Section Five   The 1930’s and John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
I. Background of the 1930s
With the Stock Market crash of 1929, America moved into the Great Depression. The economic structure in the U.S.A. changed, as small farms were replaced by larger ones and the financial picture enlarged to include corporations, large investments and amassing fortunes. The gap between the rich and the poor lengthened. More and more people lost their jobs. So unemployment and poverty were the main social problems. At this time, the post-war period ended and a new pre-war period began. The new mood of the nation called forth a new type of class-conscious, proletarian writing. The new writers identified their point of view closely with the suffering of farmers and workers, and novels such as John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath were highly influential in raising the nation’s social conscience. Although the young writers of the 1930’s were severely influenced by the Depression, there were many excellent writers in the 1930’s, and they had far greater literary resources than ever before thanks to the new freedoms of style, method and technique, and to reforms in the language, which had been experimented with and explored by the writers of the previous period. Faulkner alone continued to experiment with style. He examined the disintegrating old society of the South, limiting the scope of many of his books to one southern country in order to describe the social forces at work there.
II. John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck published his first book Cup of Gold in 1929, the year of America’s stock market crash, and he is recognized as the foremost writer of the Great Depression. He wrote sympathetically about poor, oppressed California farmers, migrants, laborers, and the unemployed, making their lives and sorrows very understandable to his readers. His theme was usually that simple human virtues such as kindness and fair treatment were far superior to official hard-heartedness, or the dehumanizing cruelty of exploiters for their own commercial advantage.
1.His Life and Literary Career
John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California, in a long valley between two mountain ranges, which he used as the setting for many of his stories. His father was a well-to-do flour miller who also served as a county official, and his mother was a schoolteacher. With his three older sisters, they were a family who enjoyed books. So Steinbeck did well at school. He attended a university in California on and off for five years, studying literature and taking courses in writing. Between terms of study, he worked at various unskilled jobs, acquiring knowledge about the lower levels of society and gaining admiration for the human qualities of the humble people he worked with. He wrote stories about them which he sent to magazines, but his stories were always rejected. In the 1920’s, people were not interested in reading about such things.
In 1925, Steinbeck got tired of studying. Without graduating, he went to New York with $3 in his pocket, hoping to make his living there as a writer. His uncle helped him find a job as a reporter, but he was not good at newspaper work and he was soon dismissed. Discouraged, he returned to California where he went back to doing odd jobs, moving from town to town. But he still continued to write as much as he could, in his spare time and between jobs.
Finally, in 1929, a publisher accepted his first book. It was a romantic, fictional biography of a pirate, which did not bring him much money, but nevertheless, he decided to get married and continue writing. He published two more books The Pastures of Heaven and To a God Unknown, which were not very successful, and he sold a few stories to magazines. Fortunately, Steinbeck’s father had given the young couple a small house and an allowance of $25 a month so they were able to live during these lean years.
In 1935, Steinbeck published Tortilla Flat, a book which vividly described the life of poor Mexican-Americans with affection and humor. This book was an immediate success, and Steinbeck was never poor again. Each book that he wrote thereafter became a best seller. The following year, he wrote In Dubious Battle in a far different, grimmer mood. It was the story of a farm workers’ strike, which, in later times, has been called the best “strike novel” in the English language.
In 1937, he wrote Of Mice And Men, a short novel which established Steinbeck’s reputation among literary critics as a major American writer. This story told of the strange, tragic friendship between two migrant workers, the homeless people who wandered from place to place during the Depression, looking for work as agricultural laborers. The book was turned into a play in the same year, and then into a film, both of which were highly successful. In 1939, he wrote his masterpiece, The Grapes OF Wrath, of which more will be said later. This book was turned into an unforgettable film, which is still considered a great classic.
At the beginning of his success, in 1935, Steinbeck visited Mexico, the first of many trips which he took to foreign lands. After the huge success of The Grapes of Wrath in 1939, he was seldom at home. Perhaps this was why his wife divorced him in 1942. He soon married again, and this second marriage marked a dividing line in Steinbeck’s career. He only wrote one more book, Cannery Row (1945) about the poor people of California whom he loved and understood. From that time onward, he ceased to be a Californian. He and his wife moved to New York and Steinbeck’s writing never again achieved the powerful quality of the books he wrote during the 1930’s. Soon after his wedding, he went to Europe to cover the Second World War for a big New York newspaper. His post-war novel The Pearl (1947) reflected his bitter feelings against those greedy, rapacious elements of society which made the war possible. In 1948, his second marriage ended in divorce. His third marriage fortunately turned out to be a very happy one.
During the 1950’s, Steinbeck wrote several books, all of which were very popular with the public, but which literary critics all compared unfavorably with his earlier work. He wrote scripts for several films based on his own stories, and also original film scripts, the best-remembered of which is Viva Zapata, the life of a Mexican revolutionary leader. His last notable book was Travels With Charley In Search of America, published in 1962. It told of his journey across America with his pet dog, and it was a runaway best seller. However, by that time Steinbeck seemed to have lost his fiery concern about the lives of poor and oppressed people. While traveling with his dog in New Orleans, in the Deep South, there were riots and protest demonstrations on behalf of the black Civil Rights Movement. But Steinbeck avoided them and did not mention them in his book. He felt strong anger against the injustice to farm laborers in the 1930’s, but he did not feel the same sympathy for poor, oppressed city workers and blacks, thirty years later.
In 1962, Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his lifetime work, but primarily for the great works which he produced in the 1930’s. He died in New York, in 1968.
2.His Style and Point of View
Steinbeck’s prose style is noted for a poetic quality which heightens the realism of his naturalistic writing-relieving and brightening the grim subjects which he often wrote about. Steinbeck frequently set a scene, of the mood for a chapter, in short, abrupt passages which were almost like the stage directions for a play, as though the author wanted his reader to see the story clearly in his imagination. This habit was undoubtedly what encouraged many film producers to turn his novels into films. Steinbeck, like Eugene O’Neill, nearly always wrote the dialogue of his books just as it should sound, using strange spelling to denote the regional accent, and inserting many words of slang and dialect. By reproducing the exact speech patterns of his characters, Steinbeck made his reader feel as though he knew them personally. Steinbeck’s best writing was produced by outrage at the injustices of society and by his admiration for the strong spirit of the poor.
During the Depression years, his fiction combined warm humour, regionalism, and violence with a realistic technique which produced a unique kind of social protest. His influence was very wide in arousing public sympathy for the subjects of his novels.
3. His Major Works
Steinbeck wrote eighteen novels as well as many short stories, works of non-fiction, plays and film scripts. His most important books are the following:
1935-- Tortilla flat is a collection of short stories about an imaginary Mexican-American town in California. The same group of characters appear in different stories, so the form of the book resembles Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. But Steinbeck treats his characters in a much more light-hearted vein.
1936-- In Dubious Battle is a naturalistic, objective novel about Jim, a young, unemployed communist who, with an old, experienced Party member, sets out to organize the poor migrant fruit-pickers in California in a strike. The workers’ union is crushed by the landowners and Jim is killed. But at the end of the book, the farm workers continue their struggle, led on by the old Party member.
1937-- Of Mice And Men is a short novel, written almost like a play with six chapters, each of which represents a scene. It tells of the tragic friendship between a migrant farm worker and his enormously strong, feebleminded friend whom he is finally forced to kill, as an act of kindness, to save him from a worse death at the hands of his oppressors.
1939-- The Grapes Of Wrath is Steinbeck’s masterpiece. It is the story of a family from Oklahoma who are evicted from their small farm when they cannot pay their debts. They set out as migrants for California, to start a new life. Cruel police and employers mistreat them, some of them die, but the family somehow survives by all helping one another.
1945-- Cannery Row centers the story around a group of characters who live on the waterfront of a California town given over to fish canneries. It is a satire, ridiculing both those who try to gain wealth and social position, and also the Communist Party, reflecting Steinbeck’s changed attitude toward social problems after the Second World War.
1962-- Travels With Charley In Search Of America is a work of non-fiction, recounting his impressions and adventures as he traveled through America in a truck with his dog. It is amusing but not profound

III. Selected Reading  The Grapes Of Wrath(电影片段)

1.Plot Overview
During the 1930’s large numbers of tenants and sharecroppers were evicted from their small farms in the Dust Bowl region, including the states of Oklahoma and Arkansas. They had all borrowed money from banks during the hard times of drought, uprooting even weeds, making it impossible to grow crops. When farmers were unable to return the money they had borrowed, the banks seized the small farms and combined them into fewer large plantations to grow cotton with modern machinery. One man with a tractor could cultivate an entire plantation for very low daily wages. Many of the small farmers thus became dispossessed and headed for California, lured by the promise of employment.
The Joad family were typical landless and homeless migrants who traveled westward to California during the Great Depression.
Tom Joad is hitchhiking home after being released from the state prison on parole. He has served four years of a seven year sentence because he killed a man in self-defense in a fight. A truck driver gives him a lift and takes him to the road which leads to his family’s farm.
He bumps into Jim Casy, an ex-preacher who baptized Tom. Casy explains that he has been away for some time trying to figure out some things, and has decided that since everything is holy, he need not be a preacher any more but just live with the people because the people are holy.
They go together to Tom’s place. Casy wonders if Tom is ashamed. Tom tells him that he is not. Casy then is curious about prison life. Tom reveals that they have three meals regularly and even have a shower bath everyday. He also mentions how one man was released and found the freedom unbearable because he was hungry all the time so he stole a car so that he could be thrown back into the prison. As they approach the house, both realize that something has gone wrong, but they cannot understand why there is no one around. And the well is dry, the barn empty and the house pushed all out of shape.
His neighbor Muley reluctantly tells Tom that his family has all moved in with Tom’s Uncle John, and that they have been chopping cotton to get enough money to buy a truck so that they can embark on the journey to California, which they believe is a land of plenty. The next day when they arrive at Uncle John’s house, Tom realizes his family is obviously ready for the journey; all the furniture stacked out in the yard. The Joad family is large, including the grandparents, Pa and Ma, Noah, Tom’s elder brother, Al Tom’s sixteen-year-old brother; Rose of Sharon and Connie, Tom’s sister and brother-in?law, and Ruthie and Winfield, the youngest sister and brother, aged respectively 12 and 10.
The Joads are sorting through their collection of property to decide what they can take along the trip and what should be sold. The truck loaded with family belongings and farm equipment has gone to the junk market. In the late afternoon, Pa comes back home with the truck, tired and angry: he has got only 18 dollars for everything the family had possessed.Now the family decides to take Casy with them along the journey because Ma insists that the Joads have never turned anyone down.
Streams of cars of poor migrants pour onto Highway 66 which is the main highway from Oklahoma to California. When the Joads stop the first time on the journey westward, they notice, much to their depression, that they forgot to bring water along with them. When they stop at the next station to get some gas, the attendant wants to make sure that they have some money on them. That evening, the family stop alongside the road nest to the car of a couple, the Wilsons. Then Grandpa dies of a stroke. The Wilsons explain that they started the trip three weeks ago and have been in constant trouble of getting the car fixed. Tom and Al say that they will repair the car for them.
The Joads are kind to those in need of help and neighbourly to those who are like them.
When a ragged man learns that they are heading for California, he says that he has just been there and now he is on his way home to starve. He then proceeds to reveal more truth about those impossible handbills.
As a matter of fact, the handbills that promise jobs in California are the bosses’ intention to cheapen the labor market. Grandma is now getting sick and near death. The Joads are expecting further trials to come.
Every morning the tents are folded up and safely paced together with beds and pots back in the cars which tumble out on the highway. Every night, they crowd together and “the twenty families became one family.”
At first, people feel embarrassed to move about among the large and makeshift “family.” Gradually, rules and regulations essential to the safety and order of such a style of living take root of their own accord among all the family members.
When the Joads and the Wilsons reach the border of California one morning, they stop by the side of a river. A man with his boy shows up and tells the Joads about his disastrous experience in California. People there called him an “Okie”, used to mean a person from Oklahoma. Up to the present, there are about 30,000 Okies in California, a fact that makes it next to impossible for newcomers to find even odd jobs, let alone permanent employment.
The Wilsons are also left behind because Mrs. Wilson is suffering seriously from cancer. Leaving them some money and food, armed with plenty of water, the Joads set off to cross the desert in the cool breeze of the evening. During the long trip across the desert, Ma is lying beside Grandma, fanning and comforting her. Yet everyone is startled to see Ma, a lady capable of endurance, sick and pale. The truth is that Grandma died early in the night, dead before the border officer stopped them. In spite of death, the Joads do not break. They keep on.
The Joads are now in a Government camp. It is clean, organized, joyful and comfortable. They can hardly believe it when the manager tells them that there are no cops around, and they begin to regain a sense of dignity. What’s worse, the locals, at first in sympathy with them, now turn to resent them: the migrants are simply taking the bread out of their mouths.
After supper, Tom goes to investigate what is wrong outside the fence. He unexpectedly runs into Casy, who tells him about his experience in prison and now is obviously the leader of the strike just in progress against the farm owner’s cutting the wage in half. Witnessing the suffering of his fellow men on the route to California, Casy has changed from a preacher to a radical activist, organizing the dispossessed migrants against the tyrannical bosses. Suddenly they realize some men are approaching and Casy is instantly killed with a pick handle. Tom flies into a rage at this, and he in turn kills one of the murderers. Then he manages to run away and return to the camp.
The rains set in when winter arrives. Right before they start off, Rose of Sharon’s labor pains begin. Once healthy and active, Rose of Sharon is obviously very weak and suffers from malnutrition. To make it worse, her baby is stillborn.
At last they spot a barn with dry hay occupied by a father and his son, the man dying from eating nothing for six days. The Joads are out of food and money as well. Rose of Sharon accepts Ma’s suggestion and breast feeds the sick man.

2. Brief Comment
2.1. The Themes of the Novel
The novel reflects such a theme as that strength comes from unity (from I to We). It also reflects people’s faith in life, people’s will and people’s struggle to live a better life.
2.2. Writing Style in this Novel
Firstly, the use of interchapters contributes greatly to the book’s success as a social document and literary masterwork. Symbolism is used in it, e.g. “Grapes” symbolize people’s anger; “The turtle” symbolizes people’s will and faith; “The tractors symbolize destructive forces.etc. As for Steinbeck’s language, he created a lot of spellings and made them sound just like the language spoken in that place.
3.The following is a part of Chapter IV in the novel The Grapes of Wrath.


    CHAPTER IV
     
WHEN Joad heard the truck get under way, gear climbing up to gear and the ground throbbing under the rubber beating of the tires, he stopped and turned about and watched it until it disappeared. When it was out of sight he still watched the distance and the blue air-shimmer. Thoughtfully he took the pint from his pocket, unscrewed the metal cap, and sipped the whisky delicately, running his tongue inside the bottle neck , and then around his lips, to gather in any flavor that might have escaped him. He said experimentally, "There we spied a nigger--" and that was all he could remember. At last he turned about and faced the dusty side road that cut off at right angles through the fields. The sun was hot, and no wind stirred the sifted dust. The road was cut with furrows where dust had slid and settled back into the wheel tracks. Joad took a few steps, and the flourlike dust spurted up in front of his new yellow shoes, and the yellowness was disappearing under gray dust.
He leaned down and untied the laces, slipped off first one shoe and then the other. And he worked his damp feet comfortably in the hot dry dust until little spurts of it came up between his toes, and until the skin on his feet tightened with dryness. He took off his coat and wrapped his shoes in it and slipped the bundle under his arm. And at last he moved up the road, shooting the dust ahead of him, making a cloud that hung low to the ground behind him.
The right of way was fenced, two strands of barbed wire on willow poles. The poles were crooked and badly trimmed. Whenever a crotch came to the proper height the wire lay in it, and where there was no crotch the barbed wire was lashed to the post with rusty baling wire. Beyond the fence, the corn lay beaten down by wind and heat and drought, and the cups where leaf joined stalk were filled with dust.
    Joad plodded along, dragging his cloud of dust behind him. A little bit ahead he saw the high-domed shell of a land turtle, crawling slowly along through the dust , its legs working stiffly and jerkily. Joad stopped to watch it, and his shadow fell on the turtle. Instantly head and legs were withdrawn and the short thick tail clamped sideways into the shell. Joad picked it up and turned it over. The back was browngray, like the dust, but the underside of the shell was creamy yellow, clean and smooth. Joad shifted his bundle high under his arm and stroked the smooth undershell with his finger, and he pressed it. It was softer than the back. The hard old head came out and tried to look at the pressing finger, and the legs waved wildly. The turtle wetted on Joad's hand and struggled uselessly in the air. Joad turned it back upright and rolled it up in his coat with his shoes. He could feel it pressing and struggling and fussing under his arm. He moved ahead more quickly now, dragging his heels a little in the fine dust.
Ahead of him, beside the road, a scrawny, dusty willow tree cast a speckled shade. Joad could see it ahead of him, its poor branches curving over the way, its load of leaves tattered and scraggly as a molting chicken. Joad was sweating now. His blue shirt darkened down his back and under his arms. He pulled at the visor of his cap and creased it in the middle, breaking its cardboard lining so completely that it could never look new again. And his steps took on new speed and intent toward the shade of the distant willow tree. At the willow he knew there would be shade, at least one hard bar of absolute shade thrown by the trunk, since the sun had passed its zenith. The sun whipped the back of his neck now and made a little humming in his head. He could not see the base of the tree, for it grew out of a little swale that held water longer than the level places. Joad speeded his pace against the sun, and he started down the declivity. He slowed cautiously, for the bar of absolute shade was taken. A man sat on the ground, leaning against the trunk of the tree. His legs were crossed and one bare foot extended nearly as high as his head. He did not hear Joad approaching, for he was whistling solemnly the tune of "Yes, Sir, That's My Baby." His extended foot swung slowly up and down in the tempo. It was not dance tempo. He stopped whistling and sang in an easy thin tenor:

     "Yes, sir, that's my Saviour,
     Je-sus is my Saviour,
     Je-sus is my Saviour now.
     On the level
     ’S not the devil,
     Jesus is my Saviour now. "

Joad had moved into the imperfect shade of the molting leaves before the man heard him coming, stopped his song, and turned his head. It was a long head, bony, tight of skin, and set on a neck as stringy and muscular as a celery stalk. His eyeballs were heavy and protruding; the lids stretched to cover them, and the lids were raw and red. His cheeks were brown and shiny and hairless and his mouth full-humorous or sensual. The nose, beaked and hard, stretched the skin so tightly that the bridge showed white. There was no perspiration on the face, not even on the tall pale forehead. It was an abnormally high forehead, lined with delicate blue veins at the temples.  Fully half of the face was above the eyes. His stiff gray hair was mussed back from his brow as though he had combed it back with his fingers. For clothes he wore overalls and a blue shirt. A denim coat with brass buttons and a spotted brown hat creased like a pork pie lay on the ground beside him. Canvas sneakers, gray with dust, lay near by where they had fallen when they were kicked off.
The man looked long at Joad. The light seemed to go far into his brown eyes, and it picked out little golden specks deep in the irises. The strained bundle of neck muscles stood out.
Joad stood still in the speckled shade. He took off his cap and mopped his wet face with it and dropped it and his rolled coat on the ground.
The man in the absolute shade uncrossed his legs and dug with his toes at the earth.
Joad said, "Hi. It's hotter'n hell on the road. "
The seated man stared questioningly at him. "Now ain't you young Tom Joad-ol' Tom's boy?"
"Yeah," said Joad. "All the way. Goin' home now. "
“You wouldn' remember me. I guess, " the man said. He smiled and his full lips revealed great horse teeth. "Oh, no, you wouldn't remember. You was always too busy pullin' little girls' pigtails when I give you the Holy Sperit.You was all wropped up in yankin' that pigtail' out by the roots. You maybe don't recollect, but I do. The two of you come to Jesus at once' cause of that pigtail yankin'. Baptized both of you in the irrigation ditch at once. Fightin' an' yellin' like a couple a cats. "
Joad looked at him with drooped eyes, and then he laughed. "Why, you're the preacher. " You're the preacher. I jus' passed a recollection about you to a guy not an hour ago. "
"I was a preacher, "said the man seriously. "Reverend Jim Casy--was a Burning Busher.  Used to howl out the name of Jesus to glory. And used to get an irrigation ditch so squirmin' full of repented sinners half of 'em like to drownded. But not no more," he sighed. "Just Jim Casy now. Ain't got the call no more. Got a lot of sinful idears-but they seem kinda sensible. "
Joad said, "You're bound to get idears if you go thinkin' about stuff. Sure I remember you. You use ta give a good meetin'. I recollect one time you give a whole sermon walkin' around on your hands yellin' your head off. Ma favored you more than anybody. An' Granma says you was just lousy with the spirit." Joad dug at his rolled coat and found the pocket and brought out his pint. The turtle moved a leg but he wrapped it up tightly. He unscrewed the cap and held out the bottle. "Have a little snort?"
Casy took the bottle and regarded it broodingly. "I ain't preachin' no more much. The sperit ain't in the people much no more; and worse'n that, the sperit ain't in me no more. 'Course now an' again the sperit gets movin' an' I rip out a meetin', or when folks sets out food I give 'em a grace, but my heart ain't in it. I on'y do it' cause they expect it. "
Joad mopped his face with his cap again- "You ain't too damn holy to take a drink, are you?" he asked.
Casy seemed to see the bottle for the first time. He tilted it and took three big swallows. "Nice drinkin' liquor, " he said.
"Ought to be, " said Joad. "That's fact'ry liquor. Cost a buck. "
Casy took another swallow before he passed the bottle back. "Yes, sir! " he said. "Yes, sir!"
Joad took the bottle from him, and in politeness did not wipe the neck with his sleeve before he drank. He squatted on his hams and set the bottle upright against his coat roll. His fingers found a twig with which to draw his thoughts on the ground. He swept the leaves from a square and smoothed the dust. And he drew angles and make litt1e circles. "I ain't seen you in a long time," he said.
“Nobody seen me, " said the preacher. "I went off alone, an' I sat and figured. The sperit's strong in me, on'y it ain't the same. I ain't so sure of a lot of things. "He sat up straighter against the tree. His bony hand dug its way like a sqairrel into his overall pocket, brought out a black, bitten plug of tobacco. Carefully he brushed off bits of straw and gray pocket fuzz before he bit off a corner and settled the quid into his cheek. Joad waved his stick in negation when the plug was held out to him. The turtle dug at the rolled coat. Casy looked over at the stirring garment. "What you got there-a chicken? Yor'll smother it. "
Joad rolled the coat up more tightly. "An old turtle, " he said. "Picked him up on the road. An old bulldozer. Thought I'd take 'im to my little brother. Kids like turtles. "
The preacher nodded his head slowly. "Every kid got a turtle some time or other. Nobody can't keep a turtle though. They work at it and work at it, and at last one day they get out and away they go-off somewheres. It's like me. I wouldn' take the good ol' gospel that was just layin' there to my hand. I got to be pickin' at it an' workin' at it until I got it all tore down. Here I got the sperit sometimes an' nothin' to preach about. I got the call to lead the people, an' no place to lead'em. "
"Lead 'em around and around, " said Joad. "Sling' em in the irrigation ditch. Tell 'em they'll burn in hell if they don't think like you. What the hell you want to lead'em someplace for? Jus' lead' em. " The straight trunk shade had stretched out along the ground. Joad moved gratefully into it and squatted on his hams and made a new smooth place on which to draw his thoughts with a stick. A thick-furred yellow shepherd dog came trotting down the road, head low, tongue lolling and dripping. Its tail hung limply curled, and it panted loudly. Joad whistled at it, but it only dropped its head an inch and trotted fast toward some definite destination. "Goin' someplace, "Joad explained , a little piqued. "Goin' for home maybe. "
The preacher could not be thrown from his subject.  "Goin' someplace, " he repeated. "That's right, he's goin' someplace. Me-I don't know where I'm goin'. Tell you what-I use ta get the people jumpin' an'talkin' in tongues, an' glory-shoutin' till they just fell down an' passed out. An' some I'd baptize to bring 'em to. An' then-you know what I'd do? I'd take one of them girls out in the grass, an' I'd lay with her. Done it ever' time. Then I'd feel bad, an' I'd pray an' pray, but it didn't do no good. Come the nex' time, them an' me was full of the sperit, I'd do it again. I figgered there just wasn't no hope for me, an' I was a damned ol' hypocrite. But I didn't mean to be. "
Joad smiled and his long teeth parted and he licked his lips. "There ain't nothing like a good hot meetin' for pushin' 'em over," he asid. "I done that myself. "
Casy leaned forward excitedly. "You see, " he cried , "I seen it was that way , an' I started thinkin'. "He waved his bony big-knuckled hand up and down in a patting gesture. "I got to thinkin' like this- 'Here's me preachin' grace.  An' here's them people gettin' grace so hard they're jumpin' an' shoutin'. Now they say layin' up with a girl comes from the devil. But the more grace a girl got in her, the quicker she wants to go out in the grass. ' An' I got to thinkin' how in hell, s'cuseme, how can the devil get in when a girl is so full of the Holy Sperit that it's spoutin' out of her nose an' ears. You'd think that'd be one time when the devil didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell. But there it was. " His eyes were shining with excitement. He worked his cheeks for a moment and then spat into the dust, and the gob of spit rolled over and over, picking up dust until it looked like a round dry little pellet. The preacher spread out his hand and looked at his palm as though he were reading a book. "An' there's me," he went on softly. "There's me with all them people's souls in my han'--responsible an' feelin' my responsibility--an' ever' time, I lay with one of them girls. " He looked over at Joad and his face looked helpless. His expression asked for help.
Joad carefully drew the torso of a woman in the dirt, breasts, hips, pelvis. "I wasn't never a preacher," he said. "I never let nothin' get by when I could catch it. An' I never had no idears about it except I was goddarmn glad when I got one. "
"But you wasn't a preacher, " Casy insisted. "A girl was just a girl to you. They wasn't nothin' to you. But to me they was holy vessels. I was savin' their souls. An' here with all that responsibility on me I'd just get' em frothin' with the Holy Sperit, an' then I'd take’em out in the grass. "
"Maybe I should of been a preacher, " said Joad. He brought out his tobacco and papers and rolled a cigarette. He lighted it and squinted through the smoke at the preacher. "I been a long time without a girl, " he said. "It's gonna take some catchin' up. "
Casy continued, "It worried me till I couldn't get no sleep. Here I'd go to preachin' and I'd say, 'By God, this time I ain't gonna do it. ' And right while I said it, I knowed I was. "
"You should a got a wife," said Joad. "Preacher an' his wife stayed at our place one time. Jehovites they was. Slep' upstairs. Held meetin's in our barnyard. Us kids would listen. That preacher's missus took a godawful poundin' after ever' night meetin'. "
"I'm glad you tol' me, "said Casy. "I use to think it was jus' me. Finally it give me such pain I quit an' went off by myself an' give her a damn good thinkin' about. " He doubled up his legs and scratched between his dry dusty toes. "I says to myself, 'What's gnawin' you? Is it the screwin'?' An' I says, 'No, it's the sin.' An' I says, 'Why is it that when a fella ought to be just about mule-ass proof against sin, an' all full up of Jesus, why is it that's the time a fella gets fingerin' his pants buttons?'" He laid two fingers down in his palm in rhythm, as though he gently placed each word there side by side. "I says, 'Maybe it ain't a sin. Maybe it's just the way folks is. Maybe we been whippin' the hell out of ourselves for nothin'. ' An' I thought how some sisters took to beatin' theirselves with a three-foot shag of bobwire. An' I thought how maybe they liked to hurt themselves, an' maybe I liked to hurt myself. Well, I was layin' under a tree when I figured that out, and I went to sleep. And it come night, an' it was dark when I come to. They was a coyote squawkin' near by. Before I knowed it, I was sayin' out loud, 'The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain't nice, but that's as far as any man got a right to say. ' " He paused and looked up from the palm of his hand, where he had laid down the words.
Joad was grinning at him, but Joad's eyes were sharp and interested, too. "You give her a goin'-over," he said "You figured her out. "
Casy spoke again, and his voice rang with pain and confusion. "I says, 'What's this call, this sperit?' An' I says, ' It's love. I love people so much I'm fit to bust, sometimes.'  An' I says, 'Don't you love Jesus?' Well, I thought an' thought, an' finally I says, 'No, I don't know nobody name' Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people. An'sometimes I love 'em fit to bust, an' I want to make 'em happy, so I been preachin' somepin I thought would make 'em happy. ' An' then-I been talkin' a hell of a lot. Maybe you wonder about me using bad words. Well, they ain't bad to me no more. They're jus' words folks use , an' they don't mean nothing bad with' em. Anyways, I'll tell you one more thing I thought out; an' from a preacher it's the most unreligious thing, and I can't be a preacher no more because I thought it an' I believe it."
"What's that?" Joad asked.
  Casy looked shyly at him. "If it hits you wrong, don't take no offense at it, will you?"
  "I don't take no offense 'cept a bust in the nose," said Joad. "What did you figger?"  
  "I figgered about the Holy Sperit and the Jesus road. I figgered , 'Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,' I figgered, 'maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.'  Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a suddent-I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it. "
Joad's eyes dropped to the ground, as though he could not meet the naked honesty in the preacher's eyes. "You can't hold no church with idears like that, " he said. "People would drive you out of the country with idears like that. Jumpin' an' yellin'. That's what folks like. Makes 'em feel swell. When Granma got to talkin' in tongues, you couldn't tie her down. She could knock over a full-growed deacon with her fist. "
Casy regarded him broodingly. "Somepin I like to ast you," he said. "Somepin that been eatin' on me. "
"Go ahead. I'll talk, sometimes. "
"Well" -the preacher said slowly- "here's you that I baptized right when I was in the glory roof-tree. Got little hunks of Jesus jumpin' outa my mouth that day. You won't remember 'cause you was busy pullin' that pigtail. "
"I remember, " said Joad. "That was Susy Little. She bust my finger a year later. "
"Well-did you take any good outa that baptizin'? Was your ways better? "
Joad thought about it. "No-o-o, can't say as I felt anything. "
"Well-did you take any bad from it? Think hard. "
Joad picked up the bottle and took a swig. "They wasn't nothing in it, good or bad. I just had fun. " He handed the flask to the preacher. He sighed and drank and looked at the low level of the whisky and took another tiny drink. "That's good," he said. "I got to worryin' about whether in messin' around maybe I done somebody a hurt. "
Joad looked over toward his coat and saw the turtle, free of the cloth and hurrying away in the direction he had been following when Joad found him. Joad watched him for a moment and then got slowly to his feet and retrieved him and wrapped him in the coat again. "I ain't got no present for the kids, " he said. "Nothin' but this ol' turtle. "
"It's a funny thing, " the preacher said. "I was thinkin' about ol' Tom Joad when you come along. Thinkin' I'd call in on him. I used to think he was a godless man. How is Tom?"

4. Questions for discussion

(1). What is the symbolic meaning of the turtle connected with the theme?
(2). What is the function of Jim Casy in the whole story?