Chapter 4

After the truck departs, Tom Joad turns down a dusty side road toward home, removes his shoes, and picks up a land turtle to bring to his younger brother. Seeking shade at a scraggly willow, he discovers a man resting there: Reverend Jim Casy, the former revival preacher who once baptized Tom.

They share whiskey and talk. Casy explains he no longer preaches, troubled by his hypocrisy and by the ecstatic meetings that led him to sleep with congregants. After long solitary reflection, he rejects conventional sin and virtue, deciding he loves people themselves and believing “maybe all men got one big soul.”

Tom listens, amused and interested, and says such ideas wouldn’t suit a church. He admits he felt no change after his own baptism. The turtle slips free and Tom rewraps it, determined to bring it home as a gift. Casy mentions visiting Tom’s father, and Tom reveals he has been in McAlester prison for killing a man in a drunken fight; he is now on parole and unashamed.

They walk together toward the Joad place, swapping stories about Tom’s family—Grandpa, Uncle John, and the house Pa once dragged across the fields. The heat eases as the day wanes, and the men cross dusty cotton and cornfields, recalling past revivals and family antics.

At the final rise, they look down and see the Joad homestead. Tom stops, sensing something wrong. The buildings look altered and empty. The chapter ends with their discovery that no one seems to be there.