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Dramatic Monologue

Tom Joad tells the story of his friend Jim Casy. He describes how Casy used to be a preacher who tried to baptize him as a child. They reunited after Tom was released from jail, and Casy had changed and no longer preached but still had a spiritual nature. They traveled together to California to find work picking fruits with Tom's family. However, when the farm owners started cheating the migrant workers, Casy and Tom got involved in protests, leading to Casy being killed by police. Tom realized that Casy was right that a person can only find wholeness through helping others.

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12K views2 pages

Dramatic Monologue

Tom Joad tells the story of his friend Jim Casy. He describes how Casy used to be a preacher who tried to baptize him as a child. They reunited after Tom was released from jail, and Casy had changed and no longer preached but still had a spiritual nature. They traveled together to California to find work picking fruits with Tom's family. However, when the farm owners started cheating the migrant workers, Casy and Tom got involved in protests, leading to Casy being killed by police. Tom realized that Casy was right that a person can only find wholeness through helping others.

Uploaded by

soadquake981
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Garg 1

Rishi Garg
English 10, 1st Period
Mr. Fox
15 January 2008

Dramatic Monologue – Tom Joad

Well hey there.


I see you’re looking at this here picture I’ve got.
Would you like to know who that is?
It’s my dear old buddy, Jim Casy.
Naw, he’s gone to a better place now.
So you wanna hear what happened to him, huh?
All right, I’ll tell you.
It’s a sad story, but I think it’s worth hearing.
Who knows, you might just learn a thing or two.

I guess I’d best start with how I met him.


He was a preacher when I was a kid,
He was always tryin’ to baptize me and all.
I would always be pullin’ girls’ hair,
And he’d dunk me in the holy water.
Back then, I could hardly get the meaning of what he was preaching.
It was all as good as trash to me.
But then I went to jail for killing a man.
As soon as I was sprung out, I met Jim again.
He was different… he didn’t really preach no more.
But he still had that spirit in him.

We walked together to my old man’s place.


But we didn’t find nobody there.
We found out they was all at Uncle John’s place.
So we walked there.
Turns out everyone got kicked outta our old place.
So they was all planning to go to California
And find jobs as fruit pickers.
Well, I had no place else to go.
I was looking for a job for myself…
I guessed I could find some work in California.
We invited Jim along, too.

You know, I was a lot different back then.


After four years in jail, I thought that I should focus on the present
And not the future.
Garg 2

Seize the day, you know?


I thought that the future was out of reach
And that thinking about it would drive me mad.
So I would always just think about myself and the present.
I guess you could call me narrow-minded back then.

Granma loved religion.


She knew Jim was a preacher,
So she would always ask him for some encouraging words.
I’ll never forget what he’d always say:
When a man acts alone, he doesn’t affect nobody.
He can only achieve wholeness by helping other people out.

I don’t think I really believed what he said


Until we got to California.
As soon as we got there
We found out that the farm owners were cheating all the migrants.
And whenever a group of migrants protested against that scum
Someone got killed.
Well finally, one day, Jim and I decided to get involved.
One of those idiot policemen bashed Jim’s skull in.
I guess I got a little angry and killed the policeman
Then got away.

While I was hiding, I thought about what Jim had been saying all his life.
It’s true that when a man acts alone, he don’t affect nobody.
I don’t think Jim would have helped nobody if there wasn’t so many migrants.
It’s also true that a man can only achieve wholeness by helping others.
I’m pretty darn sure that Jim gave his life to a good cause
And he’s going to Heaven for sure.
I guess my old ways of seizing the day and focusing on the present don’t
really work.
So my new philosophy is:
If there’s ever a starving child
I’ll be there.
If there’s ever a person in need
I’ll be there.
If the community is in need
I’ll be there.

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