"Never wanted to get close to folks. Wanted to be off alone. I never seen a kid that wasn’t crazy about him. He’d come to our house in the night sometimes, an’ we knowed he’d come ’cause jus’ as sure as he come there’d be a pack a gum in the bed right beside ever’ one of us. We thought he was Jesus Christ Awmighty."
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 8. Uncle John cuts a sad and lonely figure in the novel. But he is also big-hearted, as Tom Joad explains to Jim Casy. Uncle John carries around the guilt of ignoring his pregnant wife’s complaint of a stomach ache and not calling a doctor. Since her death from a burst appendix, Uncle John has been giving things to people to make up, like bringing sweets to the kids.