. Everyone concealed that little hell in himself, while publicly pretending it did not exist— and when he was caught up in it he was completely helpless. Cathy learned that by manipulation and use of this one part of people she could gain and keep power over nearly anyone. It was at once a weapon and a threat. It was irresistible. And since the blind helplessness seems never to have fallen on Cathy, it is probable that she had very little of the impulse herself and indeed felt a contempt for those who did. And when you think of it in one way, she was right. What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be human. One would be a monster.

'Cathy Ames (during the book she is also known as Cathy Amesbury,

Cathy Trask, and Kate Albey) snarls and fights her way through

life with all the success she imagined, but finds no peace.

Steinbeck had a popular and noteworthy theme, but there was no

mission or immediacy involved here. Partially because of this,

the book just never achieved much stature. Whether or not

another reason shows up in this analysis, the external factors

surrounding the book are most likely to blame.

I have chosen 100 representative paragraphs containing 10,010

words from which to make the examination. This involves 642

sentences. The average number of sentences per paragraph is 6.4»

This might be high by comparison with the other books, but it

seems to be reasonable considering the length, complicated plot,

and nature of the subject of the book. 33

The average number of words per paragraph (100.1) is

deceptive. There are several series of short paragraphs which

lower the average somewhat disproportionately. One of the more

typical- paragraphs speaks about Adam Trask*s parents:

His private life was also laced through with his new profession. He was a man devoted. His house and farm he organized on a military basis. He demanded and got reports on the conduct of his private economy. It is probable that Alice preferred it this way. She was not a talker. A terse report was easiest for her. She was busy with the growing boys and with keeping the house clean and the clothes washed. Also, she had to conserve her energy, though she did not mention this in any of her reports. Without warning her energy would leave her, and she would have to sit down and wait until it came back. In the night she would be drenched with perspiration. She knew perfectly well she had what was called consumption, would have known even if she was not reminded by a hard, exhausting cough. And she did not know how long she would live. Some people wasted on for quite a few years. There wasn»t any rule about it. Perhaps she didrlt care to mention it to her husband. He had devised a method for dealing with sickness which resembled punishment. A stomach ache was treated with a purge so violent that it was a wonder anyone survived it. If she had mentioned her condition, Cyrus might have started a treatment which would have killed her off before her consumption could have done it. Besides, as Cyrus became more military, his wife learned the only technique through which a soldier can survive. She never made herself noticeable, never spoke unless spoken to, performed what was expected and no more, and tried for no promotions. She became a rear rank private. It was much easier that way. Alice retired to the background until she was barely visible at all.

This paragraph is not unique in the book, and yet it has almost

three times the average number of words per paragraph. There are

24 sentences. That is about four times the average. 34

The reason for the shorter sentences and the length of this paragraph is obvious. Steinbeck is rushing through a brief description of life in Cyrus Trask*s home. One of the shortest sentences is about the small amount of communication between the two of them, ”A terse report was easiest for her." The correlation between what he is saying and how he says it is apparent. He is also terse. Again, when Steinbeck says Alice does not talk much, he says it in a few words, «She was not a talker.” Near the end of the paragraph the pace slackens and the sentences lengthen.

The sentences average 15.5 words. There are many sentences ranging from 40 to 75 words. The average is unduly low because of the number of very short sentences. In other words, in Bast of Bden paragraph and sentence length varies greatly. They are not at all consistent; therefore, the averages do not reflect reality well. This is, however, one of the reasons the book is criticized as rambling.

Grammatical sentence types offer an interesting statistic.

Thirty-eight percent of the sentences are complex. This figure is Inordinately high. Almost two of every five sentences is grammatically complex. Simple sentences comprise 28%, and compound sentences of the total sentences. The rhetorical significance can be measured by determining why a writer departs from more direct and simple sentence structure. The answer is probably that Steinbeck fitted his sentence structure (consciously or 35

unconsciously) into the involved schemes and subplots of his

books.

bast of Eden is a long novel. The plot brings the reader

in contact with farming, whoring, doctoring, business, and the

military. A specialized vocabulary is necessary to be proficient

at storytelling in each of these areas. To be realistic, the

author must use the terminology of each field. Steinbeck does

a good job. Almost anyone could pick up a few new or forgotten

obscene phrases, learn some things about prostitution, and bone up on his chemistry by deciphering the names of all the medicines xand potions concocted. Steinbeck draws upon an embarrassingly

large knowledge of jargon.

Judging by the experiences of the other books examined, East of Eden would seem to be laden with concrete terns. That is not the case. Maybe this has some bearing on the book»s literary value. Possibly Steinbeck is too broad and abstract in his assertions. The percentage of abstract words is 62$. This is practically the reverse of The Pearl.

All the factors concerned— subject matter, characterization, past experience— point toward a preponderance of Anglo-Saxon diction in East of Eden. As is the case with the abstract terminology, the book flaunts our expectations. Only 3Z$ of the substantive words are monosyllabic. For some reason East of Eden is different from Grapes of Wrath in these two respects— concrete 36

and monosyllabic diction. This unusual statistic might be related

to the poor literary acceptance the book received; only further

examination •will tell.

Imagery is not prominent in East of Eden. The book has few

purely descriptive passages, but these contain most of what

imagery there is. This excerpt is typical of the scattered

examples:

Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing and preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delimit of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all his life in the gray, dark and somber. The events even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then— the glory— so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.

There are no pertinent series of images, just the inescapable sprinkling of metaphor.

In a few places Steinbeck gives in to a sort of poetic impulse.

He turns dramatic and even a little maudlin, «Oh, strawberries don’t taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch.« «For the world was changing, and sweetness was 37

gone, and virtue too.11 This is a high level in language and does

not fit in well with most of the book. It does serve a limited

purpose as an interruption in the course of the book. It is as

if the writer is pausing to contemplate the happenings to that

point and is doing so in a poetic manner.

One of the most salient characteristics of Steinbeck»s style

in. East of Eden is his use of appositives and parenthetical

clauses. Because he usually uses dashes to set off his appositives,

the pages are literally dotted with them. Normally, spoken

language contains more appositives than does written prose. This xindicates, then, that Steinbeck uses a somewhat conversational

style in East of Eden. He does not always observe the accepted

and stylized procedures of written prose. Perhaps he dictated

much of the book. This might also explain the wide variance in

length of the sentences and paragraphs.

In Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck uses a peculiar sort of dialogue

without punctuation. I mentioned it as an unorthodox type of

punctuation style. This device also turns up in East of Eden;

H o w were the babies? They were fine, growing. How was Adam? Well, he moved around as if he m s alive but he left no evidence. The Lord in his wisdom gave money to very curious people, perhaps because they»d starve without. H o w was Mrs. Trask? Quiet, lackadaisical, like most rich Eastern women (Liza had never met a rich Eastern woman), but on the 38

other hand docile and respectful. «And ittg a strange thing,« Liza said, «1 can find no real fault with her save perhaps a touch of laziness, and yet I don*t like her very much. Maybe it*s that scar. How did she get it?

This passage shows how haphazardly Steinbeck seems to employ his strange style, which was a principal means of telling the story in Grapes of Wrath, but seems to be just a change of pace here. CHAPTER VI

TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY

John Steinbeck has always held a widely acclaimed position among authors as a spokesman of and for America. After three decades of writing about his homeland he decided to renew the acquaintance. A copywriter composed these words for the jacket of Travels with Charley in Search of America;

He felt that he might have lost touch with this monster country, with its speech, the smell of its grass and trees, its color and quality of light, the pulse of its people. To reassure himself, he set out on a voyage of rediscovery, accompanied by a distinguished French poodle named Charley, and riding in a three-quarter-ton pickup truck equipped with miniature shipis cabin and named Rocinante.

The story of the trip was first published in a series of syndicated newspaper articles. Upon returning, Steinbeck edited the articles into a book.

The distinguishable stylistic feature ii Travels with Charley will probably be the journalistic influence. The book was written in sections; therefore, the style might have no continuity. The plot is simple and not a factor in the book at all. There is no dependence on the plot. The book can be picked up and read at any chapter with no difficulty if the reader is aware of the basic background. 40

A popular criticism of the book aims at the credibility of

many of the incidents. Many of the experiences do seem to freely

stretch the imagination; however, no matter how valid a criticism

this is, the veracity of his experiences could not interfere with

the style of writing.

I have chosen 129 widely distributed paragraphs with which to

compile data to analyze the prose style in Travels with Charley.

This involves 18,765 words in 99$ sentences. Although I examined

more paragraphs from The Pearl, this is the greatest number of

words and sentences. The reason I deemed this necessary is the

\ possible effect that the original newspaper articles might have

had on the different sections. A cursory reading demonstrates

that there are wide divergences according to which chapter you

look into. With a great number of paragraphs from all parts of

the book, the true averages can be ascertained.

The sentences in Travels with Charley average 18.7 words each.

This figure is only a little higher than the average sentence in

the other books. The surprising fact is that an average of 7*7

sentences make up the average paragraph of 144.3 words. Both of

these figures are high; as a matter of fact, each almost doubles

the corresponding average from Pastures of Heaven.

The rhetorical significance of these high averages is surely

tied in with the manner in which the book was originally written.

Long paragraphs made up of not so long sentences sounds like a a

casual style. We normally speak in shorter sentences than we write in. We also say more words when we speak. This conversational type of style (I make this observation without the reassurance of established fact that we do speak in such a manner. Since the subsequent comparison only serves as speculation and is not an essential, element of my analysis, I feel justified in doing so.) is casual and effective when related to Steinbeck»s purpose. He wanted firsthand evidence of what he had been reading in the newspapers. If he had wanted a formal report, he would have written in such a manner.

This paragraph, by closely corresponding with the cumulative averages for the entire book, demonstrates well Steinbeck»s style in Travels with Charley:

My plan was clear, concise, and reasonable, I think. For many years I have traveled in many parts of the world. In America I live in New York, or dip into Chicago or San Francisco. But New York is no more America than Paris Is France or London is England. Thus I discovered that I did not know my own country. I, an American writer, writing about America, was working from memory, and the memory is at best a faulty, warpy reservoir. I had not heard the speech of America, smelled the grass and trees and sewage, seen its hills and water, its color and quality of light. I knew changes only from books and newspapers. But more than this, I had not felt the country for twenty-five years. In short, I was writing of something I did not know about, and it seems to me that in a so- called writer this is criminal. My memories were distorted by twenty-five intervening years.

The sentences in this paragraph are not long, but the paragraph is 42

There are other features -which should be mentioned. For instance, in this paragraph he uses **In on the average of one to a sentence. This indicates an instructional tone. The use of all declarative and mostly grammatically simple sentences verifies this. Of course, in any narrative prose passage there is limited use of other than declarative sentences. Travels with Charley, excluding what dialogue there is, must contain at least 99% declarative sentences. I found only three interrogative sentences in the entire book.

Simple sentences comprise 76$ of the 998 sentences I examined. This figure is the highest of all five books. Compound sentences make up 12$ and complex 10$. These figures are a little misleading.

The complex sentences seem to come in groups. One could scan through the pages and find groups of three, two, three, three, four of five, and three of four. Therefore, a typical passage would be more apt to contain a greater percentage of simple sentences than the cumulative average. And, conversely, where

Steinbeck uses complex sentence structure, he uses several.

The instructional or personal narrative style, then, is a demonstrable feature of Travels with Charley. The stated purpose of the books is rediscovering America. In telling the story of his journey Steinbeck relates the happenings as if he were writing in a diary. He directs his remarks not especially to the reader, but to himself. The book, although it was surely written for 43

publication, serves the purpose of renewing, especially for the

author, knowledge of the country he once knew well. It amounts

to almost casual notations about worthwhile experiences. The

author supposes the reader is interested in what he has to say,

and then proceeds to tell his story in his casual., informative way.

The diction in Travels with Charley is 62/1 polysyllabic. The

reason is the purpose of the book. Steinbeck does not make any

effort to be forceful, simple, direct. He wants to demonstrate

his perceptiveness. His senses experience everything about the

people and their habitat. He records these sensations and

,perceptions and laces them with generalizations and witty

commentaries. The result is a narrative with frequent panoramic

views and remarks about the implications of what he sees.

Concrete and abstract diction follow a predictable pattern.

Trfhen Steinbeck is discoursing about how things used to be in

Monterey, most of the nouns are abstract (greetings, memory, home,

crimes, triumphs, attention). Describing a scene is cause for

concrete nouns (bell, highway, hammer, anvil, bench, coyotes,

aphids, car).

In previous books Steinbeck proved his adroitness with jargon.

He continues with passages like these:

Fossils of these ancients have been found dating from the Cretaceous era while the Eocene and Micene they were spread over England and Europe and America. It is the verb vacilar, present participle vacilando. It does not mean vacillating at all. If one is vacilando, he is going somewhere but doesn’t greatly care whether or not he gets there, although he has direction.

Well, he got me out of town by a route which, if I could have remembered it, would have made the path into the Labyrinth at Knossos seem like a throughway.

There are more and possibly better examples. Three languages

(French, Spanish, Latin) besides English are left in the text to be deciphered by the reader.

The best reason for such specialized diction being spread out through a book is a natural one. It is a sign of learning. A man steps up in your estimation when he can handle monster scientific terminology or several languages. It could possibly lead to or be viewed as pedantry if there was no reason for using such words.

As it is, Steinbeck is justified and effective with the large vocabulary he freely displays.

Just as Steinbeck is masterful with the jargons of many areas, so are his images original and worthy of a great writer. Although there does not seem to be any special theme in. the images, most of them are pleasant and not vicious or deprecatory. Their biggest asset, in my estimation, is their originality. These are a few examples:

It isn’t only color but a glowing, as though the leaves gobbled the light of the autumn sun and then released it slowly. 45

The minister, a man of iron "with tool-steel eyes and a delivery like a pneumatic drill, opened up -with prayer and reassured us we were a pretty sorry lot.

I hadn’t heard it in years. It was old home week. The years crawled back in their holes.

If there can be said to be any special rhetorical significance in

imagery such as this, it is in the fact that the images are

excellent. Then it can be said that Steinbeck wrote excellently.

Other than that, I can see no special effect created by or as the

result of the imagery in Travels with Charley.

In several of the books examined Steinbeck made use of a

peculiar dialogue style. Travels with Charley is no exception.

There is one small difference. Since Steinbeck is describing what he saw, the passages are in the past tense:

Was that the truth? Where in France? In Bercy, on the outskirts of Paris, did they know it? No unfortunately they had never been to the fatherland. I hoped they might remedy that.

Did he go back? Just went through now and again. The only good writer is a dead writer. Then he couldn’t surprise anyone any more, couldn’t hurt anyone any more. And the last time I saw him he seemed to have shriveled even more.

Judging by previous experiences with the author, it would be

reasonable to look for abundant appositives in the so-called

conversational prose. There are very few examples to be found

in Travels with Charley. For some reason Steinbeck chose, 46

consciously or unconsciously, not to use nouns in apposition or parenthetical clauses. Perhaps the reason is contingent on the way the book was written. Newspaper articles do not often contain such grammatical devices. CHAPTER VII

CONCLUDING REMARKS ABOUT JOHN STEINBECK*S PROSE STYLE

Each of the five previous chapters contains statistics about

one of the five books indicated in the introduction. For the most

part the aspects of style chosen for this examination are

objectively observable. The result is a comprehensive table

of figures (Appendix) that can be compared side by side.

The thesis of this paper is that John Steinbeck over three

.decades has evolved a literary style. He can exercise a high

degree of control over it as demonstrated by the differences in

the books chosen. There is, however, a specific style which runs

through all the books. This will be shown by using the table of

figures.

The statistics gleaned from the books must first be related

to each other. For instance, all the grammatical sentence type

percentages need to be discussed as a group, and any special

circumstances noted. There will be minor differences which are

irrelevant, or possibly a particular statistic is not valid. An

example of this is the mixture of concrete and abstract nouns in

Travels with Charley. I have no firm percentage because I

determined it would not be a valid measure. Steinbeck»s paragraphs

were weighted down with one or the other kind depending on whether he was describing something or generalizing about what he had seen.

Therefore, I simply mentioned this and offered no percentage.

After completing the compilation of figures, these statistics have proven most revealing:

TABLE A

LIST OF SPECIFIC POINTS OF COMPARISON

A. The number of words per sentence.

B. The number of words per paragraph.

C. The number of sentences per paragraph.

D. The degree of consistency in paragraph and sentence length.

E. The percentage of monosyllabic and polysyllabic substantive words.

F. The percentage of concrete and abstract nouns.

G. The amount of jargon in the book.

H. The percentage of grammatically simple sentences.

I. The percentage of grammatically compound sentences.

J. The percentage of grammatically complex sentences.

K. Use of the unpunctuated dialogue.

L. Use of nouns in apposition.

Since the figures are arranged chronologically, aspects of style can be observed as they develop or diminish.

The first aspect to be considered is the number of words in the average sentence. Oddly enough the highest average is The

Pearl (19.2), and the lowest is East of Eden (15*5)» The difference is less than four words 49

Bast of Eden would be expected to have longer than average

sentences. The book has the greatest number of complex sentences,

and they are usually longer. The Pearl would be expected to have

fairly short sentences because of the nature of the story and the

length of the book. However, one of the criticisms of the book

was that it was expanded to novel size, but the plot was too

simple to support a full length book. Maybe 19 words per

sentence is not long for some other writer, but it is the longest

average in these five books written by Steinbeck. Therefore, the

criticism now seems more justified than before. Steinbeck»s x sentence length, although very consistent, is not predictable.

Paragraph length is not nearly so consistent an element as

sentence length. The five averages given chronologically are

68.1, 116.6, 95»9> 100.1, and 144.8. The average paragraph from

Travels with Charley is more than twice as long as the average in

Pastures of Heaven. The reason for so great a difference is,

again, the nature of the book. Travels with Charley is an

informative first-person narrative of the experiences and thoughts

of the author during a trip around the United States. Pastures of

Heaven is a short, simply told, carefully structured story about

life in a California valley. The expounding done in Travels with

Charley simply requires more words. The reason for the difference

has no apparent connection with the passage of time in Steinbeck»s

career. This is verified by the averages from the other books. They

show no specific pattern of development. 50

Since the sentence averages do not vary much and the

paragraphs» average length does fluctuate, the number of

sentences per paragraph will also have to show quite a range.

As the table shows they range from 4.2 in Pastures of Heaven to

7.7 in Travels with Charley. The reason is much the same as the

reason for the considerable differences in paragraph length. The

original journalistic style used in Travels with Charley is

vastly unlike the simple narrative style in Pastures of Heaven.

An interesting similarity turns up when the five books are

compared on the basis of the three aspects of length measured.

, The books are listed in order of length.

TABLE B

COMPARATIVE LENGTH MEASURES

Paragraph Sentences Per Words Per Book Title Length Paragraph Sentence

Pastures of Heaven 68.1 (1) 4.2 (1) 16.1 (2)

The Pearl 95.9 (2) 4.99(2) 19.2 (5)

East of Eden 100.1 (3) 6.4 (3) 15.5 (1) Grapes of Wrath 116.6 (4) 6.6 (4) 17.5 (3) Travels with Charley 144.8 (5) 7.7 (5) 18.7 (4)

Notice the consistency between paragraph length and sentences per

paragraph. This is, of course, reasonable because the sentence 51

length was not widely divergent; however, it is inescapable that

the flexible feature in length patterns is the number of sentences

per paragraph and not sentence length. As the paragraphs lengthen,

the sentences do not. There is a complete rigidity in this matter.

The next aspect of comparison is the adherence of the

paragraphs and sentences to the average. It may be generally

said that Pastures of Heaven and The Pearl follow the averages

closely. The very long or very short sentences are minimal, and

the bulk of the paragraphs are comparable in length. The other

three books— East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, and Travels with

, Charley— have much greater ranges in paragraph and sentence

length. As shown in the individual chapters, they often had

paragraphs three or four times the average and sentences often

were five or six times the average sentence length.

The rhetorical aptness of this lies in the nature of the books.

Pastures of Heaven and The Pearl are the short and simple tales of

two small groups of people. There is no need or space for lengthy

rhetorical devices. The other three books are much longer,

involved, and treat vastly different subject matters.

In the realm of diction there are three areas for consideration,

and they are interrelated. The first is the sub-categorization of

the substantive words into monosyllabic (Anglo-Saxon) and poly­

syllabic (Latinate). The next is the percentage of concrete and

abstract nouns. The third is the degree to which jargon is used 52

in the book. These studies are interrelated because "where there is a large number of monosyllabic words, there is usually a correspondingly greater employment of concrete diction. The use of polysyllabic diction corresponds with increased numbers of abstract nouns and also a tendency toward more jargon.

Three of the books— Pastures of Heaven. Grapes of Wrath, and The Pearl— primarily use monosyllabic words. The reason is attributed to the type of book in Grapes of Wrath which has 57% monosyllabic diction. The people are very uneducated and without large vocabularies. Therefore, Steinbeck only occasionally draws upon his vast vocabulary to write the book. In Pastures of

Heaven and The Pearl the use of monosyllabic or Anglo-Saxon diction fits in very well with the simple and straightforward nature of each book. The percentages here are 52$ and 53% respectively.

The two books which feature mostly polysyllabic diction are

East of Eden with 66% and Travels with Charley with 62$. This seems a little strange in East of Eden, but I will mention more about this later. Travels with Charley is the most likely of these five books to have polysyllabic diction. When Steinbeck began his trip with a favorite French Poodle he vowed to renew his knowledge of what made America unique. His subsequent columns were often humorous and many times emotional. He writes to a perceptive audience and presumes a special interest on their part. This all resulted in a relatively learned and frequently 53

romantic prose ■which, I believe, would be expected to feature

Latinate diction.

This table shows the relationship between the three aspects of diction studied:

TABLE C

RELATIONSHIP OF THREE FACETS OF DICTION

Mono syllabi sm Concrete Amount of Book Title Polysyllabi sm Abstract Jargon

Pastures of Heaven Monosyllabic Concrete Little

Grapes of Wrath Monosyllabic Concrete Little

The Pearl Monosyllabic Concrete None

East of Eden Polysyllabic Abstract Much

Travels with Charley Polysyllabic Both Much

The inference is patent. If a book features either a s m a l l amount of jargon or concrete diction or monosyllabic words, it w i l l feature all three. And conversely, if a book has mostly poly­ syllabic diction or abstract nouns or a great amount of jargon, it w i l l have all three of these traits. Therefore, in the realm of diction, Steinbeck seems to have two distinct styles which he may consciously choose between when he writes a book.

Jargon is especially interesting since Steinbeck so obviously has a penchant for words. Of course, the plot of a book w i l l determine how much jargon the author can insert. Steinbeck seems 54

to feel as if he can handle such books better now than in the past, at least he has chosen to write books containing more jargon. It is possible that this lies at the roots of a general criticism of

Steinbeck. Critics have said that he reached an early peak and has coasted on a slowly diminishing reputation since then. If this is so, a further study of the diction in a great number of

Steinbeck’s books might turn up relevant statistics about a change that appears to have occurred. Not only has jargon increased, but also polysyllabic words and abstract nouns.

Possibly an-essential change in Steinbeck’s diction has somehow lessened his effectiveness as a writer. Instead of attributing his so-called decline to a nebulous series of personal or financial matters, it might be correlated to an internal change in the author’s prose.

The study of graramatical sentence types does not seem to follow any pattern whatsoever. Since compound and complex sentences are normally longer than simple sentences it might be posited that the works with the shorter average sentence will have high percentages of simple sentences. The shortest average sentence is East of Eden with 15.5 words per sentence. East of

Eden has the smallest percentage of simple sentences with 28$.

At the other end of the chart is Travels with Charley with 76$ simple sentences and 18.7 'words per sentence. This thoroughly disproves any correlation between grammatically simple and short sentences 55

Since two simple sentences can often be combined into one compound or complex sentence, there is some correlation between the number of sentences per paragraph and the percentage of simple sentences. The books with high percentage of simple sentences are Grapes of Wrath (71$>) and Travels with Charley (76^). These two books also have the greatest number of sentences per average paragraph with 6.6 and 7*7 sentences respectively. The correlation, however, stops there as this table shows:

TABLE D

■CORRELATION OF SIMPLE SENTENCES AND AVERAGE SENTENCES PER PARAGRAPH

Percentage of Average Sentences Title Simple Sentences Per Paragraph

Travels with Charley 76 7.7

Grapes of Wrath 74 6.6

Pastures of Heaven 48 4.2

The Pearl 37 4.99

East of Eden 28 6.4

The last three books break the pattern which began to develop with the first two books.

Compound sentences would seem to be the longest of the three grammatical sentence types. This is not true with Steinbeck. The book with the greatest percentage of compound sentences is The 56

Pearl which has 38%, and it has the longest average sentence. The

book with the second highest number of compound sentences is East

of Eden with 3/$>; however, East of Eden has the shortest average

sentence of all five books with 15»5» There is no apparent

relationship.

Complex sentences range from 8% in Grapes of Wrath to 3&7° in

Bast of Eden. They observe no special patterns and have no

obvious correlation with the other grammatical sentence types

except they usually are the least numerous. The only generalization

made possible by the study of complex sentences is that Steinbeck x does not employ many.

In Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck chose an unusual means to tell

much of the story. Instead of normal dialogue with the f,he said”

and ”sh e answered” type of wasted and dull words, he uses an

unpunctuated and unconventional style of dialogue. There are

several examples of this given in the paper. Besides Grapes of

Wrath, there was some use of it in East of Eden and Travels with

Charley. The buzzing crowd in The Pearl is often similar to this

type dialogue. The merit of such a device is questionable.

The last of the salient characteristics xdiich are noted in

this thesis is the use of appositives. Steinbeck frequently used

appositives in East of Eden, and there are several in Grapes of

Wrath and Travels with Charley. He separates them from the rest

of the sentence with dashes for emphasis. 57

Of these five books, the one that met with the least acclaim

was Bast of Eden. As mentioned above, it was successful in other

respects, but never received much literary praise. The reason

for this might be contained in some of these figures. Rhetorical

aptness might be defined as having the available literary devices

employed in the most effective manner. Bast of Eden is unpredict­

able. Although the book resembles Grapes of Wratht its sentence

types are almost the reverse of those in its more successful

counterpart. In other words, Grapes of Wrath seems much more

rhetorically apt. The use of concrete words, monosyllabic words,

' and simple sentences seems to fit the nature of that type of long,

rambling, powerful, and very American novel. Both books would

seem to be similar in all general aspects. One book was widely

acclaimed and the other failed to measure up. The reason could

easily be that Steinbeck overlooked these stylistic devices as

a means to inject more realistic and vivid characters and situations

in Bast of E d e n .

Under all the different styles Steinbeck created for the five

books, there is an element Which he cannot change. It seems to be

immutable and unconscious. Quite possibly, if the author

intentionally set out to erase these traits he could do it easily.

The fact is, in the works he has created over a period of time

these few elements of style are consistent and measurable. They

comprise the basic element of what must be considered John Steinbeck* s

prose style. 58

The most apparent characteristic of Steinbeck»s prose is the sentence length. It is consistent and. pays little attention to the type of the book. Sentence length is a building block for the paragraphs and eventually the book. Steinbeck writes with about the same number of words per sentence no matter what the book is about.

The other trait is the tendency toward monosyllabism and concrete nouns. Steinbeck is at his best in Pastures of Heaven,

Grapes of Wratht and The Pearl. East of Eden was no literary

success, and Travels with Charley is primarily entertainment and not art. The first three books studied, then, have been the most noteworthy. They are also the three that make the most use of concrete, Anglo-Saxon diction.

These three aspects of style are surely responsible in part for the current success of Steinbeck. He writes about common

American people in their native country. He does not glamorize them, but they become palatable and alive in his prose with the words that are reminiscent of the people themselves. Just as the people are sturdy and American, his prose is simple and native.

Sentence length is less easily ascribed a result in prose

style; however, its importance is self-evident. Sentence length is a primary element in any stylistic analysis; and although it may indicate several different things, according to the way the

sentences are used, it is one of the most obvious stylistic traits. 59

A cursory reading of the five books studied here tells the

reader the books are written in different styles. Steinbeck has many styles at his disposal as do all good authors; however,

when one becomes well acquainted with an authorT s works, it is

not difficult to recognize his style. The primary purpose of

this paper has been to pinpoint the elements that go to make up

the style peculiar to John Steinbeck.

In the introduction I placed SteinbsckTs style in a historical

literary framework. I quoted Mr. R. Bridgman as saying John

Steinbeck ’wa s identifiable with a group of writers whom he says

participate in the current American colloquial prose style.

Discoveries previously indicated about Steinbeck*s style

coordinate well with what we would like to think of as our

national prose style APPENDIX

Pastures Grapes The East Travels of of Pearl of with Heaven Wrath Eden Charley

17.5 19.2 ' 15.5 18.7

Paragraph length ...... 116.6 95.9 100.1 144.8

Sentences per paragraph . . . 6.6 4.99 6 .4 7.7

Consistent lengths . • . . . no yes no no

Monosyllabic words ...... 57 53 34 38 Polysyllabic words ..... 43 47 66 62 Concrete words ...... C C c Abstract words ...... A A

little none much much

Simple sentences ...... 74 37 28 76 18 38 34 14 Complex sentences ...... 8 25 38 10 slight slight Special dialogue ...... much some

some none many some oC tn BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS

Steinbeck, John. Pastures of Heaven. New York: Compass Books Ed., 1963.

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Compass Books Ed., 1963*.

Steinbeck, John. The Pearl. The Red Pony. New York: Compass Books Ed., 1965V

Steinbeck, John. East of Eden. New York: Viking Press, 1952.

Steinbeck, John. Travels With Charley. New York: Viking Press, 1962.

BOOKS AND PERIODICALS

Ashida, Margaret, and Whipp, Leslie T. “A Slide-Rule Composition Course,“ College English, XXV (October, 1963), 18-22. Boulton, Marjorie. The Anatomy of Prose. London: Routledge and Keegan, 1954«

Brewster, William (ed). Representative Essays on the Theory of Style. New York: Macmillan Company, 1905.

Bridgman, Richard. The Colloquial Style in America. New York, 1966.

Brooks, Cleanth, and Warren, Robert Penn. Modern Rhetoric. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1949*

Christiansen, Francis. ‘‘No t e s Toward a New Rhetoric: I. Sentence Openers,“ College English, XXV (October, 1963), 7-11.

Corbett, Edward P. J. Classical Rhetoric for the Modem Student. New York; Oxford University Press, 1965• Fontenrose, John. Giant John Steinbeck. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1963. 62

French, Warren. John. Steinbeck. New York: Twayne Publishing Company, 1961.

Himes, Catharine A., and Christ, Martha F. A Laboratory Course in Reading and Writing. New York: F. S. Crofts and Company, 19 44.

Hook, J. N., and Mathews, E. G. Modern American Grammar and Usage. New York: The Ronald Press Company, 1956«

Hughes, Richard E., and Duhamel, P. Albert. Rhetoric: Principles and Usage. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1552.

Lacy, Edgar Vi., and Thomas, Ednah S. Guide for Good Writing: A Composition Text for College Students. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole and Heck, Inc., 1951*

Lisca, Peter. The Wide World of John Steinbeck. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers Press, 1958.

\ Lucas, F. L. Style. London: Cassel and Company, 1956.

Moore, Harry. The Novels of John Steinbeck. Chicago: Normandie House, 1939.

Tedlock, E. W., Jr., and Wicker, C. V., ed. Steinbeck and His Critics. Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1957*