Introduction:
In a book The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck tells the story of families giving up or losing their family farms due first to drought and then to the dustbowl and migrating to California to find employment. Drought and water shortage is currently a great concern for agriculture and the communities dependent on it, not only in the United States, but also in other regions of the world.
Your task:
After reading The Grapes of Wrath and discussing the impact of the drought and the dustbowl on the Joad family, the farming communities, and the California communities that the Joad families end up in, research and analyze the impacts of the current drought on some aspect of our agricultural and food production complex, our water and land resources, or on the families and communities suffering the most from this drought. You may choose to focus on local or international regions, social or environmental impacts.
Write an essay comparing the current drought impacts to the impacts felt by the Joad family from “The Grapes of Wrath”
• Does the introduction engage the reader and capture the topic of the assignment?
• Does the thesis make an argument that accurately reflects the main ideas of the essay?
• Are ideas properly supported with clear topic sentences, examples and analysis?
• Are the paragraphs organized and arranged in a logical order? In other words, transitions clearly show how the ideas between paragraphs relate to and build on one another?
• Does the writer use logical subordinating clauses?
• Are the sentences clearly focused? In other words, the sentences have concrete nouns and active verbs whenever possible.
• Is the writer attempting to incorporate more sophisticated sentence combining tactics (NPA, verbal phrases)?
• Does the essay follow MLA format?
Possible thesis to use in the comparison to the book:
• Environmental issues/phycology and connecting it to the book
• Cost and effect and connecting it to the book
• How drought affects us now and connecting it to the book
• Comparing the time of dustbowl, luck of food/money to now and connecting it to the book.