Three Boxes and a Coffee Can of Screws
A short literary excerpt from a GED-style reading set:
“The shed still smelled of cedar shavings and gasoline. Marisol had come with three boxes and a plan: label, stack, haul, done by noon. At ten she was still holding a coffee can of mismatched screws. Her father had never thrown out a screw in his life. She remembered mocking him for it - the jars, the labels in his cramped capitals, the way he would not let her use a good screwdriver on a job that didn't deserve it. Now she found herself sorting the can by size, smallest to largest, the way he did. She put the lid back on and set the can on the shelf, not in the box, and told herself she would deal with it next weekend, the way she had told herself that in April, and in May.”
1. Marisol tells herself she will “deal with it next weekend.” What does the passage suggest is actually going on?
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She is not making a plan; she is finding a socially acceptable way to stop.
The evidence is layered. She arrived with “a plan” of comic efficiency - label, stack, haul, done by noon - and by ten o'clock she has filled no boxes and is holding a single can of screws. That gap between intended speed and actual stillness is the passage's central fact.
The April and May references settle it: this is not the first time she has promised herself next weekend. The pattern converts a one-time excuse into a habit, which tells the reader the delay is not about scheduling. She is not too busy to sort the shed; she is unwilling to finish it, because finishing means her father is definitively gone and the objects stop being decisions she still gets to make.
The phrase “not in the box” is the giveaway. Everything about the trip is designed to move objects out; she has just quietly exempted one. The reader who notices that sees grief operating under the cover of a to-do list.
2. What does the memory of the screwdriver reveal about the father, and about how Marisol now regards him?
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About the father: he had standards and a kind of reverence for good tools. Refusing to let a child use a good screwdriver on “a job that didn't deserve it” implies a hierarchy of work - some jobs are worth the good tool and some are not. It also implies thrift and self-respect, consistent with a man who never threw out a screw. He is not merely stingy; he is a person with a system.
About Marisol: the memory is introduced as mockery - “she remembered mocking him for it” - and the mockery does not survive the paragraph. Within a few sentences she is sorting screws by size, smallest to largest, “the way he did.” The detail about the screwdriver establishes what she once found ridiculous; her imitation establishes that she now finds it binding.
That movement, from derision to replication, is the passage's emotional arc compressed into a single memory. She is becoming the person she teased, and the story does not say so directly.
3. Which single detail best supports the claim that Marisol has absorbed her father's habits rather than merely remembering them? Explain why the other details are weaker.
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The strongest detail is “she found herself sorting the can by size, smallest to largest, the way he did.”
Why it wins: it is an action performed in the present, and it reproduces a specific method. Imitation of a method is evidence of habit; a memory is only evidence of memory. The phrase “found herself” matters too - she did not decide to sort, which suggests the behavior has become automatic.
Weaker candidates:
- Never threw out a screw - about the father, not about Marisol.
- Mocking him for it - establishes her past attitude, which is the opposite of absorption.
- Keeping the can out of the box - shows attachment and avoidance, but preserving an object is sentimental, not habitual.
- April and May - establishes avoidance, a different trait, and one about the shed rather than about her father's methods.
A claim about habit needs evidence of repeated behavior; only the sorting scene shows her doing what he did without being told to.