Pieces of a big soul

We come to honor the Dust Bowl Oklahoma families forced to migrate west in The Grapes of Wrath because John Steinbeck’s language brings their relationships within hearing-holding distance. They are neither noble nor magisterial, neither preachers nor reformers. Old and young move together in tight-knit groups looking for work, carrying memories of lost homes, burying kin, shaking off sins intentional and unintentional, coping. With grace and will, they “bite deep into living.” Casy’s words challenge the impulse to moralize: “There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do.”