A Study Of The Exotic Images In John Steinbeck’s Travel Writing

John Steinbeck devoted himself to exploring “new ideas” in the 1940 s,and regarded travel as a realistic bridge leading to new world,creating four categories of exotic images of the Soviet Union,Germany,Britain and Italy in his travel works such as A Russian Journal and Once There Was a War.These four kinds of exotic images are an important part of new ideas,Containing Steinbeck’s dissection and appreciation of the individual’s sense of life.Cosmopolitanism is an important spiritual core for Steinbeck to look outward at the world and inward at himself,which runs through the whole process of Steinbeck’s exotic construction.It is clear from the analysis that Steinbeck is good at highlighting the spiritual commonality between the “other” and the world in the process of shaping the foreign world,placing ugliness and beauty,good and evil in the space of individual and national existence,deconstructing the absolute division between angels and demons,and reconstructing the image of the foreign world in a pluralistic field.The exotic becomes Steinbeck’s sounding board,forming a two-way speech relationship with Steinbeck.This study starts from the perspective of travel,takes imagology as the main theoretical basis,draws on theoretical resources such as space,cross-cultural studies and cosmopolitanism,analyses the image of the foreign world created by Steinbeck in his travel texts based on literary texts and historical sources.Travel is the breeding ground for cosmopolitanism,the act of travel interacts with the subject of travel,travel experience and the social and cultural environment in which Steinbeck lived lay the foundation of his image building.Steinbeck placed the Soviet Union in the common spiritual system of the world,and through the deconstruction of the inherent stereotypical image,he got rid of the alienation,and built a new Soviet Union that was conservative and repressed but contained beautiful hopes after the veil of mystery was removed.In contrast,the German fascist army was the killer demon and creator of suffering in the battlefields of World War II,but still showing the warmth of humanity in different arenas.The phrase “German devils” exists only at a certain time in history and is Steinbeck’s indictment of war and suffering,showing his concern and sense of the fate of the world community.The War destroys the natural landscape and saps the will of man.Steinbeck gave Italy deep sympathy and realized the spiritual empathy for the ordinary people by describing the living state of the “little people” trapped in the war,and the righteous and tall image of Steinbeck was revealed in a foreign mirror.Britain is Steinbeck’s spiritual home,his second home,which carries the bitterness,happiness and sadness of his life,and in Steinbeck’s pen,Britain reveals tenderness and thick,but in the smoke of war,under the shadow of homesickness,it becomes a cold and exquisite strange city,and The vision is an amazing glimpse into the life of a soldier.Travel,exoticism and cosmopolitanism constitute a trinity of circular connect ion relations.Cosmopolitanism places the object of individual observation in the broad holistic category,highlighting the spirit of harmonious and inclusive dialogu e.Steinbeck’s humanistic concern for the “other” is realized in the construction of exotic images.Steinbeck’s humanistic concern for the “other” in the construction of exotic images.Meanwhile,The exotic world in the prism contains Steinbeck’s th oughts and perceptions of the self,More so,it became an exploration and experi mentation of Steinbeck’s return to the individual itself in the creative process in the 1940 s.