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In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck uses the harrowing journey of the Joad family to reveal the humanitarian crisis at the heart of the Dust Bowl. He maps the otherwise realistic tale onto biblical parallels, creating a humanistic working-class mythology with Jim Casy as a labor-organizing Christ figure. Jim Casy acts as a spiritual guide for Tom Joad, the primary protagonist of the novel, as he transforms from a man of practical self-interest to the successor of Casy’s message, moving forward to work in labor organizing at great personal risk. The plot-driven sections about the Joads are interspersed with intercalary chapters, which are unrelated to the main plot. These shorter vignettes serve both to explore the novel’s larger themes and to place the Joad family’s struggles into a larger context, making it clear that their plight is not an individual tale but part of a larger systemic injustice plaguing thousands of families.
When Tom first encounters Jim Casy in the novel, neither man has a clear sense of purpose. Tom, just released from prison, is used to simply taking each moment as it comes to survive. He is also keenly aware that his instinct to defend himself, just as he did when he killed Herb Turnbull, could lead him to being sent back to prison. Casy, no longer believing in Christian morality, is unsure of how to tend to people spiritually as he feels called to do. The novel’s action begins in earnest when Muley Graves explains to Tom and Jim Casy about how the tenant farmers have been driven from their lands and that the Joad family is planning to go to California. This inciting incident crystalizes a direction for both men in different ways. Jim Casy immediately sees this as an opportunity to be amongst people and to be of help and comfort. Tom, on the other hand, simply agrees to go where his family goes.
The first part of the rising action encompasses the family’s journey to California. The way they cope with these initial hardships prefigure the solutions for the drastic humanitarian crisis they find in California. For example, their meeting with the Wilson family just as Grampa Joad is beginning to die shows how community can ease grief and help create common purpose. This portion of the journey is also rife with biblical references that highlight the moral center of the novel. The journey of the 12 Joads through wilderness and desert mirrors that of the 12 tribes of Israel fleeing Egypt to the Promised Land. Amid both the realistic plot and religious imagery, Jim Casy encourages Tom to consider the future that might wait for them in California given all that they’ve seen and heard on the road. At this point, Tom isn’t ready to think beyond what is directly in front of him because he’s too afraid of the fear and anger that thinking beyond that might arouse.
When the Joads reach California, they quickly learn that what was pitched to them as the Promised Land is a nightmare, with slave-like conditions for the migrant laborers. At the Hooverville camp, Tom momentarily unleashes his righteous anger when he strikes the cop to defend Floyd. Jim Casy steps in to take the fall for this action, recalling Moses defending the Israelite slave from the taskmaster’s whip. This grim portion of the novel is immediately juxtaposed with the safety and joy the family finds in the government camp. The camp not only represents a concrete, hopeful solution for California’s humanitarian crisis, but serves to portray the collective body of migrant laborers in a positive light. In direct contradiction to the dehumanizing way the police and California landowners talk about the Midwestern migrants throughout the novel, when left to their own devices and shown dignity, they are clean, diligent, and community-minded. The horrors of Hooper ranch look all the worse in comparison because the landowners reject this clearly better system for one that foments chaos and violence as laborers compete for wages.
The climax of the novel comes with Jim Casy’s death. Just before he dies, Jim Casy asserts the importance of labor organizing and collective action, begging Tom to convince his family to reject self-interest for the greater good. Tom, once again, doesn’t believe he’s capable of changing anything, not even his father’s mind. When the police attack Casy, Steinbeck makes the parallel between Christ and Casy more explicit by having Casy echo Christ’s words, as he says that the strikebreakers do not understand the full effect of their actions. Tom’s immediate response to strike back against Casy’s murderers by smashing a man recalls how he killed Herb Turnbull in self-defense. He again has killed a man in a way that society condemns, and once again, the wrath that drives him to it is a matter of defending not only himself but the dignity of all migrant laborers. Once Tom’s wrath has been reawakened, he is able to fully embrace Jim Casy’s message. While in hiding, Tom begins to think seriously about the situation plaguing both his family and all migrant laborers. Previously, he couldn’t afford to think because he learned in prison that thinking too much can cause a person to become unhappy and stir-crazy. However, bringing that same attitude of getting along just to survive into the outside world only allows for inhumane systems to continue.
The falling action begins with the family’s escape from the Hooper ranch and Tom’s exit from the family to continue Jim Casy’s mission of labor organizing. Tom is able to exit the story at this point because the novel is not only about the plight of the Joad family or Tom’s activist awakening. As the intercalary chapters continually remind us, the Joads are one of thousands of families, and all their plights are one. At the conclusion of the novel, Rose of Sharon nurses a dying man with her breast milk, knitting together the plight of the Joad family with the plight of the other migrant laborers, joining the two into one family. Rose of Sharon nursing the dying man recalls imagery of the Virgin Mary nursing the Baby Jesus. Because of this parallel, her stillborn child seems to indicate that the very idea of a singular, individual messiah is itself stillborn. Instead, the potential to save the migrant laborers is in the laborers themselves.
