47 pages • 1 hour read
The Wayward Bus
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Symbols & Motifs
The Bus
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to domestic abuse, sexualization of racial “otherness,” sexual assault, self-harm, and depression.
The bus, dubbed “Sweetheart” by Juan, is a symbol of waywardness. The bus is itself a physical object of transition as it literally transports people from one city to another. In this narrative, it is also a symbolic space for the possibility of internal transitions. On the bus, characters grapple with their insecurities and internal conflicts and contemplate the external conflicts that heighten their lack of autonomy and freedom. The bus is characterized as being well-worn: “The ballooning sides of the bus, heavy and shining with aluminum paint, showed nevertheless the bumps and bends, the wracks and scratches, of a long and violent career” (18). The physical condition of the bus parallels the metaphorical scratches that exist within each character’s perception of their lives. The more the characters try to work on their lives, the more worn out they become, similar to the way Juan has kept up the bus. The bus is a space in which characters can potentially transform themselves, but because the bus keeps them near one another, they can’t help but be influenced and triggered by the other passengers. This suggests that symbolically, the bus is a reminder that no matter how hard people work to escape social norms and pressures to explore their inner selves, they are constantly surrounded by external stimuli that prevent their growth.
When Juan gets the bus stuck in a ditch, the bus’s rut is symbolic of Juan’s life rut. Juan feels stuck; therefore, he gets the bus stuck. When Juan frees the bus from the ditch, it’s a symbolic moment that represents that Juan has decided to resign himself to his life. The symbol of the bus as wayward is therefore a paradox: When stuck, the bus allows space for character change. When in movement, the bus returns characters to the people they have always been.
Physical Symptoms
Each character of The Wayward Bus has a richly textured internal selfhood that they struggle to express in the external world. Certain physical manifestations of their internal strife therefore become the only way characters (accidentally) reveal some of their deepest-held secrets and truths.
Pimples embodies this symbol, as his acne is exacerbated when he is in a stressful situation—yet his loneliness is itself stressful. Pimples is self-conscious about his acne, but doctors assure him that with time and age, his acne will clear up. His acne is therefore a symbol of his youth and insecurity.
Bernice’s migraines are a physical symbol of her oppression. Bernice is stalwart in her role as the typical 1940s housewife and can only express her displeasure through her painful migraines, but give her attention from her family that she would otherwise never get. Elliott believes that Bernice’s migraines are a symbolic reaction to his secret life, seeing her migraines as “a little like conscience […] in some way his fault. Not that Mrs. Pritchard ever said anything or indicated that this might be so. In fact, she was very brave. She tried to muffle her screams with a pillow” (183). That Elliott interprets her “screams” as a stoic reaction suggests that the dynamic between Elliott and Bernice is one in which Elliott hears what he wants to hear. Elliott and Bernice don’t communicate with anyone about their internal struggles, so Bernice’s migraines serve as the physical manifestation of their lack of happiness.
Similarly, Van Brunt’s strokes are a physical manifestation of his unhappiness. The strokes represent Van Brunt’s mortality, and grappling with his mortality makes him angry. Steinbeck describes how Van Brunt has
A weight of disappointment on him, and there was anger in him too. All the people around him who weren’t going to die angered him. And there was another thing that bothered him. The stroke had knocked the cap off one set of his inhibitions. He had suddenly reachieved powerful desires. He was pantingly drawn toward young women, even little girls. He couldn’t keep his eyes and his thoughts from them, and in the midst of his sick desires he would burst into tears. He was afraid, as a child is afraid of a strange house (256).
This reveals that Van Brunt’s strokes are symbolic of his mortality as well as his capacity to have dark desires that shame him. Van Brunt’s strokes are out of his control, which adds to the symbolism of the overall lack of control that all the characters in this novel feel about their lives.
California
In The Wayward Bus, Steinbeck uses the physical setting of California as a symbol of the characters’ existential crises in the period following World War II. This period was marked by significant social change and upheaval, as well as a renewed surge of industrialization and economic prosperity. Within the narrative, California’s natural beauty—particularly within the isolated valley—is frequently juxtaposed with society’s development and the industrialization of land. For instance, of the land, Steinbeck writes, “The sweet smell of the lupines and of the grass set you breathing nervously, set you panting almost sexually” (13), but of Rebel Corners itself, his prose is more sparing: “It was a nice compact grouping of buildings, functional and pleasant” (12).
Steinbeck also describes the physical impacts of capitalism and industrialization on nature in a way that parallels society’s impacts on the characters themselves. The wayward bus travels on an old road that
was simply a slice of country, uncultivated to start, marked only by wheel ruts and pounded by horses’ hoofs […] Gradually the road became scooped out so that it was lower than the fields through which it traveled, and this made it a long lake of standing water in the winter, sometimes very deep. Then it was that men with plows made ditches on either side, with the embankments toward the road. And then cultivation came in and the cattle became so valuable that the owners of the property along the road put up fences to keep their cattle in and other people’s cattle out (188).
How people have bent and changed the land to suit their lives and needs mirrors how the novel’s characters have bent and changed their identities to adhere to social norms and expectations. The natural landscape of California thus symbolizes a lack of respect for nature and humans’ prioritization of industrialization and the pursuit of wealth.
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By John Steinbeck
