Grapes of Wrath Supplement and Lesson: CHARACTER SKETCHES À LA STEINBECK

The goals of this Grapes of Wrath supplement and reading-writing exercise are:

1. to exercise and improve students’ observation skills by teaching them to observe body language, dialect and gestures without judgment;
2. to help students recognize the role body language plays in character sketches (word portraits);
3. to help students “read” character through habits of speech and manner of dress;
4. to show students the use and value of non-generic, descriptive verbs in delineating character;
5. to write word portraits (using Steinbeck’s character sketches as models) with well chosen descriptive verbs that are based on careful observations that they have made and recorded.