Cite thorough evidence, mark where the text leaves matters uncertain, and analyze how two themes interact in The Scion Wood

Learning goal: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what a story says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from it, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain. Analyze literary text development: determine two or more themes of a text, analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another, and produce a thorough analysis of the text.

Original story — The Scion Wood

1. The knife was colder than Nell remembered, and smaller. Her grandfather had set it on the workbench beside a bundle of pencil-thin sticks wrapped in damp newspaper, and he did not look up when she came into the barn. It was the second week of March. The orchard outside was still bare, the ground gray with old snow, and the forty trees in the north block stood in their rows like people waiting to be told something.

"You cut toward yourself, you bleed," Teodor said. "You cut away, you learn."

"You told me that when I was nine."

"And you still have ten fingers." He handed her a stick. "Scion wood. Last year's growth, taken while the tree sleeps. Tell me what it is."

She turned it over. The bark was reddish, the buds small and tight. "A Ruth."

He nodded, as if she had passed something.

2. Her cousin Dale had called her at school three weeks earlier. The solar company had made an offer on the north block, a twenty-five-year lease, better money than apples had brought in a decade. "He's signing," Dale said. "He told Mom at Christmas. He just hasn't told you, because you'll make a face." Nell had asked whether Grandpa had actually said the word signing. Dale had said, "He said he was tired. Same thing."

She had not made a face on the phone. She had driven home the first weekend she could, and she had not asked about the lease, and neither had he. The envelope from the company sat on the kitchen table under the salt shaker. It had been opened. It had been there since she arrived.

3. The Ruth apple was named for her grandmother, who had died when Nell was four. Teodor said the first tree had come up as a seedling beside the lane in the year he married, from a core somebody had thrown out a truck window. An apple seed, he had told Nell more than once, never grows into its parent; every seed is a new variety, and almost all of them are bad. This one was not. It was small and yellow with a red flush on one side, it kept in the cellar until April, and it tasted, Teodor said, like a thing that had decided to be sweet.

When Nell was fifteen she had looked for the Ruth in a nursery catalog and then in an online list of heritage varieties and had found nothing. "It isn't anywhere," she had told him.

"It's here," he had said.

Mrs. Oyelaran from the next farm had once told Nell, over a fence, that she did not remember any seedling by the lane, and that Teodor had grafted his first Ruths onto the rootstock the year after the old Baldwin tree came down. She said it kindly. She said it as though it did not matter which story was true.

4. "Rootstock," Teodor said now, and set a rooted stick the thickness of a finger on the bench. "The roots decide how big. The scion decides what fruit. Neither one is the tree by itself."

He showed her the cut again: a long slanting face on the scion, the same on the rootstock, then a second shallow cut into each face so they would lock together like two hands. "The green line under the bark," he said, "that is the only part alive enough to join. Line it up on one side at least. Miss it and you have two dead sticks tied together."

Her first cut wandered. Her second was better. On the fourth she felt the two pieces click, and he wrapped the join with tape, tight, and wrote on a paper tag: RUTH / M.111 / NELL.

"Why am I on the tag?"

"So we know whose fault."

She laughed. He did not, but his mouth moved.

5. They made thirty grafts that afternoon. At dusk Teodor bundled them into a crate of damp sawdust for the cellar. "In April they go in the nursery row," he said. "In three years, apples. Four, if the deer are hungry."

"Where does the nursery row go," Nell said, "if the north block is panels?"

It was the closest either of them had come.

He brushed sawdust from his sleeve. "The nursery row is by the lane," he said. "The lane is not in the north block."

"That isn't an answer."

"It is a fact. You asked where."

She waited. The barn light buzzed. Somewhere in the house the furnace came on.

"Your grandmother," he said at last, "wanted to see the ocean. Once. We said next year for thirty-one years." He looked at the crate, not at her. "Trees are very good at next year."

6. On Sunday she packed the car. The envelope was still under the salt shaker. She moved the shaker and read the first page, which was a letter, and the second, which was a lease with a line for a signature. The line was blank. On the back of the last page, in pencil, in her grandfather's square hand, was a list: Ruth, 30. Baldwin, 6. Nell—M.111 or M.7? and below it, crossed out so hard the pencil had torn the paper, a word she could not read.

She put the pages back in the order she had found them and set the shaker on top.

Teodor walked her to the car carrying something wrapped in a dish towel. It was the knife.

"You'll need your own," he said. "Scion wood keeps. You cut it in March, it waits in the cold until you're ready. Six weeks. Eight, if you're careful."

"And then?"

"Then it has to go somewhere." He closed her hand over the towel. "That is the only rule."

She drove out past the lane, where a crooked old tree she had never thought to ask about stood a little apart from the rows, and in the mirror she watched him walk not toward the house but toward the north block, slowly, the way he walked when he was counting.

Three kinds of claim, three kinds of support. Most claims you make about what happens in a story, and about what its characters do, know and intend, are of three kinds, and each needs a different kind of support. (Claims about craft, such as how a structure or a word choice works, come in the lessons that follow and rest on the same habits of evidence.) An explicit claim reports what the text says outright: the lease line "was blank"; Teodor and Nell make "thirty grafts"; Dale reports that Teodor "said he was tired." One well-chosen quotation usually settles a narrow explicit claim. An inference is a conclusion the text supports without stating it: that Teodor has been weighing an alternative to the lease, or that he is thinking about Nell as the person who might keep the orchard. An inference usually needs more than one piece of evidence, and the pieces should come from different places, because a single detail can usually be explained another way. The blank line alone might mean only that he has not got around to it; the blank line plus the pencil list naming "Nell—M.111 or M.7?" plus his walk "toward the north block... the way he walked when he was counting" is a pattern, and a pattern is much harder to explain away. That is what thorough evidence means at this level: not one good quotation but enough, from enough places, that the reader sees why competing explanations are weaker.

The third kind of claim is the one this band adds: a claim about where the text leaves matters uncertain. Some questions a careful reader asks are not answered by the text, and a strong analysis says so, supports the "not answered" with evidence, and does not quietly fill the gap. What was the crossed-out word? The text says it was crossed out "so hard the pencil had torn the paper" and that Nell "could not read" it. The reader cannot read it either; any answer is invention. Which origin of the Ruth apple is true, the seedling from a thrown-out core or a graft made after the Baldwin tree came down? The story gives both, gives each a speaker, and has Mrs. Oyelaran tell her version "as though it did not matter which story was true." The crooked old tree by the lane that Nell "had never thought to ask about" is a hint toward Teodor's version, but it is only a hint; a thorough analysis cites it as such. The two accounts may not even conflict: a seedling could have come up by the lane and Teodor could later have grafted his first Ruths from it, and Mrs. Oyelaran's not remembering a seedling does not prove there was none. What stays unverified is where the original tree came from. Will Teodor sign? The story ends before any decision is revealed. Declaring that "he decides not to sign" is not an inference; it is a guess that the text refuses to confirm. Keep two possibilities apart: a decision not yet made and a decision made but not yet revealed. The text supports only that none is revealed.

Why uncertainty is evidence too. Students often treat an unanswered question as a flaw in their reading. At this level it is a finding. An author who leaves a matter open usually does so on purpose, and the gap itself carries meaning. Here the gaps cluster around one subject, decisions the story does not reveal, and that clustering is part of how the story's themes are built. To cite a gap you quote the sentence that comes closest and stops short: "The line was blank" establishes that no signature exists; it does not establish that none will.

Determining two or more themes. A theme is an idea about human experience that the whole text develops, stated as a claim, not a topic. "Family" is a topic. This story develops at least two themes. Theme A: what is handed down survives only by being cut and joined to something new. The grafting lesson states it in orchard terms: "The roots decide how big. The scion decides what fruit. Neither one is the tree by itself," and Teodor's earlier point that an apple seed "never grows into its parent" means a variety like the Ruth can outlast its first tree only if someone propagates it by hand, which for apples in practice means grafting. (Teodor's bench talk is a character's shorthand, not a botany text: "the only part alive enough to join" and "two dead sticks" exaggerate. When a graft fails it is the scion that dies, while the rooted stock usually lives, and an original tree carries its variety for as long as it stands.) Theme B: postponing a choice is itself a choice, and it has a cost. Teodor and Ruth "said next year for thirty-one years," and she never saw the ocean; Nell and Teodor never speak of the lease directly all weekend, and the closest either comes is Nell's question about where the nursery row goes "if the north block is panels." Teodor's bitter line "Trees are very good at next year" joins the two themes, because trees can wait and people, the story suggests, cannot wait forever.

How themes interact and build on one another. Analysis of a single theme traces it; analysis of two themes shows what each does to the other. In section 1 Theme A is only a craft lesson. In section 2 Theme B arrives as silence: the envelope "had been there since she arrived." In section 3 the Ruth apple's two origin stories connect the themes: whichever is true, the Ruth spread beyond a single tree only because someone chose to graft it, not because anyone waited. In section 5 the ocean story makes the cost of waiting concrete. In section 6 the two themes fuse in Teodor's rule about scion wood: it "waits in the cold until you're ready," but "Then it has to go somewhere." The graft (Theme A) supplies the image that answers the postponement (Theme B): waiting is allowed, but only for a limited time, and what is kept must eventually be joined to something new. Each theme makes the other more precise. Without Theme B, Theme A would be a pleasant idea about tradition; without Theme A, Theme B would be a complaint about procrastination with no image of what to do instead.

A thorough analysis of the text. "Produce a thorough analysis" means an essay that states the themes as claims, traces each through specific moments, shows the point where they build on one another, cites evidence for every inference, and names what the text leaves uncertain rather than resolving it. Here is a model paragraph. The story never says whether Teodor will sign the lease, and it takes care not to. The final section gives the strongest evidence that he has not signed yet, "The line was blank," and strong evidence that he is considering an alternative, since his pencil list plans rootstock for "Nell." Yet the crossed-out word "she could not read" and his walk toward the north block "the way he walked when he was counting" keep the outcome open for the reader. That openness is the second theme in action: the story itself refuses to say "next year" on Teodor's behalf, and it leaves the reader, like Nell, without his answer. The paragraph makes an inference, supports it from two places, and marks the limit of what the text establishes.

The misconception. Many readers believe that the best analysis resolves every question. The opposite is true of this kind of story: an analysis that claims to know the crossed-out word, or that says "Teodor signs" or "Teodor refuses," is weaker, because it replaces the author's design with the reader's preference. Thorough means complete about what the text supports and honest about what it does not.

Worked evidence set for an inference: Inference: Teodor is considering keeping part of the orchard for Nell. Evidence 1 (section 4): the tag reads "RUTH / M.111 / NELL," and his joke "So we know whose fault" treats her as responsible for the tree. Evidence 2 (section 6): his pencil list reads "Nell—M.111 or M.7?", a rootstock choice attached to her name. Evidence 3 (section 5): the nursery row will be "by the lane," which "is not in the north block," so young trees have a place whatever happens to the lease. The three pieces come from three different sections and three different kinds of detail (a tag, a private note, a statement), so the inference does not rest on one ambiguous object. Limit: nothing says he has decided; the analysis states the inference as "considering," not "has chosen."

Worked uncertainty analysis: Question: which origin story of the Ruth is true? Evidence for Teodor's seedling story: his own account, and the "crooked old tree... a little apart from the rows" by the lane, which fits a tree that came up where it was not planted. Evidence for Mrs. Oyelaran's graft story: she "did not remember any seedling by the lane," and the Ruth appears in no catalog, though that absence fits either version. Conclusion: the text leaves the matter uncertain and signals that the uncertainty is deliberate through the way Mrs. Oyelaran tells her version, "as though it did not matter which story was true." The analysis reports both sides and the signal, notes that the versions may be reconcilable (a found seedling later propagated by grafting), and notes that either origin supports Theme A, since in both versions the variety is carried on by grafting.

Worked theme interaction: Theme A (continuation requires cutting and joining) and Theme B (postponement has a cost). Point of contact 1: section 3, where the Ruth is carried beyond one tree only because someone acted. Point of contact 2: section 5, "Trees are very good at next year," which contrasts trees, which can wait, with people, who ran out of time. Point of contact 3: section 6, "it waits in the cold until you're ready... Then it has to go somewhere." Build: by the end, Theme A supplies the answer to Theme B: waiting is legitimate for a season, but what is kept must be joined to something new. The final image, Nell holding the knife while Teodor walks toward the north block, puts both themes in motion at once without resolving either.

Three-column evidence record: Divide a page into Explicit, Inferred and Uncertain. Record at least four entries in each column. The quotation counts below are a scaffold for this exercise; the real test of evidence is whether it is relevant, sufficient in context and answers competing readings. In this exercise, every Explicit entry has one quotation; every Inferred entry has two or more quotations from different sections; every Uncertain entry quotes the sentence that comes closest to answering the question and explains exactly where it stops. Then draw two lines through the six numbered sections, one per theme, and circle the sections where the lines cross.

Independent performance: Write a thorough analysis (650–850 words) of how two themes in The Scion Wood develop and build on one another. Success criteria: both themes are stated as full claims, not topics; each theme is traced through at least three numbered sections; at least one paragraph analyzes a specific moment where the themes interact and explains what each adds to the other; at least eight quotations are used, each introduced and explained; every inference is supported from at least two places; at least two matters the text leaves uncertain are identified, with evidence showing that the text withholds the answer, and are not resolved by guessing.

Revision check: Highlight every sentence in your draft that states what will happen after the story ends. Delete it or rewrite it as a claim about what the text leaves open.