What happened to the Joad family? The Joads lived during the Great Depression, the great economic downturn in the United States from 1929-1939. Many families were affected by this, including being laid off and having to leave their homes. The Joad family was not immune to these effects at all. They were forced to sell their furniture, valuables, and even desert their home. Tom, just having been let out of jail, is completely shocked. He had shown up to an empty, and destroyed, house, with his family attempting to flee to California in search of work. Through this moving adventure, the reader learns about how the events, living conditions, and language of the time period was presented and how it affected the characters. The language used
