"I’m still layin’ my dogs down one at a time…I climb fences when I got fences to climb."
– John Steinbeck
The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 16. Tom Joad responds to Jim Casy’s social prophesy that the migration of so many dispossessed sharecroppers will change the whole country. Tom is a pragmatist who lives day to day and doesn’t look to the future or think about larger social issues like Casy. But in time he will become a convert to Casy’s philosophy of life.