There seems to be a couple points in the Grapes of Wrath so far by chapter six where the author is trying to point out that being knowledgable and having everything all figured out is not the best way to be. The author seems to be trying to convey to the reasder that sometimes it is just better for you to believe what you believe or know what you know and not question the rest because it will doing nothing but confuse you further or mess up everything you think that you know about life.
One example of this lies in the life of the preacher Jim Casy. For a very long time it seems, he was perfectly happy being apreacher and doing his best to instill the holy spirit and the fear of God in people young and old who he thought needed it. However, he talks about how once he got to thinking about things and questioning just why everything about God and religion was the way it was he got himself into trouble. He started doubting everything that he knew. He started wondering why the holy spirit did not feel the same way inside him that it used to, and all of the sudden he just could not be a preacher anymore.
Another example of this is the man in McAlester prison who had a lifelong sentence and spent a lot of time reading. Joad knew him during his stay in prison and he says that the man told him reading about the past of prisons does not do him any good in trying to figure out why they are the way they are. He says that he is more confused now then when he began reading. It seemed like the more information he read the less he truly knew about how things work.
I think the author is trying to tell his readers that being blissfully ignorant of some matters is the best way to be a lot of the time. The more you know the more you have to know to be able to handle that information, so the best way to be is to know what you need to know to get by and be done with it.
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