Common Core Standard For English Language Arts Page 13
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43Common Core State StandardS for engliSh language artS & literaCy in hiStory/SoCial StudieS, SCienCe, and teChniCal SubjeCtS
Example 2: The Grapes of Wrath (Grades 9–10 Text Complexity Band)
Excerpt
The man took off his dark, stained hat and stood with a curious humility in front of the screen.
“Could you see your way to sell us a loaf of bread, ma’am?”
Mae said, “This ain’t a grocery store. We got bread to make san’widges.”
“I know, ma’am.” His humility was insistent. “We need bread and there ain’t nothin’ for quite a piece,
they say.”
“’F we sell bread we gonna run out.” Mae’s tone was faltering.
“We’re hungry,” the man said.
“Whyn’t you buy a san’widge? We got nice san’widges, hamburgs.”
“We’d sure admire to do that, ma’am. But we can’t. We got to make a dime do all of us.” And he
said embarrassedly, “We ain’t got but a little.”
Mae said, “You can’t get no loaf a bread for a dime. We only got fifteen-cent loafs.”
From behind her Al growled, “God Almighty, Mae, give ‘em bread.”
“We’ll run out ‘fore the bread truck comes.”
“Run out then, goddamn it,” said Al. He looked sullenly down at the potato salad he was mixing.
Mae shrugged her plump shoulders and looked to the truck drivers to show them what she was up
against.
She held the screen door open and the man came in, bringing a smell of sweat with him. The boys
edged behind him and they went immediately to the candy case and stared in—not with craving or
with hope or even with desire, but just with a kind of wonder that such things could be. They were
alike in size and their faces were alike. One scratched his dusty ankle with the toe nails of his other
foot. The other whispered some soft message and then they straightened their arms so that their
clenched fists in the overall pockets showed through the thin blue cloth.
Mae opened a drawer and took out a long waxpaper-wrapped loaf. “This here is a fifteen-cent loaf.”
The man put his hat back on his head. He answered with inflexible humility, “Won’t you—can’t you
see your way to cut off ten cents’ worth?”
Al said snarlingly, “Goddamn it, Mae. Give ‘em the loaf.”
The man turned toward Al. “No, we want ta buy ten cents’ worth of it. We got it figgered awful
close, mister, to get to California.”
Mae said resignedly, “You can have this for ten cents.”
“That’d be robbin’ you, ma’am.”
“Go ahead—Al says to take it.” She pushed the waxpapered loaf across the counter. The man took
a deep leather pouch from his rear pocket, untied the strings, and spread it open. It was heavy with
silver and with greasy bills.
“May soun’ funny to be so tight,” he apologized. “We got a thousan’ miles to go, an’ we don’ know
if we’ll make it.” He dug in the pouch with a forefinger, located a dime, and pinched in for it. When
he put it down on the counter he had a penny with it. He was about to drop the penny back into
the pouch when his eye fell on the boys frozen before the candy counter. He moved slowly down
to them. He pointed in the case at big long sticks of striped peppermint. “Is them penny candy,
ma’am?”
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