The Joad's are the main characters in the novel.

The Joad family goes on a

journey in search of work and shelter in California because they have been
driven away from their home in Oklahoma because of the Great Depression
and the Dust Bowl.

The Joads loyalty and commitment to one another establishes their true kinship. In the
migrant lifestyle portrayed in the book, the biological family unit quickly becomes a
thing of the past, as life on the road demands that new connections and new kinships
be formed. This merging takes place among the migrant community in general as well:
In the face of adversity, the livelihood of the migrants depends upon their union.

The Joads refuses to be broken by the circumstances that conspire against them. The
author shows their dignity and honor; emphasizing the importance of maintaining self-
respect in order to survive spiritually. Nowhere is this more evident than at the end of
the novel. The Joads have suffered incomparable losses: Noah, Connie, and Tom have
left the family; Rose of Sharon gives birth to a stillborn baby; the family possesses
neither food nor promise of work. Yet it is at this moment that the family manages to
rise above hardship to perform an act of kindness and generosity for the starving man,
showing that the Joads have not lost their sense of the value of human life.

Characters

 Tom Joad — Protagonist of the story; the Joad family's second son, named
after his father. Tom takes leadership of the family and he's the first character that
we meet. He takes good care of his family, and he works to help them survive.
Reverend Casy helps Tom to understand the world and to find a higher purpose.
Tom develops over the course of the novel to care for all of the families he sees
around him. He dedicates his life to fighting for justice and equality among the
migrant worker community at the end of the novel. Tom is a plainspoken man, yet
he still retains some of his violent tendencies.
 Ma Joad — Practical and warm-spirited, she tries to hold the family together.
She´s accustomed to hardship and deprivation. Ma Joad goes about her days
selflessly, cooking, cleaning, and nurturing her family. She doesn't talk about her
wants or needs, except to dream about having a little house one day next to an
orange orchard – a dream which she quickly realizes will never be.
 Pa Joad — also named Tom and he is 50. Although Pa Joad is the head of the
Joad household, he is not a forceful presence and he loses his place as leader of the
family to his wife.
 Uncle John Joad — Older brother of Pa Joad. He feels responsible for the
death of his young wife years before when he ignored her when she asked for a
doctor because he thought she just had a stomachache, when she actually had a burst
appendix. Filled with guilt, he is involved in alcohol and prostitutes, yet tries to
repent for his sins and guilt by spoiling Ruthie and Winfield with candy when he
can.
 Al Joad — the second youngest son, a "smart-aleck sixteen-year-older" He is
concerned with cars and girls, and remains combative and truculent toward the rest
of the family. Out of the Joad family, he has the most knowledge of cars, and fears
that the rest of the family will blame him if anything goes wrong. He dreams of
becoming a mechanic, and becomes engaged to Aggie Wainwright by the end of the
novel.
 Rose of Sharon Joad Rivers — Childish and dreamy teenage daughter
(about 16 or 17) who develops as the novel progresses to become a mature woman.
She symbolizes regrowth when she helps the starving stranger. Rose of Sharon is
the one adult who retains a sense of optimism in the future. She dreams of a middle-
class life with her husband and child, but becomes paranoid and disillusioned once
her husband abandons her when they reach California. Pregnant in the beginning of
the novel, she delivers a stillborn baby, probably as a result of malnutrition. Her
name is pronounced "Rosasharn" by the family.
 Connie Rivers — Rose of Sharon's husband. He is stated to be 19 years old
upon his and Tom's first encounter before leaving for California. The shiftless
husband of Rose of Sharon, Connie dreams of a better life. When he reaches
California and does not find work, he immediately becomes disillusioned and
abandons his pregnant wife.
 Noah Joad — The oldest son who is the first to willingly leave the family,
choosing to stay by the Colorado river telling Tom that he feels his parents do not
love him as much as they love the other children and survive by fishing. Injured at
birth, described as "strange", he may have slight learning difficulties or autistic
spectrum disorder.
 Grampa Joad — An energetic, feisty old man who expresses his strong desire
to stay in Oklahoma. His full name is given as "William James Joad". Grampa is
drugged by his family with "soothin' syrup" to force him to leave but dies in the
evening of the first day on the road because of a stroke.
 Granma Joad — The religious wife of Grampa Joad, she seems to lose the
will to live (and consequently dies while crossing the desert, possibly as a result of
exposure to the heat while crossing New Mexico and Arizona) after her husband's
death.
 Ruthie Joad — The youngest daughter, age twelve. The second and younger
Joad daughter. Ruthie has a fiery relationship to her brother Winfield: the two are
intensely dependent upon one another and fiercely competitive.
 Winfield Joad — the youngest male in the family, aged ten. He and Ruthie are
close. Ma worries for his well-being, fearing that without a proper home he will
grow up to be wild and rootless. He becomes severely ill during the course of the
novel from deprivation, but survives his illness.

The Dust Bowl, or the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms causing major

ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930
to 1936 (in some areas until 1940). The phenomenon was caused by severe
drought coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation, fallow
fields, cover crops or other techniques to prevent erosion.

During the drought of the 1930s, without natural anchors to keep the soil in place, it
dried, turned to dust, and blew away eastward and southward in large dark clouds. At
times the clouds blackened the sky reaching all the way to East Coast cities such as New
York and Washington, D.C. Much of the soil ended up deposited in the Atlantic Ocean,
carried by prevailing winds, which were in part created by the dry and bare soil
conditions. These immense dust storms—given names such as "Black Blizzards" and
"Black Rollers"—often reduced visibility to a few feet (around a meter). The Dust Bowl
affected 400,000 km2, centered on the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and adjacent
parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.

Millions of acres of farmland became useless, and hundreds of thousands of people

were forced to leave their homes; many of these families (often known as "Okies", since
so many came from Oklahoma) migrated to California and other states, where they
found economic conditions little better during the Great Depression than those they had
left. Owning no land, many became migrant workers who traveled from farm to farm to
pick fruit and other crops at starvation wages. 

Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United

States of America. With almost 4 million inhabitants as of the 2010 census
and a land area of 177,847 km² Oklahoma is the 28th most
populous and 20th-largest state. The state's name is derived from
the Choctaw words okla and humma, meaning "red people", and is known
informally by its nickname, The Sooner State. Formed by the combination
of Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory on November 16, 1907,
Oklahoma was the 46th state to enter the union. Its residents are known
as Oklahomans, and its capital and largest city is Oklahoma City.
During the 1930s, parts of the state began feeling the consequences of
poor farming practices, drought and high winds. Known as the Dust Bowl,
areas of Kansas, Texas, New Mexico and northwestern Oklahoma were
hampered by long periods of little rainfall and abnormally high
temperatures, sending thousands of farmers into poverty and forcing
them to relocate to more fertile areas of the western United States. Over a
twenty-year period ending in 1950, the state saw its only historical decline
in population, dropping 6.9 percent. In response, dramatic efforts
in soil and water conservation led to massive flood control systems and
dams, creating hundreds of reservoirs and man-made lakes. By the 1960s,
more than 200 lakes had been created, the most in the nation.