American Expansionism
There is very little that happens in this story about storytelling. The three generations of characters and the focus on the pioneer era indicate that “The Leader of the People” is a meditation on time, its passage, and the diverging viewpoints about the past and the future that each generation has. This part of “The Red Pony” is about the renewed American belief in its image as the shining city upon a hill in the aftermath of the Second World War. If the 1930s faced a severe interrogation of whether American democracy exploited people, Steinbeck was deeply troubled by the myths of American nationhood that were re-embraced by the post-war era. While the grandfather is consumed by nostalgia and passion for “westering” in a land that has no more west to conquer, he soothes himself by seizing the spotlight in his often told tales in which he is always the protagonist. Jody’s grandfather represents Steinbeck’s warning of the American trend. The grandfather’s nostalgic vision seems to represent the vision of American expansionism as delivery democracy to the world, but when the old man suddenly announces that “westering” is dead, we are left wondering where America stands in the new world of global wars. Carl, who is ever a pragmatist, considers the stories as repetitive and irrelevant. He sees the past as the past, and if time is already done, nobody wants to hear it over and over. For generations like that of Carl, there is no place to go. In historical context, this story might be placed within the generation that fully accepted the declaration by historian Frederick Jackson Turner that by 1890 the American frontier had come to an end. Grandfather is convinced that Carl might be right. The old man mourns the end of the era of expansion and exploration, which he also hopes to keep alive through his stories.
Steinbeck’s use of Jody in the story creates hope for the future generation about America’s dream of expansion. A literal west may not be available anymore for expansion but a young boy, and eventually a young man, the world is still promising, wonderful, and adventurous. Jody understands that the most important thing is not that his grandfather led a group across the plains because someone else could have done it, but the whole concept of “westering” participating in mass movement eager for new experiences that changed the course of national history forever. To Jody, the western frontier was not a mere geographical boundary but a mental outlook. While grandfather concludes that the spirit of “westering” has died and all is finished for those without that spirit, it might be that Jody’s generation will recapture something of that vision that his father’s generation had lost. Both Jody and his grandfather have their anagnorisis. Through them, the reader may be convinced that western expansion was an expansion for the sake of expansion. It is apparent that after the WW2, every western has been “anti-western” rather than western, pointing out the fruitlessness and the misery of American expansionism rather than glory. Therefore, Steinbeck is ahead of the time in writing a western story in which an older man looks back on his life as a pioneer and sees it in a deterministic, pessimistic way.