Characters in "The Grapes of Wrath": Al

Al is important in The Grapes of Wrath for many different reasons. He was one of the two people in the Joad family that is able to drive the car. Al, as a person, was pretty average. He was pretty unnoticeable and did nothing remarkable. He liked to be looked at with pride and he never wanted to fail his family. He would even go so far as to blame things on other people just to not have failed. He was a teenage boy that was head over heels into girls. It was all he thought about, and he was constantly with different girls. He helped drive the whole family halfway across the nation, and he did that work that was necessary from him. He did not complain, he just made sure that when anything was his fault, he did not get blamed for it. He would blame it on anyone else around that could have possibly done it. He had a hard time in California, because he could not find hardly any girls. Everywhere he went there were barely any girls and he needed to devote his time to either working or finding work in the first place. In the government camp there were some girls, but the pretty ones were all taken. They also did not stay there long enough for him to find any girls that really struck his fancy. When they moved into the boxcar, though, he had a much easier time of finding someone that he liked. The family that the Joads shared the boxcar with had a girl that was the same age as Al. Her name was Aggie, and Al and Aggie were constantly together when the work was finished. Eventually, they ended up getting engaged. They would have done anything for each other, and he did not want to ever leave her side. Al was not an influential character, but he showed the mindset of teeange boys during this period of time.