Minor Characters
Grampa Joad
Grampa is a curmudgeonly and somewhat depraved old man. He is reluctant to leave his home in Oklahoma, and dies shortly after the Joads begin their travels.
Granma Joad
Granma is devoutly religious. During the journey west, her health declines, and she passes away as the Joads cross the desert into California.
Al Joad
Al is Tom’s younger brother. He greatly looks up to Tom. Al is a skilled mechanic and a prodigious flirt, and towards the end of the novel he becomes engaged to Agnes Wainwright.
Ivy and Sairy Wilson
Ivy and Sairy Wilson are a migrant couple whom the Joads encounter on the road to California. They hospitably help the Joads cope with Grampa’s death. The two families travel together until they reach the California border, where Sairy falls too ill to continue.
Connie Rivers
Connie is Rose of Sharon’s immature, selfish husband. He grows frustrated during the Joads arduous journey, and abandons the family and his young wife.
Noah Joad
Noah is the oldest Joad child. He is aloof and cold; Pa suspects that his strange personality came as a result of Pa mishandling him at birth. Noah abandons the family to live on his own when they reach the Colorado River.
Ruthie Joad
Ruthie isTom’s kid sister. Her immature and boastful nature gets her into trouble when, to impress her peers, she reveals that Tom is on the lam.
Winfield Joad
Winfield is the youngest Joad. He is often treated cruelly by his sister Ruthie, and he takes every opportunity to tattle on her. Towards the end of the book, he grows very ill.
Floyd Knowles
Floyd is a young man whom befriends in the first Hooverville. Floyd tries to stand up to a contractor but is arrested on a bogus charge, and hides after an altercation with police.
Mr. Thomas
Mr. Thomas hires Tom and the Wallaces to do pipe-laying work. He informs them of the Farmers’ Association’s plans to start a riot at the dance.
Timothy and Wilkie Wallace
Tom meets this father-and-son pair at the government camp. They help find him a job.
Agnes Wainwright
Agnes’s family shares a boxcar with the Joads when they live on a cotton plantation. She becomes Al’s fiancée.
The Mayor
The Mayor is a haggard man who runs the first Hooverville the Joads stay in. He has been beaten down by the systematic oppression of the cops and other cruel institutional powers, and can no longer bring himself to resist.
Jim Rawley
Jim Rawley is the manager of the government camp. He treats the Joads with kindness and caring.
Lisbeth Sandry
Mrs. Sandry is a Jehovite (Jehova's Witness) zealot from the government camp who terrorizes Rose of Sharon to make her fear sin.
Ezra Huston
Ezra Huston is the chairman of the government camp committee.
Willie Eaton
Willie Eaton is the chairman of the government camp’s entertainment committee.
Mae the Waitress and Al the Cook
Mae and Al give a migrant family a special deal on food in their roadside restaurant.
The One-Eyed Junkyard Attendant
The one-eyed man does nothing but complain bitterly about his lonely, pathetic life. Tom urges him to get in control of his life.