Pa Joad
Pa Joad, born Tom Joad Sr., is the titular head of the Joad family, a tenant farmer whose life has been defined by the land he works. He is a man of few words and deep physical strength, with a grizzled beard, powerful muscles, and a forceful chin thrust out in determination. His identity is so intertwined with his forty acres that when the bank and the tractor force him off, a part of him dies. He is not a man given to introspection or complex planning; his world is one of direct action—plowing, building, and providing. The novel charts his painful journey from a man who "measured it and broke it up" to a migrant worker who must learn to navigate a system that treats him as surplus labor, a journey that strips him of his patriarchal authority and leaves him searching for a new sense of self.
Identity and Background
Pa Joad is a product of the Oklahoma frontier, a man whose family history is etched into the land. His father, Grampa Joad, took the land from the Indians, and Pa was born on it, inheriting not just a farm but a way of life. He is a skilled farmer, able to "work out a catalogue order as good as the nex' fella," but he is deeply uncomfortable with writing, which he associates with loss: "Ever' time Pa seen writin', somebody took somepin away from 'im." His physical description reflects his labor: his sleeves are tight on his forearms from bulging muscles, his stomach and hips are lean, and his legs are short, heavy, and strong. He wears a black, dirty slouch hat and a harness-leather belt polished from years of wear. His authority is unquestioned within the family structure, but it is an authority rooted in a stable, agrarian world that is rapidly vanishing.
Arc Through the Plot: From Patriarch to Displaced Man
Pa's journey is one of steady diminishment. When the tractor comes to destroy his house, he stands by helplessly, a rifle in his hand, but unable to shoot the driver, Willy Feeley, a local boy. This moment "took somepin outa Tom. Kinda got into 'im. He ain't been the same ever since." On the road, his role as decision-maker is increasingly challenged. He is the one who squats on his hams to figure things out, but his plans are often overruled by the more pragmatic and forceful Ma. When he suggests the family split up to get to California faster, Ma's revolt with a jack handle marks a definitive shift in power. He is bewildered by the new world, complaining, "Seems like times is changed... Seems like women is tellin' now." His attempts to find work are met with failure and exploitation, and he is forced to accept a wage cut from thirty to twenty-five cents an hour, and later to two and a half cents a box for peaches. By the end of the novel, he admits, "I ain't no good any more. Spen' all my time a-thinkin' how it use' ta be."
Key Actions and Objectives
Pa's primary objective is to provide for his family, a goal he pursues with stubborn, if often ineffective, determination. He is the one who counts the family members to see if there is room for the preacher, and he leads the negotiations with the used-car salesman. He works tirelessly, chopping cotton, picking peaches, and building a levee against the flood. He is also the keeper of the family's moral code, insisting on a proper burial for Grampa and arguing against the shame of a pauper's grave. His actions are always physical and direct: he squats, he draws in the dust, he swings a shovel. He is not a talker or a planner, but a doer, and his tragedy is that the world has changed so that doing is no longer enough.
Relationships and Conflict
Pa's most significant relationship is with Ma, a partnership that undergoes a profound power shift. Initially, he is the head of the family, but as the journey progresses, Ma becomes the "citadel of the family," the one who holds them together. Pa is often bewildered by her strength, but he also respects it, even when it challenges his authority. His relationship with his son Tom is one of pride and a kind of awe. He is glad Tom is back, seeing him as a "good boy," and he defers to Tom's judgment on the car and on the road. With Uncle John, he shares a bond of shared labor and family history, but he is also impatient with John's guilt and self-destructive tendencies. His conflict is not with individuals but with the faceless system—the bank, the Farmers' Association, the deputies—that he cannot understand or fight.
Change and Ending
Pa undergoes a profound, if reluctant, transformation. He loses his farm, his authority, and his sense of purpose. He is forced to accept charity, to work for starvation wages, and to see his family's unity threatened. In the final chapters, he is a man who has been broken down, but not entirely destroyed. He helps build the levee, works through the night, and carries Rose of Sharon through the flood. He admits his own uselessness, but he does not give up. His final act is one of submission to Ma's leadership, as he helps her move the family to higher ground. He has not found a new identity, but he has learned to endure, to follow, and to accept that the old world is gone forever.
Narrative Role and Evaluation
Pa Joad serves as the embodiment of the displaced agrarian man, a figure whose entire worldview is shattered by the Depression and industrial agriculture. He is a tragic figure, not because he is weak, but because his strengths—his physical labor, his connection to the land, his patriarchal certainty—are rendered obsolete. His story is a counterpoint to Tom's more ideological awakening and Ma's resilient pragmatism. Through Pa, Steinbeck shows the personal cost of the migrant crisis: the loss not just of a home, but of a man's sense of himself. His gradual decline from the head of the family to a bewildered follower is one of the novel's most poignant and powerful arcs, a quiet tragedy of a man who has been left behind by history.
