Few essay prompts generate as much genuine student debate as one asking who bears the most responsibility for the accident that kills Billie Jo's mother and unborn brother, since the novel presents a genuinely complicated web of contributing factors rather than a single clear cause. This makes for an excellent argumentative essay topic, but it also means grading requires real comfort with ambiguity, since a well-supported essay might reasonably argue for several different positions as long as the evidence and reasoning are handled with genuine rigor.

A strong essay on this topic does not need to arrive at a definitive, singular answer, but it does need to grapple honestly with the counterarguments to whatever position it takes, acknowledging the complicating factors rather than ignoring evidence that might complicate a tidy conclusion. An essay arguing that Billie Jo's father bears primary responsibility should still address the fact that Billie Jo's mother made the choice to set the kerosene near the stove herself, and failing to address this kind of complicating detail should be scored as a significant gap in the argument's completeness.

It is also worth watching for essays that oversimplify the question into pure blame assignment without engaging with the more interesting underlying question of how accidents happen within systems of poverty, exhaustion, and constrained choices during the Dust Bowl. The strongest essays recognize that assigning individual blame may be less useful than understanding how desperate circumstances created the conditions for tragedy, and this kind of systemic thinking represents a genuinely advanced level of analysis worth specifically rewarding in the rubric's highest scoring tier.

Grading Argument Quality Over Position Taken

Because this is a genuinely debatable topic without a single correct answer, the rubric needs to be explicitly built around argument quality, meaning the strength of reasoning and evidence, rather than whether a student's conclusion matches what a teacher might personally believe about the accident's causes. This distinction should be communicated clearly to students before they begin writing, since some students may otherwise worry, reasonably, that their grade depends on guessing the teacher's own interpretation rather than constructing their own well-supported argument.

• Does the essay take a clear, specific position rather than remaining vague or noncommittal?
• Does the argument genuinely address counterevidence rather than ignoring complicating details?
• Is the reasoning connecting evidence to the claim logical and clearly explained?
• Does the essay consider systemic or circumstantial factors, not just individual blame?
• Is the position taken assessed on its argumentative quality, not whether it matches a predetermined answer?

Handling Essays That Avoid Taking a Clear Position

Some students, uncomfortable with the moral weight of the topic, write essays that avoid committing to a clear position at all, presenting multiple perspectives without ever synthesizing them into an actual argument. While it is genuinely appropriate for a strong essay to acknowledge complexity and multiple contributing factors, a rubric should still require some form of clear, defensible claim, even if that claim is itself an argument for shared or distributed responsibility rather than blame resting primarily on one individual.

Feedback on essays that avoid taking a position should distinguish clearly between productive complexity, genuinely wrestling with competing evidence, and unproductive vagueness, simply listing possibilities without committing to any interpretive judgment about them. Helping students understand this distinction, perhaps through a brief revision conference focused specifically on identifying where their essay could commit to a clearer claim, often produces a noticeably stronger final product than accepting the hedge as the student's final answer.

Preparing Students for This Kind of Interpretive Debate

Before assigning this essay, a structured class debate or discussion where students argue different positions aloud tends to produce stronger written essays afterward, since students have already had to defend their reasoning against genuine pushback from classmates holding different views. This kind of oral rehearsal surfaces weak points in a student's argument before they commit it to a formal written essay, giving them a chance to strengthen their reasoning in response to real counterarguments rather than discovering the weakness only after receiving graded feedback.

Grading feedback after this kind of prior discussion can reference the class debate directly, noting whether a student's written essay successfully incorporates the strongest counterarguments raised during discussion or whether it retreats to a simpler version of their position once writing independently. This kind of feedback helps students see the connection between oral argumentation skills and written argumentative essay construction, reinforcing that a well-reasoned written argument shares the same fundamental structure as a well-reasoned spoken one.