"I got thinkin’ how we was holy when we was one thing, an’ mankin’ was holy when it was one thing. An’ it on’y got unholy when one mis’able little fella got the bit in his teeth an’ run off his own way, kickin’ an’ draggin’ an’ fightin’. Fella like that bust the holiness. But when they’re all workin’ together, not one fella for another fella, but one fella kind of harnessed to the whole shebang – that’s right, that’s holy."
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 8. Asked to say grace before the family breakfast, Casy gives his new-found definition of holiness. It is an irony that the former hellfire and brimstone preacher uses the occasion of grace to speak of an alternative to traditional Christianity. He sees holiness as all people working together as a community with a common purpose. This idea is at the heart of Emerson’s "Over-Soul" – God and people and nature being part of the one universal soul. It is a philosophy that Casy, and later Tom Joad, will put into practice when they turn revolutionary and try to organize migrant workers in their fight for justice.