Jim Casy

I am quite intrigued by the character of Jim Casy. I had already read ahead to where he said to Muley that he should have kept his family together and when he could not sleep because he was too troubled by what was going on at the farms. I have now thought back a couple of chapters to when Tom and Casy first meet. Jim tells Tom that he was the priest who baptized him but he had stopped preaching a while back. He then tells his story of why he stopped. He says that he would be taking girls out after church and he could not control it. As he tells this my first thought was that his lust for women was a huge flaw in his character because he is a priest. He tells Tom that he came to a conclusion that there isn’t any sin and there isn’t any virtue in the world. This appears to show a loss of faith from Casy, but in a later chapter as I referred to in a previous blog, he states that he cannot sleep because of what was going on with the farmers. That to me seems to be genuine caring and virtue. And his previous stage of life where he had a lust for women, Jim seems to have sin. All of this meaning that what he said about being no virtue and sin in the world is a complete and utter contradiction to his actions that he did in his past and what he has shown now. Although Jim Casy has seemed to have lost his faith and belief in the church, he tends to show that he is still displaying and proving it true, even if it is not all the good things. His actions show both virtue and sin in the world and he is a preacher, so he has proved the point he was trying to when he thought that he was caring for the church earlier in his life.