On a Sexual Allegory Facing Civilization in John Steinbeck’s The Wayward Bus
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Lee, Geon-Geun. “On a Sexual Allegory Facing Civilization in John Steinbeck’s The Wayward Bus.” Studies in English Language & Literature 43.4 (2017): 87-105. This paper aims to illuminate John Steinbeck’s idea of sexuality by re-evaluating sexual images in The Wayward Bus, which have been criticized for its paste-up stories and vulgar characters. The detailed analysis of its texts in the light of psychology references reveals that the sexual desire is repressed by the civilization in the form of money, fame, and public relations. Also, it is found that such a situation causes the characters’ negative aspects of sexual perversions, such as sex/love addiction, anxiety disorder, and hysteria. This story has relevance to the writer’s stormy marriage life with his second wife, Gwyn. Steinbeck uses panoramic stories as a helpful literary technique in an allegorical style describing all the characters equally in the internal monologue of the mind. Notably, the symbolic structure of The Wayward Bus is similar to the sexual response cycle—excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution: The neurotic characters’ sexual drive is stimulated in a closed space. The characters’ desire increases up to the highest level of excitement, bursts up into the modes of intercourse, argument, assault, and rape, and finally recovers its initial condition. I hope this study will contribute to expanding the scope of research about Steinbeck’s literature besides his tendency of social criticism around The Grapes of Wrath. (Chosun University)
Abstract
Lee, Geon-Geun. “On a Sexual Allegory Facing Civilization in John Steinbeck’s The Wayward Bus.” Studies in English Language & Literature 43.4 (2017): 87-105. This paper aims to illuminate John Steinbeck’s idea of sexuality by re-evaluating sexual images in The Wayward Bus, which have been criticized for its paste-up stories and vulgar characters. The detailed analysis of its texts in the light of psychology references reveals that the sexual desire is repressed by the civilization in the form of money, fame, and public relations. Also, it is found that such a situation causes the characters’ negative aspects of sexual perversions, such as sex/love addiction, anxiety disorder, and hysteria. This story has relevance to the writer’s stormy marriage life with his second wife, Gwyn. Steinbeck uses panoramic stories as a helpful literary technique in an allegorical style describing all the characters equally in the internal monologue of the mind. Notably, the symbolic structure of The Wayward Bus is similar to the sexual response cycle—excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution: The neurotic characters’ sexual drive is stimulated in a closed space. The characters’ desire increases up to the highest level of excitement, bursts up into the modes of intercourse, argument, assault, and rape, and finally recovers its initial condition. I hope this study will contribute to expanding the scope of research about Steinbeck’s literature besides his tendency of social criticism around The Grapes of Wrath. (Chosun University)
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