"That's him. That shiny bastard.": Jim Casy and Christology
Click for larger view | Illustration 1 Thomas Hart Benton's depiction of Jim Casy, from The Grapes of Wrath |
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 Christ-like 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. [End Page 15]
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...
