47 pages • 1 hour read
The Wayward Bus
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Chapters 5-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
Bernice Pritchard thinks mostly about material goods, not concepts or ideas. This often puts her at odds with her politically aware daughter Mildred, who wants to experience the world and have adventures.
As Pimples and Juan prepare breakfast for everyone, both men admire Mildred’s body. Elliott buys the fake bloodied foot socks from Ernest so that he can play a trick on Bernice. Ernest pitches an idea for a business: He wants to design a tuxedo suit outfit that can change lapels so that men who travel only have to pack one suit. Elliott is impressed by the idea. Juan gets the bus ready but is warned by Van Brunt, another passenger, that the San Ysidro River will be too high to cross safely. Juan admits to Elliott that he is often tired of his life and fantasizes about escaping it.
Mildred is attracted to Juan, and Juan fantasizes about seducing her. Juan tells Mildred a story from his childhood in Mexico, laughing to himself as he toys with Mildred’s perception of him.
Chapter 6 Summary
Alice calms down in her bedroom. She wishes Juan had hit her because “[c]asual kindness in a man she had found to be the preliminary to a brush-off” (78). Alice wishes Juan would drive the bus so that she could get drunk on her own. Alice goes to Norma and explains that she didn’t mean it when she said that Norma was fooling around with Ernest. Norma is unused to Alice being kind to her but accepts her apology because she craves friendship. Norma knows that Alice looks through her belongings, so she keeps her suitcase locked. Inside the suitcase, Norma keeps the money she is saving for her move to Hollywood. Even though she wants to be friendly with Alice, Norma knows better than to trust her.
Chapter 7 Summary
The setting shifts to a Greyhound bus station in San Ysidro. A Black man named George cleans the bus. He finds a wallet with cash left behind. George gives the wallet to Louie, the bus driver, who turns it over to the owner. The owner gives Louie a $5 reward and Louie gives George one of those dollars. George knows that Louie is withholding the rest from him.
Louie gets distracted by a beautiful young woman waiting for the ride to Rebel Corners. He gets annoyed when people of other races and ethnicities try to sit at the front of the bus; he makes them move back so that this woman will sit near him. This woman is aware of her effect on men. She’s changed jobs many times because men harass and assault her at work. Although it can be nice to get free things or help from men, Camille is exhausted by their advances. She works as a nude dancer for bachelor parties but doesn’t reveal this to the bus driver.
Louie drops her off at Rebel Corners and delivers some pies to Juan.
Chapter 8 Summary
Juan and Pimples are impressed by the beautiful woman who disembarks at Rebel Corners. Pimples plans on making the drive to San Juan with Juan so he can be around her.
Norma finds Alice looking through her things and reading her private letter to Clark Gable. Angry and finally in a position to stand up for herself, Norma packs her things for the ride to San Juan. Alice tells Juan that she was looking through Norma’s things because Norma stole from her, which Juan knows is a lie.
The beautiful woman introduces herself as Camille. Elliott Pritchard recognizes her from somewhere. The woman doesn’t tell him that she saw him in a club where she performed for a bachelor party. As the passengers prepare for the ride to San Juan, Alice grows nervous about the attention Camille is receiving. Juan is annoyed with Alice because of her outburst that morning but knows he won’t leave her because “He’d need another woman right away and that took a lot of talking and arguing and persuading. It was different just to lay a girl but he would need a woman around, and that was the difference” (119). Juan knows that Alice loves him, and he can’t be himself without that love.
Chapter 9 Summary
As he drives the bus toward San Juan, Juan notes that there isn’t traffic in the opposite direction. This makes him worry that the bridge is down.
All the passengers have their own thoughts and conversations. Norma suggests to Camille that they could find an apartment to rent together in Los Angeles. Camille enjoys playing with the idea, but she knows that she and Norma won’t stay friends.
Mildred is jealous of Camille and annoyed with her for the interaction she had with Elliott. Elliott tries having a conversation with Bernice and continues talking about his opinions even when he realizes she’s daydreaming and not listening to him. Elliott tries to distract himself from his attraction to Camille by talking to his wife about his desire to get into business with Ernest Horton.
As Ernest talks to Pimples about the difficulty of setting up his business, he says that he would like a more stable life with less travel, though he knows that’s not true. Elliott gets out of his seat to move closer to Ernest to talk business when he trips and falls on Camille, ripping her skirt. Bernice jokes that Elliott is trying to sit on Camille’s lap, and the bus passengers bond through laughter.
Elliott offers Ernest a job with his company, which Ernest teases. Pimples strikes up a conversation with Mildred.
Meanwhile, Juan approaches the San Ysidro River and sees that it’s full and powerful.
Chapters 5-9 Analysis
In Chapters 5 through 9, Steinbeck explores how individuals maintain their interiority while interacting with other people around them. In juxtaposing interior thoughts with external expressions, Steinbeck illustrates the complexity of characters and their identities.
The Pritchard family is initially characterized by their idyllic stability, and this section pokes some holes in that façade. The dynamic between Bernice and Mildred highlights that a close relationship can also be marked by tension. As mother and daughter, Mildred and Bernice are bound together even if they are two very different women. While Bernice does not express many opinions, Mildred is the opposite. Mildred is eager for adventure, politically minded, and an active participant in the world around her. These differences lead to “times when Mildred wept with rage at her mother’s knowing, forgiving smile after one of Mildred’s political or economic deliveries” (55), as she realizes that Bernice is disinterested in conversation that doesn’t revolve around people or materialist concerns. Their relationship illustrates the expectations people place on each other, highlighting People’s Resentful Dependence on One Another. Mildred expects that her mother will listen to and connect with her, even though her mother can’t relate to her. Mildred’s expectations are not aligned with the reality of Bernice’s interiority. Ultimately, their relationship is evidence of how people misunderstand one another to fulfill their own needs.
This is also true of Bernice’s marriage with Elliott. Their partnership appears idyllic because they are outwardly respectful to one another and fill the role of husband or wife that the other partner needs. However, they also illustrate the ways that people can enable one another to the point of disabling one another. Metaphorically speaking, Bernice and Elliott don’t grow together; their relationship highlights The Stasis of Human Existence as well as their preference for that stasis. This is emphasized through their sex life, in which Elliot’s “beginning libido she had accepted and […] gradually strangled, so that his impulses for her became fewer and fewer and until he himself believed that he was reaching an age when such things did not matter” (56). In The Wayward Bus, marriages such as Bernice and Elliott’s—and Alice and Juan’s—are exposed as institutions in which two individuals can stymie one another’s growth both sexually and emotionally. For these characters, marriage becomes a symbolic attempt at stability and avoiding all that is wayward in life at the expense of true happiness.
Through these characters and their relationships, Steinbeck explores the idea of people versus the reality of people. Sometimes, how a person seems accurately represents who they truly are. Many times, however, people wear a mask and codeswitch with others as they navigate different situations and contexts. For example, Elliott externally espouses conservative values about women, but he privately and secretly watches nude women dance at parties. Juan and Mildred externally flirt and send sexual signals to one another, but internally, Juan resents Mildred’s whiteness and her exoticization of him. Externally, Ernest says he wants a marriage, but internally, Ernest runs away from commitment. In Steinbeck’s novel, characters navigate their own layers and decide, often subconsciously, which version of themselves to present to the world around them.
Norma acknowledges this interplay between identity, person, and world. She fantasizes about Clark Gable, but she’s met enough people to know that the perfection she sees in him does not fit the realities of most people: “She had a knowledge of and a lack of respect for the impulses of the people she met and came in contact with in everyday life” (82). Norma therefore knows that the reality of people is not the same thing as the idea of people. Even so, she clings to fantasy, initially about Clark Gable and later to moving in with a woman she’s just met, illustrating the theme of Dreams, Ambitions, and Fantasies as Escape.
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By John Steinbeck
