The Theme of Suffering in Grapes of Wrath A constant theme in The Grapes of Wrath is the suffering of human beings. As FW Watt says, (The primary impact of The Grapes of Wrath... is not to make us act, but to make us understand and share a human experience of suffering and resistance.) Steinbeck shows us that his characters, so how all people must endure suffering as human beings. Human beings suffer due to many factors. Religious suffering is a self-imposed factor. (When we first see Casy, he is explaining to Tom Joad how he left preaching, not simply because of the lusts that plagued him, but because religious faith, as he knew it, seemed to establish codes of behavior that denied human nature its correct and full meaning.) Religious suffering is perhaps summarized in Jesus Christ, and Joseph Fontenrose believes that Casey's tragic character is the symbolic representation of Jesus Christ himself. (Jim Casy's initials are JC, and he retreated into the wilderness to find spiritual truth and came forward to teach a new doctrine of love and good works... Casy sacrificed himself for others when he surrendered as the man who had hit a Sinrod 3 deputy in Hooverville...Tom told his mother, "I speak like Casy," after saying he would be present everywhere, even if invisible...) However the character of Jim Casy goes beyond Christ.While reflects on sin and virtue, Casy comes to the illuminating conclusion that people cannot be judged "good" or "bad." ("Maybe that's just the way people are... There's no sin and there's no virtue. There's just things people do. It's all part of the same thing. And some things people do are nice , and others it's not nice, but that's all a man has any right to say.") Viewing the morality of individuals as dynamic, rather than static, offers enormous freedom to characters like Tom Jode. He is capable of many different actions throughout the story, including intimidation, cunning, support, love, and even murder. Steinbeck wants to prove that even a murderer still loves his mother. After all, it is the mother who keeps her family together. (In all families in crisis, children look to women for answers for their immediate survival: "What will we do, mother? Where will we go?"?