Articles
Steinbeck Studies
Thomas Hart Benton’s depiction of Jim Casy, from
The Grapes of Wrath
“That’s him. That shiny bastard.”:
Steinbeck Studies
Jim Casy and Christology
By Stephen Bullivant
In a letter dated 19 November, 1948, Steinbeck expresses his
desire to do “one more film—the life of Christ from the four
Gospels—adding and subtracting nothing.”1 The task would
have been a formidable one, and it comes as no surprise that his
wish was never fulfilled. Not only do the gospels provide us with
four different (sometimes very different) lives of Christ, but to
a certain, significant, extent they provide us with four different
Christs. Mark, for example, depicts a very “human” Jesus—a
Christ subject to pity and compassion, as well as fear, despair
and anger. John, on the other hand, emphasizes Jesus’ divinity:
his dignified aloofness, his serene foreknowledge. These differing
portrayals of Jesus are known as christologies.2 Had Steinbeck
attempted to bring his wish to fruition he would have been
faced with the decision of whether to adopt the christology of a
particular evangelist, or, by amalgamating the portrayals of all
four, create a new christology of his very own. In neither event
could he rightly be said to be “adding and subtracting nothing.”
Steinbeck’s own take on the “greatest story ever told” would,
no doubt, have been an intensely interesting piece of work. Our
disappointment that his plan was never realized is not, however,
without its consolations. According to Steinbeck scholars Christlike figures pervade his literary output: Joseph Wayne (To a God
Unknown), Jim Nolan (In Dubious Battle), and Juan Chicoy (The
Wayward Bus) to name just three. Among Steinbeck’s characters,
however, it is The Grapes of Wrath’s Jim Casy in whom the
imitatio Christi may most fully be discerned; and it is he who
shall form the basis of this study.
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Ever since the “Christlike” depiction of Casy was noted
by the more perceptive of the book’s early reviewers,3 literary
critics have delighted in combing the novel for gospel allusions.
Not only (we are told) does Casy share Jesus Christ’s initials,
but both become disillusioned with contemporary “piety,” fall
foul of the authorities, and die a martyr’s death for the supposed
advancement of a greater good; and it is a death both might have
avoided. Jesus, we are told, has legions of angels at his disposal
should he wish to escape (Mt 26.54); Casy (admittedly rather
less well-equipped) is said to duck “down into the swing” (my
italics) which kills him—suggesting, perhaps, a deliberate act.4
Furthermore, Casy sets out west with twelve of the Joads, one of
whom (Connie) ends up “betraying” the group in pursuit of the
“thirty pieces of silver” earned daily by the Oklahoma tractor
drivers he wishes he had joined (on the reckoning that thirty
silver dimes equals three dollars5). His funeral oration to Grampa
recalls, albeit in “Okie speech,” Jesus’ command to “Let the dead
bury their own dead” (Lk 9.60).6 In a neat piece of literary irony,
Casy himself seems vaguely aware of the parallels between them.
His grace at Uncle’s John’s place begins “I been thinkin’. . . I been
in the hills, thinkin’, almost you might say like Jesus went into the
wilderness to think His way out of a mess of troubles” [82-3],7
and (in perhaps the most striking affinity between the two) he
twice tells those about to kill him “You don’ know what you’re
a-doin’” [401], paraphrasing Jesus’ words of Lk 23.34.
This—for the most part8—is all well and good, but by itself
leaves only a superficial understanding of Casy’s “christlike”
nature. As was mentioned above, any attempt to depict Christ
presupposes a commitment to a certain “christology”; that is to
say, a certain notion of the “Person” of Jesus. The same applies
to “Christlike” characters also. What christology, then, underlies
Jim Casy? In order to answer this question, this study shall explore
parallels between Jim Casy and depictions of similar Christlike
figures (including some of Christ himself) in both antecedent and
contemporary American literature. In so doing, we shall attempt
to trace the “christological tradition” to which Casy belongs.
In October 1938, Steinbeck wrote to his agent to request
that the music and lyrics to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”
be published at the beginning of his new book, The Grapes of
Wrath. He explains his reasoning:
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This is one of the great songs of the world, and
as you read the book you will realize that the
words have a special meaning in this book. . . .
The title, Battle Hymn of the Republic, in itself
has a special meaning in the light of this book.9
The “special meaning” alluded to is not difficult to divine. The
second line of the song (“He is trampling out the vintage where
the grapes of wrath are stored”) is echoed not just in the book’s
title but also in the cautionary note at the end of chapter 25: “In
the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing
heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.” (363). The following
February, Steinbeck remained adamant that the whole song should
be published as a frontispiece. He writes to his editor and life-long
friend Pascal Covici: “I meant, Pat, to print all all all the verses of
the Battle Hymn. They’re all pertinent and they’re all exciting. . . ”10
Such eagerness on the part of the author warrants a little attention.
The first verse notwithstanding, when read in light of the novel it
is the final verse of the song which seems most strikingly “pertinent”:
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
Against the pious poeticism of the rest of the stanza, the third line
here is especially noteworthy. That one ought to follow Christ
“even unto death” is not, of course, an innovative suggestion
(indeed, it is a frequent theme of the gospel writers). That the
purpose of so doing is “to make men free,” however, is. Such
a concept is wholly foreign to the gospel Jesus, who speaks of
martyrdom as a means to personal salvation, not corporal
liberation (e.g. Mk 8.34b-35: “For those who want to save their
life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for
the sake of the gospel, will save it.”). In interpreting Christian
discipleship in terms of aligning oneself with the cause of temporal
liberation, the “Battle Hymn” adapts Jesus’ example to the
contemporary situation. Or, to put it theologically, the concrete
reality provides the basis for a new christological response.
The christological tradition expressed by (if not, in fact,
originating in) the “Battle Hymn” may be traced in other
American literature right up to the time of Steinbeck’s writing
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of The Grapes of Wrath (and beyond). This notion of Christ as
a liberator (depicted by Steinbeck in such political militants as
Jim Casy and In Dubious Battle’s Jim Nolan) is represented in
several works which we shall survey here: Alfred Hayes’ 1925
poem “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night.” Sarah Cleghorn’s
“Comrade Jesus” published in 1938,11 and—most significantly
for our present purposes—two songs by Woody Guthrie,
“Jesus Christ” (1940) and “Christ for President” (undated).
Joe Hill, a Swedish born émigré, was a prominent member
and organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (the IWW,
or as they are perhaps better known, “the Wobblies”) whom he
joined around 1910 whilst working as a docker in California. He
traveled widely with the IWW, and by early 1914 found himself in
Salt Lake City. On January 10, John G. Morrison, a local grocer,
and his son Arling were shot dead in a robbery by two men masked
by red bandanas. That same evening Hill, carrying a pistol, was
found on the doctor’s steps with a bullet wound—one he claimed
he’d suffered following an argument with a friend; a red bandana
was found in his rooms. Although Hill vehemently denied his
involvement, he was duly arrested and—refusing to testify at his
own trial—was sentenced to death. He was executed by firing
squad on November 15, 1915. His last words to his supporters
are said to have been: “Don’t mourn for me. Organize!”
Despite the apparently strong case against him, controversy
surrounds the trial and execution of Joe Hill to this day. With
suspicions that Hill was framed on account of his political
activities, he was quickly revered as a martyr to the workers’
cause. Very much in this vein is Hayes’ 1925 poem “I Dreamed I
Saw Joe Hill Last Night,” the second stanza of which goes:
“In Salt Lake, Joe,” says I to him,
him standing by my bed,
“They framed you on a murder charge,”
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead,”
Says Joe, “But I ain’t dead.”
The poem was set to music in 1936 by Earl Robinson, and went
on to achieve wide currency—most notably in the fifties and
sixties in the repertoires of Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger and Joan
Baez.
Of particular significance to the arguments of the present
essay are stanzas four and five of the poem/song:
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And standing there as big as life
and smiling with his eyes,
says Joe “What they can never kill
went on to organize,
went on to organize.
“From San Diego up to Maine,
in every mine and mill,
where working-men defend their rights,
it’s there you find Joe Hill,
it’s there you find Joe Hill!”
We need not look very far to find support for the claim that Joe
Hill’s portrayal here is “Christlike.” The mention of him being
“framed” calls to mind the gospel accounts of Jesus’ trial before
the Sanhedrin—which, according to Luke and John at least,
was conducted after Pilate’s cross-examination had found “no
case against him” (e.g. Jn 19.38b; cf. Lk 23.13-5). It should
also be mentioned that Hill’s silence at his trial (although not
mentioned by Hayes) makes his story particularly conducive to
“christologization”: “Pilate said to him, ‘Do you not hear how
many accusations they make against you?’ But he gave no answer,
not even to a single charge, so that the governor was greatly
amazed.” (Mt 27.13-14).
The strongest parallel between “I Dreamed I Saw Joe
Hill Last Night” and the gospel record is to be found in Hill’s
declaration that he is not, in fact, dead, but may instead be found
wherever working men are organized to “defend their rights.”
In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples “where two
or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Mt
18.20), and his last words to them are: “And remember, I am
with you always, to the end of the age” (Mt 28.20). Also relevant
here are the Johannine discourses on the coming of the Holy
Spirit which, he says, will “be with you for ever” on the condition
that “you love me, [and] you will keep my commandments” (Jn
14.15-16). Quite how John conceives the role of the Spirit is a
point of scholarly dispute, but on a simple level it may be well to
regard it as being “the presence of Jesus when Jesus is absent.”12
Of course, Jesus makes no mention of working men defending
their rights (as does Hayes’ Joe Hill), but as we saw with the
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“Battle Hymn” (and we shall see again in other texts), such a
reinterpretation of Jesus’ words is a natural one (regardless of
strict textual justification) in light of certain circumstances. In
“Joe Hill” (that is, the Joe Hill of the poem/song as opposed to
what he might have been in reality) we have almost a prototype
for Steinbeck’s Casy. Both encourage the workers to “organize,”
die a martyr’s death, and are depicted as “Christlike.”
[As a slight aside, on the subject of Joe Hill’s promise to be
wherever men fight for justice, it will be noted that the theme is
also employed by Steinbeck, although not (at least, not directly)
this time in his portrayal of Casy. Tom Joad, in his farewell speech
to his mother, declares:
. . . I’ll be aroun’ in the dark. I’ll be ever’where—
wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry
people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop
beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. If Casy knowed, why,
I’ll be in the way guys yell when they mad an’—I’ll be
in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ when
they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the
stuff raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll
be there. See? God, I’m talkin’ like Casy. Comes of
thinkin’ about him so much. Seems like I can see him
sometimes. (436)
Much work has been done on the Christlike nature of Tom
himself,13 not to mention his alleged parallels to figures such as
Moses14 and St Paul. In light of the biblical passages we have been
considering above, we might well add the Holy Spirit of John’s
gospel to the list. At Jn 14.26 Jesus tells his disciples: .” . . the
Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach
you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.”
Needless to say, this is precisely the role Tom takes upon himself
with regard to the words of Jim Casy.]
While Hayes’ “Joe Hill” takes a well-known political figure
and “christologizes” him, Sarah Cleghorn’s “Comrade Jesus”
does precisely the opposite. Here it is Jesus himself who is the
(unsurprisingly) “Christlike” labour leader.
Thanks to Saint Matthew, who had been
At mass meetings in Palestine,
We know whose side was spoken for
When Comrade Jesus had the floor.
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This mention of Matthew is noteworthy, for it is on words
recorded by him that Cleghorn primarily bases her christology.
Prefiguring the Latin American liberation theologians by almost
three decades, she draws strongly on Mt 25.31-46 and its claim
that “whatever you did to the least of these my brothers, you did
it me”:
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty
and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger
and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me
clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in
prison and you visited me. (Mt 25.35-6)
This suggestion that Christ is to be identified—and in a sense
more real than the purely figurative—with the poor and afflicted
is paraphrased in the poem.
Where sore they toil and hard they lie,
Among the great unwashed, dwell I.
The tramp, the convict, I am he;
Cold-shoulder him, cold-shoulder me.
The direct equation between Jesus and socialism embodied
in the poem’s title is a bold one. It also has its—rather subtler—
parallels in The Grapes of Wrath. Just prior to his murder, Casy
cries to the approaching vigilantes “You fellas don’ know what
you’re doin’. You’re helpin’ to starve kids.” This obvious allusion
to Jesus’ own words of Lk 23.34 (“Father, forgive them, for they
do not know what they are doing”) is promptly answered with
“Shut up, you red son-of-a-bitch.” (401) The importance of this
exchange is reiterated later in the text as Tom repeats it to Ma, who
comments “I wisht Granma [i.e. “The most devoutly Christian of
the Joads”15] could a heard.” Visser is correct when he comments
that this is “a roundabout but unmistakable association” of
being “red” “with Christ.”16 (That said, of course, in Steinbeck’s
California “a red is any son-of-a-bitch that wants thirty cents
an hour when we’re payin’ twenty-five!” [309]). Nor is this the
only link it is possible to make between “Christlike Casy” and
Communist ideology. Indeed, according to some of the book’s
earliest reviewers The Grapes of Wrath is nothing more than an
odious, lying piece of “Red Propaganda.”17 Moreover, such an
“unsympathetic” reading of the text finds a rather more modern
proponent in the guise of Stephen Railton—he writes:
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“Large numbers of readers” could not be expected
to endorse militant socialism. Instead, Steinbeck
shrewdly insinuates his revolutionary vision by
presenting it [in the character of Jim Casy] in the
familiar guise of Christianity.18
By far the most famous and, from an artistic perspective, the
most successful (Steinbeck aside) attempts to represent the kind of
“liberation christology” we have been tracing occur in the work
of Woody Guthrie. The relationships (both personal and literary)
between Guthrie and Steinbeck have been detailed at length by
H. R. Stoneback, and need not be repeated here.19 As something
of a preamble to this section, however, it may be worth quoting
Steinbeck’s own appraisal of Guthrie:
Woody is just Woody. Thousands of people do not
know he has any other name. He is just a voice and
a guitar. He sings the songs of a people and I suspect
he is, in a way, that people. Harsh-voiced and nasal,
his guitar hanging like a tire iron on a rusty rim,
there is nothing sweet about Woody, and there is
nothing sweet about the songs he sings. But there is
something more important for those who will listen.
There is the will of a people to endure and fight
against oppression. I think we call this the American
Spirit.20
If Steinbeck admired Guthrie’s work, the feeling was more than
mutual. In 1940, after having seen Ford’s The Grapes of the
Wrath and finding it to be “best cussed pitcher I ever seen,”21
Guthrie set about composing his own version of the Joads’ story.
The result was one of Guthrie’s more famous songs, the seventeen
verse epic “Ballad of Tom Joad”—of which Steinbeck is reported
to have said “Took me years to do Grapes of Wrath and that little
squirt tells the whole story in just a few stanzas.”22
In “Tom Joad,” Preacher Casey (as Guthrie—who probably
never read the book23—consistently spells it) retains his role as
the pivotal figure. Indeed, Guthrie’s précis of Casy’s ideology is
striking both in its perceptiveness and its brevity:
I preached for the Lord a mighty long time;
Preached about the rich and the poor.
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Dust jacket of the Viking first edition of
The Grapes of Wrath.
Us workin’ folks got to all get together,
‘Cause we ain’t got a chance any more,
We ain’t got a chance anymore.
Casy’s character evidently made a strong impression on Guthrie;
he features in another of his songs from that year, “Vigilante
Man”:
Preacher Casey was just a working man,
And he said, “Unite, all you working men.”
Killed him in the river, some strange man,
Was that a vigilante man?
It was in 1940 also that Guthrie penned yet another of his
more famous songs, “Jesus Christ.” The lyrics (of which there
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are several variants) were set to a traditional tune in the Guthrie
repertoire—the traditional outlaw ballad “Jesse James.” This in
itself is significant in light of the politicized, liberation christology
we have been considering. “Jesse James” (as so frequently in the
“outlaw” genre, e.g. “Billy the Kid” and “Pretty Boy Floyd,” not
to mention the myriad songs about Robin Hood in the British
tradition) is portrayed in the song as “a friend to the poor” who
would “never see a man suffer pain.” Guthrie’s own, partially
rewritten, version of the song brings such elements to the fore
with the addition of such verses as the ones below:
They was living on a farm in the old Missouri hills,
With a silver-haired mother and a home;
Now the railroad bullies come to chase them off their
land,
But they found that Frank and Jesse wouldn’t run.
Then a railroad scab, he went and got a bomb,
And he throwed it at the door –
And it killed Mrs. James a-sleeping in her bed,
So Jesse grabbed a big forty-four.
“Jesse James” was a popular song with a familiar melody; the
“statement” made by making Jesus its new subject (new wine into
old wineskins?— cf. Mk 2.22) can hardly have gone unnoticed;
nor, one presumes was it intended to.
The eponymous hero of “Jesus Christ” is especially instructive
to the present study. (We need not be overly concerned that the
song was written marginally later than The Grapes of Wrath—
both works attest to the same broad christological tradition.
Moreover, it is not too far a stretch of the imagination to speculate
as to how far Casy may have influenced Guthrie’s Jesus.) Here
“the carpenter” (cf. Mk 6.3) is introduced with the words:
Jesus Christ was a man who traveled through the land,
A hard working man and brave.
He said to the rich “Give your goods to the poor.”
But they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.
The opening words emphasize the humanity of Christ, and the
subsequent ones in turn cast him as an industrious migrant
worker, a preacher of economic equality, and a martyr at the
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hands of a shadowy “they.” A more Casylike Christ it would be
hard to imagine.
Jesus’ command to the rich to give their “goods to the poor,”
recalling Mk 10.17-22, receives a fuller expression in the sixth
stanza:
One day Jesus stopped at a rich man’s door.
“What must I do to be saved?”
“You must take all your goods and give it to the poor,”
And so they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.
It is perhaps worth remarking here on the similarity between
this verse and a couplet in Cleghorn’s “Comrade Jesus”: “The
kingdom’s gate is low and small; / The rich can scarce get through
at all” (which seems to draw both on the passage mentioned above
and Mt 7.14’s “For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that
leads to life, and there are few who find it.”) The idea of Jesus
making “a preferential option for the poor” is a popular one in
the texts we have been considering. Similarly, Guthrie emphasizes
the social content of Jesus’ ministry:
He went to the sick, he went to the poor;
And he went to the hungry and the lame;
Said that the poor would one day win this world,
And so they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.
Moreover, Guthrie’s Jesus not only quotes Mt 11.34 (“I come not
to bring you peace, but a sword”) in verse three, but also threatens
in verse eight what, in Steinbeck’s parlance, might be put as “the
grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for
the vintage.” (363):
When the love of the poor shall one day turn to hate,
When the patience of the workers gives away;
“Would be better for you rich if you never had been
born,”
So they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.
In the original version of the song quite who this “they” who
“laid Jesus Christ in his grave” are remains obscure. In other
(later?) versions, however, the mystery is resolved. Aided and
abetted by “a dirty little coward named Judas Iscariot,” the blame
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for killing Jesus is lain at the doors of—in turn—“the bankers
and the preachers,” “the cops and the soldiers,” and finally,
“the landlord and the soldiers that he hired.” It is interesting to
compare these groups with those groups in The Grapes of Wrath
who conspire against the migrant workers—i.e. precisely those
doing to the Okies now what was done to Jesus two thousand
years before.
The song—in all its versions—concludes with a verse making
it quite plain (as if it was not already!) that Guthrie does not just
have in mind past events:
This song was written in New York City,
Of rich man, preacher and slave,
But if Jesus was to preach like He preached in Galilee,
They would lay Jesus Christ in His grave.
As far as Guthrie is concerned, of course, the bankers, preachers,
cops, soldiers and landlords are still very much at large. Helpfully,
on this theme he provides his own commentary on the song,
written for an anthology of his entitled Hard Hitting Songs for
Hard Hit People:
I wrote this song looking out of a rooming house
window in New York City in the winter of 1940.
I saw how the poor folks lived and then I saw how
the rich folks lived and the poor folks down and out
and cold and hungry, and the rich ones out drinking
good whiskey and celebrating and wasting handfulls
of money at gambling and women, and I got to
thinking about what Jesus said and what if He was
to walk into New York City and preach like He used
to. They’d lock Him back in jail as sure as you’re
reading this. “Even as you’ve done it unto the least
of these little ones, you have done it to me.”24
“Jesus Christ” is not Guthrie’s only song evincing a christology
of the kind with which we are concerned. In the archives of the
Woody Guthrie Foundation, New York, is a manuscript entitled
“Christ for President.” Sadly, neither this manuscript nor the
typed copies with it are dated; more sadly, no tune for the song
survives. Again, Jesus’ blue-collar credentials are stressed—most
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The only way we could ever beat
These crooked politician men,
Is to cast the money changers out of the temple;
Put the carpenter in.
Sthepen Bullivant
notably with him being referred to as “the carpenter” at several
points during the song, as here:
Fulminating against corrupt politicians is, of course, a hallmark
of Guthrie’s output (not that he is averse to giving credit where
credit’s due, cf. 1963’s “Dear Mrs Roosevelt”). Here Guthrie’s
proposed solution would ensure “a job and a pension for young
and old” and a reversal of the current situation in which:
Every year we waste enough,
To feed the ones who starve.
We build our civilization up,
And we shoot it down with wars.
Guthrie’s modest proposal is not, of course, wholly serious.
Rather, he puts Christ’s example up as a mirror against which to
judge contemporary piety and politics (as indeed do the gospel
writers). Steinbeck employs a similar device. From the outset
of the novel Casy is portrayed as one who has rejected popular
religious practice. Aside from several hints at the beginning, the
reader’s full understanding of this brand of “Christianity” comes
from hints and asides which occur frequently throughout the rest
of the book. “Christlike Casy” could scarcely be more at variance
with, for example, the self-confessed “lamb’-blood Christian”
Lisbeth Sandry and the preachers she so admires: “Went to a
meetin’ in Weedpatch las’ night. Know what the preacher says?
He says, ‘They’s wicketness in that camp.’ He says, ‘The poor is
tryin’ to be rich.’” (332).
As a postscript to this section it is worth noting that the
kind of christology with which we have concerned ourselves
does not end with the work of Guthrie and Steinbeck. It remains
a frequent theme in the folk tradition, as represented by songs
from artists so diverse as Ewan MacColl (“The Ballad of the
Carpenter”; 1960), Jackson Browne (“Rebel Jesus”; 1991), and
Steve Earle (“Christmas in Washington”; 1997). This latter song
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is of particular interest—suggesting as it does Jesus’ return as a
side-kick to Woody Guthrie:
So come back Woody Guthrie,
Come back to us now.
Tear your eyes from paradise,
And rise again somehow.
If you run into Jesus,
Maybe he can help you out.
Come back Woody Guthrie to us now.
___________________
The purpose of this study, as stated at the close of the
introduction, was to “attempt to trace the ‘christological
tradition’ to which Jim Casy belongs.” This has now, I hope,
largely been achieved. Hitherto, the quest for literary antecedents
and parallels for Steinbeck’s portrayal of Casy has largely been
confined to trawling through the gospels. This is, no doubt, a
fruitful exercise—but it is scarcely exhaustive. What I have tried
to do in this essay is to establish Casy’s position in a christological
tradition; a tradition stretching from the evangelists themselves,
via the battlefields of the Civil War, to writers such as Cleghorn,
Hayes and Guthrie—and beyond.
This realization is not, it is true, a wholly new one. Already
in the 1960s Edwin Moseley noted parallels between Casy and
a particular sort of “Christ figure of the ’thirties”—i.e. the sort
depicted in Guthrie’s “Jesus Christ.” Moseley, however, errs in
suggesting such a narrow time-frame, as (surely) he also does in
characterizing this christology as merely presenting “in the last
analysis a kind of melodramatic, if moving, hero who represents
the potential goodness in man.”25 Far nearer the mark was Louis
Owens, writing in 1989:
Christ, it must be remembered, came as a herald of
a new consciousness, as a leader of the oppressed
masses, and as a sacrificial figure whose death would
offer man a new beginning and a second chance. Jim
Casy, with his eye-catching initials, is such a Christ
figure in this novel.26
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1
To Bo Beskow, Pacific Grove, 19 November, 1948—reprinted in
E. Steinbeck & R. Wallstan (eds.), John Steinbeck: A Life in Letters
[hereafter SLL] (New York: Penguin, 2001) 341-44, at 343.
2
Christology being, in the words of eminent Catholic theologian Karl
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Notes
Rahner: “That part of theology which deals with Jesus Christ, and in a
strict sense with his Person. . . ” See K. Rahner & H. Vorgrimler, Concise
Theological Dictionary (Burns & Oates, 1983) 70.
3
Malcolm Cowley, for example, remarks on Casy’s transformation into
“a Christ-like labour leader.” See “American Tragedy,” New Republic
98 (3 May 1939): 382-3 (reprinted in J. R. McElrath, J. S. Crisler, & S.
Shillinglaw (eds.), John Steinbeck: The Contemporary Reviews [hereafter
TCR] (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996) 166-7. Similarly, Charles Lee
makes fleeting reference to “Christ-like Casy” in “The Grapes of Wrath:
The Tragedy of the American Sharecropper,” Boston Herald (22 April
1939, Sec. A, p. 7), printed in B. A. Heavilin, ed., The Critical Response
to John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath [hereafter Heavilin] (Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 2000) 47-9, at 47).
4
An interpretation suggested (tentatively) by C. Kocela (“A Postmodern
Steinbeck, or Rose of Sharon Meets Oedipa Maas,” in Heavilin, 247-67,
at 257).
5
J. Fontenrose, “The Grapes of Wrath,” in Heavilin, 71-86, at 82.
6
Ibid., 82.
7
Page references (given in square brackets) are to the 1967 Viking edition
of The Grapes of Wrath. All Biblical quotations (excepting those quoted
from other authors) are from the NRSV translation.
8
For example, the attempt to wrest meaning from the fact that among
the twelve Joads are two men named Thomas (cf. Fontenrose, 82-3).
The synoptists concur on there being only one Thomas among Jesus’
entourage (Mt 10.2-4; Mk 3.16-19; Lk 6.14-16), although according to
John the Twelve did include two men named Judas (see Jn 14.22). Also,
both Levant and Visser remark on how Casy accepts his martyrdom
“with a phrase that recalls Christ’s last words.” The phrase which they
do in fact recall (Lk 23.34) is not, however, Jesus’ last—cf. H. Levant,
The Novels of John Steinbeck (Columbia : University of Missouri Press,
29
Articles
Steinbeck Studies
1974), 103; N. Visser, “Audience and Closure in The Grapes of Wrath,”
in Heavilin, 201-19, at 209.
9
To Elizabeth Otis, Los Gatos, 1938, reprinted in SLL, p. 173.
10
SLL, p. 175.
11
It is not certain when the poem was written. It was, however, published
as part of a 1938 collection entitled A New Anthology of Modern Poetry,
edited by Selden Rodman. The book is now, it seems, difficult to find.
12
R. E. Brown, “The Paraclete in the Fourth Gospel,” New Testament
Studies 13 (1966-7), p. 128.
13
E.g. Fontenrose, p. 84; L. Owens, The Grapes of Wrath: Trouble in the
Promised Land (New York: Twayne 1989) 41.
14
Fontenrose, pp. 80-1.
15
S. Railton, “Pilgrims’ Politics: Steinbeck’s Art of Conversion,” in D.
Wyatt (ed.), New Essays on The Grapes of Wrath (New York: Cambridge
UP, 1990) 27-46, at 38.
16
17
Visser, p. 209.
A. D. Spearman, “Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath Branded as Red
Propaganda by Father A. D. Spearman,” San Francisco Examiner, 4
June 1939, Section 1, p. 12 (reprinted in TCR, p. 171); see also “Grapes
of Wrath,” Collier’s 104, 2 September 1939, p. 53 (TCR, pp. 174-5).
18
Railton, p. 40.
19
H. R. Stoneback, “Rough People. . . Are the Best Singers: Woody
Guthrie, John Steinbeck, and Folksong,” in D. R. Noble (ed.), The
Steinbeck Question (Troy, N.Y.: Whitston Pub. Co., 1993) 143-70, at
146.
20
In S. Shillinglaw & J. J. Benson (eds.), Of Men and Their Making
(London: Allen Lane, 2002) 225-6.
21
In one of his columns for People’s World—helpfully reprinted in Woody
Sez (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1975) 133.
22
Reported in E. Robbin, Woody Guthrie and Me (Berkeley, CA :
Lancaster-Miller Publishers, 1979). The claim, however, does not go
uncontested—cf. Stoneback, pp. 158-9.
23
Pete Seeger recalls a conversation he had with Guthrie: “I asked him
if he had read the book and he said, “No, but I saw the movie. Good
movie”” —see P. Seeger, The Incompleat Folksinger, New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1972) 44.
30
Steinbeck Studies
A. Lomax & P. Seeger (eds.), Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People,
Oak Publications 1967.
25
E. Moseley, “Christ as the Brother of Man,” in A. M. Donohue (ed.),
A Casebook on “The Grapes of Wrath” (New York: Crowell, 1968) at
216-17.
26
L. Owens, p. 40.
Sthepen Bullivant
24
Stephen Bullivant is a doctoral student in Theology at Oxford University.
Aside from his current research (the salvation of atheists in modern
Catholic theology) he is particularly interested in the works of Steinbeck,
Hemingway and Dostoevsky. He can be contacted at: stephen.bullivant@
chch.ox.ac.uk.
31