"This here ol’ man jus’ lived a life an’ jus’ died out of it. I don’t know whether he was good or bad, but that don’t matter much. He was alive, an’ that’s what matters. An’ now he’s dead, an’ that don’t matter. Heard a fella tell a poem one time, an’ he says, ‘All that lives is holy.’ Got to thinkin’, an’ purty soon it means more than the words says. An’ I wouldn’ pray for a ol’ fella that’s dead. He’s awright. He got a job to do, but it’s all laid out for ‘im an’ there’s on’y one way to do it. But us, we got a job to do, an’ they’s a thousan’ ways, an’ we don’ know which one to take. An’ if I was to pray, it’d be for the folks that don’ know which way to turn. Grampa here, he got the easy straight. An’ now cover ‘im up and let ‘im get to his work."
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 13. Jim Casy is asked to say a few words on the death of Grampa. It is not the usual eulogy you hear from a former Christian preacher. But then Casy is not your usual ex-minister. He doesn’t know whether Grampa was a good or bad man, but sums up Grampa’s existence by quoting from a William Blake poem, which declares: "All that lives is holy." This is the essence of Casy’s humanism, which is a criticism of traditional Christianity. He says that there is no need to pray for the dead, for they already have the one path laid out for them. Instead we should pray for the living, because they have a thousand ways to go and they don’t know which path to take. There is a certain irony in Casy’s words, since migrants like the Joads don’t have a thousand paths to choose. They are left with little choices after being evicted their home, accepting any low paid work that is available, and having to move on whenever they are forced to. Their odyssey to California is not a matter of choice, but is driven by necessity.
