Michener compares his young characters in The Drifters to Crusaders on a kind of quest or romance in search of new values as they travel through Europe and Africa. In keeping with this medieval motif of the romance, Michener introduces his major characters as though they were figures in an allegory, with each one personifying a prominent social cause.

The concerns espoused by the characters were all heated issues in the 1960s, but Michener develops the characters in such a way that their issues seem eternal as well as temporal. By devoting a single chapter to the introduction of each of seven major characters, who eventually meet and travel together, Michener reinforces the allegorical quality of each character.

Joe offers the reader a glimpse of life at a public university in California during the Vietnam War. Joe abandons his studies in order to avoid the military draft. As...