This article examines the motif complex in John

Steinbeck's travelogue "Travels with Charley in Search of

America," focusing on the function of the journey motif as a

key structural and semantic element of the work. The study

aims to reveal the role, artistic functions, and semantic

meanings of the travel motif in organizing the text's poetics and

shaping the author's concept of national existence. The research

employs motif analysis, which allows for tracing the

interaction of individual authorial, cultural-historical, and

traditional genre components of the work.

The analysis establishes that the journey motif in

Steinbeck's travelogue manifests itself in a complex of

interconnected motifs - movement, search, return, wandering,

loneliness, freedom, and constraint - which ensure the integrity

of the text's semantic structure and reflect the author's spiritual

quest. Special attention is paid to the connection between the

travel motif and issues of personal self-identification and moral

assessment of American reality in the early 1960s. The study

demonstrates that the journey motif performs an integrating

function, connecting personal and national-cultural meanings,

and becomes a means of artistic interpretation of changes in the

social consciousness of the era.

The study concludes that the travel motif in "Travels

with Charley" serves not only as the basis for plot development

but also as a form of philosophical reflection on humanity,

culture, and the fate of the nation, which determines the

relevance of the work and the research approach to it.