Chapter 4

This chapter details Tom Joad's return to his family's home. He meets a preacher with many different ideas, and Tom Joad is disturbingly surprised by what he finds when he does return home. As usual, John Steinbeck has sprinkled the chapter with specific details, drawing the story in the reader's head. His use of imagery and very specific detail defines the characters and relates them to the readers who study them.

It starts out with Tom getting off the truck and walking down the old dirty and dusty road. He picks up the turtle, written about in chapter three, and takes with him as a present to his younger siblings. Steinbeck ties in the historical part in that Tom Joad experiences the heat of the drought and the dust of the great Dust Bowl. As he goes to find rest under a shady tree from the sun and the heat, Joad meets the preacher.

The reverand's name is Jim Casy, and he is a kind person, with a somewhat shameful past, but with new ideas. He is an older person, tall and thin, who looks stretched to the limit physically. He is kind offering a place to sit to Tom. And even though he is a preacher, he tells Joad that he is not a spirital anymore. "'And used to get an irrigation ditch so squirmin' full of repented sinners half of 'em like to drownded. But not no more,' he sighed. 'Just Jim Casy now. Ain't got the call no more. Got a lot of sinful idears--but they seem kinda sensible.'"

As the men get to know eachother, they share their life stories; Tom shares his story of how he went to prison, life in prison, and how he got out. Casy shares his tale of being a strong preacher and then becoming less and less filled with the "sperit" as he calls it. He talks of the sinful things he would do and how that led to his thinking of his position. Casy tells Joad, that his idea of the nature of man and how that effected him. "'I says, 'Maybe it ain't sin. Maybe it's just the way folks is.'"

Because of their past experiences and the conditions of the time, the men act as a crutch to each other. They eventually continue on their way keeping each other's company and talking about life. Then they get to Tom's family's home and find that it is completely evacuated and broken down. He is utterly confused and upset about what he finds there at his family's home.