Common Core State Standards for english language arts & literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects
‘What shall I say to him?’ thought Bilovsky. But before he had time to think of anything to say his son Seriozha had already entered the study. This was a little person whose sex could only be divined from his clothes—he was so delicate, and fair, and frail. His body was as languid as a hot-house plant and everything about him looked wonderfully dainty and soft—his movements, his curly hair, his glance, his velvet tunic. ‘Good evening, papa,’ he said in a gentle voice, climbing on to his father’s knee and swiftly kissing his neck. ‘Did you send for me?’ ‘Wait a bit, wait a bit, master,’ answered the lawyer, putting him aside. ‘Before you and I kiss each other we must have a talk, a serious talk. I am angry with you, and I don’t love you any more; do you understand that, young man? I don’t love you, and you are no son of mine.’ Seriozha looked steadfastly at his father and then turned his regard to the table and shrugged his shoulders. ‘What have I done?’ he asked, perplexed, and blinked. ‘I didn’t go into your study once today, and I haven’t touched a thing.’ ‘Miss Natalie has just been complaining to me that you have been smoking; is that so? Have you been smoking?’ ‘Yes, I smoked once. That is so.’ ‘There! So now you have told a lie into the bargain!’ said the lawyer, disguising his smile by a frown. ‘Miss Natalie saw you smoking twice. That means that you have been caught doing three naughty things: smoking, taking tobacco that doesn’t belong to you off my table, and telling a lie. Three accusations!’ Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner, 2000. (1925) From Chapter 3 There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motorboats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing brushes and hammers and garden shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York—every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler’s thumb. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby’s enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors d’oeuvres, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another. Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. New York: Vintage, 1990. (1930) From “Darl” Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file. Although I am fifteen feet ahead of him, anyone watching us from the cottonhouse can see Jewel’s frayed and broken straw hat a full head above my own. The path runs straight as a plumb-line, worn smooth by feet and baked brick-hard by July, between the green rows of laidby cotton, to the cottonhouse at four soft right angles and goes on across the field again, worn so by feet in fading precision.
appendix B |
The cottonhouse is of rough logs, from between which the chinking has long fallen. Square, with a broken roof set at a single pitch, it leans in empty and shimmering dilapidation in the sunlight, a single broad window in two opposite walls giving onto the approaches of the path. When we reach it I turn and follow the path which circles the house. Jewel, fifteen feet behind me, looking straight ahead, steps in a single stride through the window. Still staring straight ahead, his pale eyes like wood set into his wooden face, he crosses the floor in four strides with the rigid gravity of
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