[In the following essay, Brasch finds elements from stories in the Old Testament in The Grapes of Wrath.]

John Steinbeck's Salinas Valley has always rested in the shade of the mountains of the Old Testament, and the legends of the people of Israel have frequently charted and illuminated the vicissitudes of his characters. Humble gestures and heroic achievements in Steinbeck's novels recount the history of “God's chosen people” as they struggled from the Garden of Eden to the Promised Land. Frequently, the speech rhythms of Steinbeck's chosen people echo the stately rhythms of the King James Version of the Old Testament. Even when he used quotations from the Vedas (To a God Unknown) or Paradise Lost (In Dubious Battle) as epigraphs for his novels, the tone, diction, syntax, and characterization were reminiscent of the language patterns of the Old Testament writers. This debt to the old chronicles of grief and pain has never been more obvious and influential than in The Grapes of Wrath (1939).¹

The religious, political, philosophical and economic context of The Grapes of Wrath has concerned readers and critics of Steinbeck's work ever since the novel was published.² Jim Casy has usually been accepted as the articulator of Steinbeck's concern. Recalling the religious mentors in great nineteenth-century novels by Melville and Dostoievski, for example, critics have described the presence of Casy as the fulcrum around which the characters and events revolve. Generally speaking, this has involved the somewhat contradictory assumptions that Casy is a Christ-figure and the Joads (read Judah) represent the Children of Israel returning from exile in Egypt. On occasion the paradox has been resolved by suggesting that in the face of economic calamity, philosophical issues generally remain unresolved. Rather sentimentally, much of the philosophical speculation has assumed that the lack of resolution could be explained by noting the conflicting echoes of American transcendentalism. Steinbeck, however, was not such a casual writer, and the easy assumption that Casy represents the voice of salvation, even though his initials are “J. C.,” fails to recognize and acknowledge the precise nature of Steinbeck's inspiration and focus as he expanded his journalistic reports on the Okies into one of the most powerful social novels ever written.

I am convinced that a careful reading of the text of The Grapes of Wrath demonstrates that John Steinbeck was not the great celebrant of American values and assumptions articulated by Emerson and Whitman. When Casy emerged from forty days in the wilderness, it was not for the purpose of reaffirming the Over-soul which presumably guided the actions and thoughts of nineteenth century Americans. Nor was Casy the end of a long line of prophets predicting the ultimate triumph of the afflicted on the basis of salvation and hope articulated by Jesus Christ. Casy returned to question the authenticity and, indeed, the very existence of the God who had apparently abandoned his chosen people. In short, his voice was not one of affirmation and consolation; he was a skeptic. He was not Joshua leading the chosen people to victory or Job affirming his God after “the dark night of the soul” or Jeremiah preaching truth to the dispossessed in exile. And he most certainly was not Jesus Christ. Casy was the despairing man of God who found a little comfort in the pleasures and actions and humour of men. He was not a preacher; he was the preacher. Casy exemplifies the writer of Ecclesiastes who in Melville's tribute was “the truest of all men,” because he wrote “the truest of all books”: Ecclesiastes, “the fine hammered steel of woe.”³

Casy has traditionally and rightly been considered the philosophical centre of the novel. Recognition of his Ecclesiastical origins, however, places a different complexion on the novel. Casy's origins were presented by Tom Joad. Just before Tom leaves his mother because of his impending arrest, the two of them examine their general plight, and Tom tells her about Casy's influence. He recalls a sermon by Casy:

Says one time he went out in the wilderness to find his own soul, an' he foun' he didn' have no soul that was his'n. Says he foun' he jus' got a little piece of a great big soul. Says a wilderness ain't no good, 'cause his little piece of soul wasn't no good 'less it was with the rest, an' was whole. Funny how I remember. Didn' think I was even listenin'. But I know now a fella ain't no good alone.”⁴

Casy's reference to a “little piece of a great big soul” is generally considered as a folk rendering of Emerson's Over-Soul, “within which everyman's particular being is contained and made one with all other; that common heart. …” Tom's passage, however, did not end there. Steinbeck carefully emphasized Casy's relationship to the writer of Ecclesiastes in the passage that followed. Tom went on:

“He spouted out some Scripture once, an' it didn' soun' like no hell-fire Scripture. He tol' it twicet, an' I remember it. Says it's from the Preacher.”

“How's it go, Tom?”

“Goes, ‘Two are better than one, because they have good reward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lif' up his fellow, but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him up.’ That's part of her.”

“Go on,” Ma said. “Go on, Tom.”

“Jus' a little bit more. ‘Again, if two lie together then they have heat; but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him, and a three-fold cord is not quickly broken.’”

“An' that's Scripture?”

“Casy said it was. Called it the Preacher.”

“… An' I got to thinkin', Ma—most of the preachin' is about the poor we shall have always with us, an' if you got nothin', why, jus' fol' your hands an' to hell with it, you gonna git ice cream on gol' plates when you're dead. An' then this hear Preacher says two get a better reward for their work.”

(p. 570; my italics)

“The Preacher”, of course, is the author of Ecclesiastes. The italicised passages are verses 9-12 of chapter 4, where the Old Testament preacher reflects on the obstacles to happiness especially as they are related to labour and wealth. Tom realizes that Casy's quotation of the preacher represented a departure from the opiates provided by complacent Southern preachers whose platitudinous efforts amounted to duplicitous apologia for the exploitive economic system. “Ice cream on gol' plates when you're dead” is no solution for Tom, Casy, or John Steinbeck in the face of the abuse of the workers and their families. Casy, like the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, teaches Tom that there is more consolation in the warmth and comfort of another human being than in all the consolations of religion and transcendental philosophy. Actually, the introduction of Casy in Chapter 4 is, broadly speaking, a summary of the events and attitudes described in Ecclesiastes.

Casy's earthy diction was sometimes upsetting to conventional critics who were reluctant to consider Casy's religious and philosophical orientation, but Casy merely reflects his Old Testament origins. Both the Old Testament sage and Casy realized that one of their chief problems was to seek out “acceptable words” (12:10) in order to explain their disillusionment to their followers and still remain their leaders. The old words of Israel's greatness and, evidently, nineteenth century America were insufficient. The language of Emerson was of little concern to the Okies trapped in the dust bowls of Oklahoma.

Casy's involvement with the Okies has always given rise to some skepticism just as the Old Testament Preacher's indulgences (See Eccl. 2:10. “I withheld not my heart from any joy.”) led to God's displeasure. Whether he was participating in militant actions or being oversolicitous of one of the attractive women on the journey, Casy had a way of rationalizing his involvement. Casy's human concerns which refuse to be intimidated by theological orthodoxy or “puritanical” tradition are not unlike Koheleth's reminiscences about his earlier life. He writes, for example:

I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labour and the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun.⁵

Casy also ponders his sexual interests in the light of his emphasis on proletarian concerns, as did the Old Testament writer (7:20, for example). Casy analyzes himself:

I use to think it was jus' me. Finally it give me such a pain I quit an' went off by myself an' give her a damn good thinkin' about … I says to myself, ‘What's gnawin' you? Is it the screwin'?’ An' I says, ‘No, it's the sin.’ … 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’ … 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.

(pp. 31-32)

The diction is unbiblical, but the tone and substance recall the result of Koheleth's introspection: “For there is not a just man upon earth that doeth good, and sinneth not.” (7:20). As Koheleth considered the distinctions between good and evil in his own life and in the history of the Israelites, the only conclusion he recorded was the one which Casy and the migrant workers ultimately adopt: “… God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.” (7:29).

Steinbeck, however, not only patterned his itinerant preacher on the Old Testament preacher but was influenced by the general philosophical disposition of the Old Testament skeptic⁶ in at least three areas. In the first place, Steinbeck's proletarian emphasis closely parallels the Old Testament lament for the exploited workers in Israel. Secondly, the titular emphasis promising that the “grapes of wrath” are ready for the harvest—that oppression leads inevitably to violent conflict—stems from Koheleth's warnings. Finally, and perhaps most revealing, Steinbeck's attempts to find a solution to the conflict clearly reflect the admonitions of the Old Testament sage: the most practical solution to economic and political tyranny is to be found in compassion and sympathy and human understanding. An examination of these three aspects of the novel in addition to consideration of the theological origins and pronouncements of the unorthodox preacher, Jim Casy, reveals Steinbeck as a writer profoundly influenced by the wisdom of Old Testament skepticism especially as it is recorded in Ecclesiastes.

Proletarian concern as recorded in Ecclesiastes was the result of the problems of the United Kingdom of Israel which led to its division into the kingdoms of Judah and Israel in about 1000 to 900 B.C. Earlier historians (Samuel and the writers of Kings and Chronicles, for example) had extolled the victories and triumphs of the former heroes of Israel such as Moses, Joshua, and David which led to great wealth and prosperity for the faithful. Hard times had come to the children of Israel, however, and Koheleth set his task to speculate on the true worth of man in the light of Israel's former glory. Somewhat reluctantly he recognized that he had to provide consolation for the dispossessed, because the Israeli dream, like its American counterpart, was not always apparent or symbolized in the natural landscape and its rulers. Ecclesiastes was not, therefore, a book of Psalms or a chronicle of the successful kings of Israel. Koheleth philosophized that “… in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” (1:18). Moreover, love and concern for his people and their labours led Koheleth to recognize that his source of power as a leader or convener in the assembly (i.e.: a preacher), lay in his own dependency on the labour of the people: “… the profit of the earth is for all: the king himself is served by the field.” (5:9). All riches, therefore, are derived from the labour of the people of Israel.

Accordingly, there are many references to the proletarian point of view in Ecclesiastes. Koheleth recorded that “All things are full of labour” (1:8) and that since there is “no new thing under the sun” (1:9) labour becomes the means whereby progress and quality may be evaluated. As a result, Koheleth argues that man should “rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion …” (3:22). If man is temporarily disheartened because he is dispossessed, he should be gratified in the knowledge that “the profit of the earth is for all.” (5:9). Moreover, the quiet humor of the labourer will serve to preserve his sense of dignity and self-respect: “The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the rich [man] will not suffer him to sleep.” (5:12). Finally, because man has “no preeminence above a beast” and returns to dust like the beasts, there can be “nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his works.” (3:19-22).

Just as the Old Testament preacher realized that the common labourers' real remuneration lay in the satisfactions which they received from honest toil, so Steinbeck's characters consoled themselves with thoughts of their ultimate survival and at least partial triumph. Just as Koheleth recognized that “There is no end of all the people” (4:16), Ma cautions Tom in one of the focal passages of the novel:

“Easy,” she said. “You got to have patience. Why, Tom—us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we're the people that live. They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people—we go on.”

(p. 383)

When Tom asks her how she knows this, her faith triumphs over his skepticism as she answers, “I don't know how” (p. 383), and this intuitive assertion leaves the Joads in a mystical relation to their surroundings from which they gain strength even in moments of intense despair. Considered in the light of Ecclesiastes, the passage reflects a proletarian recognition of the importance of labour to the kingdom of Israel and not some vague echo of Ralph Waldo Emerson or Carl Sandburg. The Biblical tone is emphasized in several intercalations as faith in proletarian progress, and triumph is prophesized in Biblical syntax:

This you may say of man—when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national religions, economics, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back. This you may say and know it and know it.

(pp. 204-5, my italics)

The passage continues in a Biblical tone and rhythm revealing Steinbeck's insistence on the Biblical precedent, as he warns of oppression. There is strength for the poor in this knowledge.

Steinbeck's attitude toward justice was significantly established, moreover, by the Old Testament skeptic who pleaded for justice in the tradition of the great prophets of Israel. Virtually alone, he recognized the futility of expecting justice on this earth.⁷ Koheleth had attempted to console his poor with the knowledge that their labour rendered them the basic fabric of the nation, but he was quite aware that “oppression maketh a wise man mad” (7:7). It was this inevitable result of excessive persecution and eternal frustration that Steinbeck also wanted to avoid in California. The ominous predictions in The Grapes of Wrath are legion. The titular passage of the novel warns of impending disaster in Biblical diction and tone and with imagery from Ecclesiastes:

… in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the soul of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

(p. 477)

The problem with injustice, both Koheleth and Steinbeck argue, is that it is futile. In the final analysis Steinbeck feels with the Old Testament radical that “… that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts … as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast; for all is vanity.” (3:19). Both commentators on the lot of the dispossessed recognized that in the sense of community and the warmth of fellow sufferers, some meaning or rationale would emerge. According to Koheleth, Yahweh's power was apparently as far from the people as the abstract consolation of American capitalism and transcendentalism were removed from the Okies for Steinbeck. Significantly, Steinbeck had Casy resort to direct quotation from Ecclesiastes in order to underline the point of closest contact between the Old Testament writer and the history of the dispossessed Okies:

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall the one will lif' up his fellow, but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him up.

(Grapes, p. 570; Eccl. 4:9, 10)

Those desperate consolations parallel proletarian awareness in the fourth chapter of the long Old Testament lament. This lament and the tradition of skepticism with its ultimate humanistic dependence is most obviously summarized by the final incident of the novel as Rose O'Sharon gives her dead baby's milk to a starving migrant. Rose O'Sharon, of course, takes her name from the country maiden in The Song of Solomon who refuses the seductive entreaties of her wise and powerful king by choosing fidelity to her rustic lover. She resists the entreaties, not with the grapes of wrath, but with the plea that the “foxes” be taken away since “… our vines have tender grapes.” (The Song of Solomon, 2:15). Whether the reader accepts the literal interpretation of the song or the allegorical overtones detected after the birth of Christ, the incident reveals Steinbeck's insistence on the circular nature of history and the Old Testament parallels to the lives of the Okies.

It is, therefore, in the recognition of “tender grapes” and in Rose O'Sharon's human gesture that the grapes of wrath may be overcome. Both The Song of Solomon and the author of The Grapes of Wrath agree that such human gestures are the most significant means of survival in the face of oppression and exploitation. Steinbeck's positive solution to the exploitation of the helpless farmers is not to be found in the abstruse consolation of Emerson and Whitman, but in the existential compassion symbolized and summarized by Rose O'Sharon's gesture.

The incident is no isolated event in the novel. Early in the record of the westward trek of the Okies, Steinbeck had commented on the movement to solidarity in the crucial Chapter 14. The passage deserves quotation in full, not only for its depiction of proletarian solidarity, but for the Biblical tone and rhythm which characterize the passage.

One man, one family driven from the land; this rusty car creaking along the highway to the west. I lost my land, a single tractor took my land. I am alone and I am bewildered. And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another family pulls in and the tents come out. The two men squat on their hams and the women and children listen. Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here “I lost my land” is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate—“We lost our land.” The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first “we” there grows a still more dangerous thing: “I have a little food” plus “I have none.” If from this problem the sum is “We have a little food,” the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-meat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It's wool. It was my mother's blanket—take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning—from “I” to “we”.

(p. 206)

Later in the novel, Steinbeck repeated this theme of consolation in human solidarity as he described the attempts of the farmers to console each other after the long day's trek:

In the evening a strange thing happened: the twenty families became one family, the children were the children of all. The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was one dream. And it might be that a sick child threw despair into the hearts of twenty families, of a hundred people; that a birth there in a tent kept a hundred people quiet and awestruck through the night and filled a hundred people with the birth-joy in the morning. A family which the night before had been lost and fearful might search its goods to find a present for a new baby. In the evening, sitting about the fires, the twenty were one. They grew to be units of the camps, units of the evenings and the nights.

(pp. 264-65; my italics)

It is important to note that in the midst of Steinbeck's most intense criticism of the corruptions of the American system, the strongest note of hope and proletarian solidarity stems not from Marx, Emerson, Whitman or Jesus Christ, but from the Old Testament skeptic. “For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion.” (9:4).

Jim Casy‘s exaggerated, perhaps evangelical plea for a unified mankind is, therefore, a positive celebration of mankind's communion in the face of an economically demeaning isolation and exploitation. The Oklahoma preacher tells his fellow sinners that once in the wilderness he was forced to reconsider his religious assumptions. The result is a gentle sermon, perhaps the key to the entire novel. Casy summarizes the Ecclesiastical emphasis on proletarian insights, predicts inevitable economic conflict, and prescribes the compassionate human solutions and understandings which constitute Steinbeck's attitude toward the oppressed Okies. Like Jesus, Casy found himself in the wilderness, but he makes some nice distinctions which critics have formerly ignored:

I ain't sayin' I'm like Jesus, the preacher went on. But I got tired like Him, an' I got mixed up like Him, an' I went into the wilderness like Him, without no campin' stuff. Nighttime I'd lay on my back an' look up at the stars; morning I'd set an' watch the sun come up; midday I'd look out from a hill at the rollin' dry country; evenin' I'd foller the sun down. Sometimes I'd pray like I always done. On'y I couldn' figure what I was prayin' to and for. There was the hills, an' there was me, an' we wasn't separate no more. We was one thing. An' that one thing was holy … I got thinkin' how we was holy when we was one thing, an' mankin' was holy when it was one thing. An' it thinkin' how we was holy when we was one thing, an' on'y got unholy when one mis'able little fella got the bit in his teeth an' run off his own way, kickin' an' draggin' an' fightin'. Fella like that bust the holiness. But when they're all workin' together, not one fella for another fella, but one fella kind of harnessed to the whole shebang—that's right, that's holy.

(p. 110, my italics)

Here is no triumph of American transcendental self-reliance but rather a wise and gentle teacher reminiscing on the sources of strength and consolation for these latter day Israelites. He even goes on to apologize for the abstractness of the word “holy.” Its meaning is closer to home. He concludes his prayer: “I can't say no grace like I use' ta say. I'm glad for the holiness of breakfast.” (p. 110). This conclusion to the prayer is preceded by a gentle reminder of Koheleth's disdain for the meaningless repetitions which characterize the participation of many people at divine services. Steinbeck notes that the Joads “had been trained like dogs to rise at the ‘amen’ signal (p. 110) and as a result kept their heads bowed no matter what their preacher/guest suggested.⁸ Whatever else the passage suggests, it must qualify many of the heroic attributes which critics have assumed from the Joad's Biblical origins. For the dispossessed Okies, there was nothing more holy than a comfortable breakfast. The tangible experience is holy; the abstract consolation is meaningless. Casy's intense humanity is reminiscent of Melville's sympathies which he too portrayed as a “wanderer” from the Old Testament searching for peace. This is the element of Steinbeck's identification with the Old Testament skeptics which has been most consistently ignored by Steinbeck critics in spite of Casy's definitive disclaimer and directive:

No, I don't know nobody name' Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people … Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe … it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit—the human sperit—the whole shebang.

(pp. 32-33)

There are, perhaps, some superficial similarities between Emerson, Whitman and the American pragmatists on the one hand and the writer of Ecclesiastes on the other. These similarities—the self-reliant common man, the mass democracy of Whitman and man's natural progress towards success—must be replaced by a more skeptical demeanor when the plight of the Joads is considered in the light of the Old Testament writer. One detects, perhaps, in the parallel to Ecclesiastes an attitude suggestive of Fitzgerald's Omar Khyyam or Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, and certainly Steinbeck's interpretation of the Joad's experience must take its place with the skeptical tradition of Hawthorne, Melville, Mark Twain, Hemingway and Faulkner rather than with the apologists for American transcendentalism. Progress for both the Joads and the children of Israel was virtually impossible within the eternal cycles of nature and human fallibility, catalogued by Koheleth and Steinbeck as they pondered economic and social disaster in an inscrutable universe.

Primarily Steinbeck was interested in questioning the arrogance of the American economic system with its emphasis on the triumph of the individual. His warnings understood in the light of Ecclesiastes urge a suspicious attitude toward any system which produces victims by the thousands. Probably the most important result of this adjusted reading of Casy's mission is to realize that like Koheleth, Steinbeck's intent is philosophic rather than religious. Casy as a Christ-Figure leads to an interpretation of The Grapes of Wrath as a recognition of the ultimate American victory which Steinbeck, by his emphasis on Ecclesiastes, clearly did not intend. Rose O'Sharon's final gesture is not, therefore, symbolic of any ultimate triumph or of better times to come. But as a gesture it is important in itself. It has profound meaning when considered in the light of:

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun … There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

(1:9, 11)

Unlike Jesus, Casy knows that there is no new thing under the sun, there is no good news for the morrow and there are only the humours and labours of the people on which to base a structure for survival.

Notes

1. See, for example Peter Lisca, “The Grapes of Wrath as Fiction,” PMLA, 72 (Mar, 1957), pp. 296-309. Lisca writes “… the grand design is there: the plagues (erosion), the Egyptian (banks), the exodus (journey), and the hostile tribes of Canaan (Californians), p. 302. He goes on to cite four Biblical sources for the “grapes” of the title and Psalms (95:7) as the source of Ma Joad's “We are the people …” speech. As I will show later, the correct source for this much-quoted speech is Eccl. 4:16.

2. The first attempt to provide this context was Harry T. Moore's pioneer study, The Novels of John Steinbeck (Chicago: Normandie House, 1939). Moore briefly noted the similarity between Casy and Christ, the “Old Testament grimness” (p. 67), and a number of other literary parallels and reflections. It was not until Frederick Lewis Carpenter published “The Philosophical Joads” College English, 2 (Jan., 1941), pp. 315-325, that Steinbeck's sources were given detailed consideration. Carpenter detected a triumphant twentieth-century culmination of Emerson's transcendentalism, Whitman's mass democracy, and realistic pragmatism. Most significant, Carpenter announced, was the itinerant preacher, Jim Casy, whose unorthodox clerical habits and sermons portrayed American radical protestant militancy. Carpenter assumed rather comfortably that Casy underlined Steinbeck's belief in the ultimate victory of the indomitable forces protecting the common man as celebrated by Emerson and Whitman. Carpenter's interpretation generally influenced later critics. Warren French (John Steinbeck, New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1961) for example, discusses The Grapes of Wrath in the context of the Old and New Testament, but his general treatment does not recognize Steinbeck's precise source and attitude. Assuming that both the Old and the New Testaments represent Steinbeck's courses, French concludes that a “relativistic view of sin leads Steinbeck into a philosophical mire from which he fails to emerge satisfactorily” (p. 109). Peter Lisca (The Wide World of John Steinbeck, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1958) generally supports Carpenter's thesis but extends it to emphasize Casy as a Christ figure after noting the parallels between the Joad's flight and the children of Israel's return to the land of milk and honey. Joseph Fontenrose (John Steinbeck: An Introduction and Interpretation, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963) extends Lisca's interpretation of Casy as a Christ figure and some of the Old Testament parallels. Tom becomes “the new Moses” (p. 78) as well as a Christ-figure (p. 80), but Fontenrose's heroic conception of the Joads (Judah) leads him to admit their similarity to the children of Israel. Perhaps the most important insistence on Casy's presentation as a Christ figure is Martin Staples Shockley's “Christian Symbolism in The Grapes of Wrath,” College English, 18 (Nov. 1956), pp. 87-90. Shockley's outspoken position (“I would avoid theological subtleties. I see Jim Casy as a simple and direct copy of Jesus Christ.” p. 88) developed Alan Paton and Liston Pope's “The Novelist and Christ” (Saturday Review, Dec. 4, 1954, pp. 15-16, 56-59) which casually assumed that Casy was one of many Christ-figures in fiction. Shockley provoked a number of challenges, the most important of which were: Eric W. Carlson, “Symbolism in The Grapes of Wrath,” College English, 19 (Jan., 1958), pp. 172-175; Charles T. Dougherty, “The Christ-Figure in The Grapes of Wrath,” College English, 24 (Dec., 1962), pp. 193-199. Briefly, Carlson objects to Shockley's “essentially and thoroughly Christian” interpretation and supports Carpenter. Dougherty also supports Carpenter, but wonders if Tom may not be a better Christ-figure than Casy. Crockett reiterates the Christ-figure interpretation but recognizes a few over-tones from the Old Testament. More recently, Theodore Ziolkowski (Fictional Transfigurations of Jesus, Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1972) glosses over the Old Testament parallels noted by Lisca to promote Casy, once again, as a Christ-figure, now secularized into “Comrade Jesus.” He admits, moreover, Casy's rebuke: “I ain't sayin' I'm like Jesus,’ the preacher went on.”

3. Although a longstanding tradition including this reference in Melville ascribes Ecclesiastes to Solomon (about 1000 B.C.), a more accurate dating places the composition considerably later, probably about 200 B.C. The author remains unknown. He is generally referred to as Koheleth (or Qoheleth) which is the Hebrew rendering of the Greek ekklesiastikos (the leader of an open assembly, or an assembly which embraces what is under the sun). The Abingdon Bible Commentary, ed. Frederick Carl Eiselen, Edwin Lewis, David G. Downey, New York: Abingdon Cokesbury Press, 1929, p. 614. The popular rendering of Koheleth is “preacher,” the word usually used by the Okies when referring to Casy. For the sake of convenience, I will follow the modern custom of referring to the writer of Ecclesiastes as Koheleth.

4. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, New York: The Viking Press, 1939, p. 570. Further references to the novel are for this edition and are included in the text.

5. Eccl. 8:15. See also 2:24 and 3:13;22. R. B. Y. Scott, The Anchor Bible: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Garden City: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1965 renders the original translation of vanity as “vapors” pp. 201-2. Moreover, Scott describes Koheleth's attitude as tempered by things inexplicable so that “the only satisfaction open to man … is the enjoyment of being alive.” p. 191.

6. Scott, Ibid., p. 192 notes that unlike the other Hebrew prophets whose testimonies make up the bulk of the Old Testament, the author of Ecclesiastes is a “rationalist, an agnostic, a skeptic, a pessimist, and a fatalist.” Scott emphasizes that these designations are not pejorative.

7. Scott, Ibid., p. 191, comments on the divergence of Ecclesiastes from the other Old Testament writers: “In Ecclesiastes God is not only unknown to man through revelation; he is unknowable through reason, the only means by which the author believes knowledge is attainable. … He is rather the mysterious, inscrutable Being whose existence must be presupposed as that which determines the life and fate of man, in a world man cannot change, and where all his effort and values are rendered meaningless.”

8. See Eccl. 5: 3-7; 5:1; 9:2 and Scott, Ibid., p. 199.