Preview of Steps Summary:

Steps involves the quest of a man shaped by the oppressive, brutal, and anarchic modern world to define himself as an individual. Once again, society and its institutions are seen more as threats than supports sustaining the individual. In his essay "The Art of the Self," Kosinski comments that "these formerly protective agencies like society and religion" now work to keep "the self from functioning freely." Some of the incidents recounted by the narrator bring out this grave malfunctioning, such as his account of finding a demented woman kept in a cage in a barn, where she had been sexually abused by the local farmers over several years. Even the local priest, obviously aware of the situation, had done nothing to rescue the woman. The priest only protested that the stranger did not understand the peasants.

The stringent pressures upon the individual person to...