Reverend Casy

Jim Casy is a reverend that has given up preaching. After leaving his hometown, which he also preached in, he develops a new belief and insight into his life and the well being of his soul. Everyone wants to get to heaven, which means taking care of your soul. Jim Casy thinks that everyone' s soul is thrown into one pot and his collected as one soul. As people act in a way that would not allow them into heaven their soul is taken from the whole soul that contains everyone's soul. He is still a religious man but he just does not believe the same things he did when he first became a preacher. Throughout the story Granma wants him to pray for dinner and other times in the day when people pray and he really does not want to do. In the end though Granma gets her way and he does an old fashion prayer for their sake even though he may not believe the same thing they do. Jim does guide them though into a better spiritual life and I think that they become better people because of him.

One night in the peach field, tragedy strikes Jim Casy. Tom and Jim are having a conversation because the old friends have not seen each other for some time when they are caught by guards in a place that is currently restricted. Jim pleas for the lives of the children and all of the people suffering outside of the farm, trying to get a job or just some food for him, and one of the guards strikes him in the head with a pick handle(Steinbeck, 527). He dies at this point and it was all because he was doing what was right. Jim was a great help and a great friend to the family and it enraged Tom so much that he killed the guard as soon as he killed Jim. Jim Casy was a man who always did the right thing and the family is hit pretty hard by the news of his death.

Steinbeck, John, and Robert J. DeMott. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Penguin, 1992. Print.