Literary Narrative Passages · Lesson 1

Read for character, conflict and change

Passages you meet on ACT-style Reading are usually fiction or memoir, social science, humanities, or natural science. The fiction-or-memoir passage, often called a literary narrative, tells a short story about people. It rarely states its point. Instead it shows a character wanting something, meeting some kind of resistance, and ending up a little different.

So read for three things. Want: what does the main character hope for at the start? Obstacle: what stands in the way, whether another person, a rule, or the character's own fear? Change: what has shifted by the last paragraph, in an action, a feeling, or a way of seeing? Jot a few words for each in the margin as you read. Those notes answer most main-idea questions and tell you where to look for the rest.

The change is often small and quiet. A character does not announce, "I have learned patience." She does something in the last paragraph that she would not have done in the first. Compare the opening and the ending side by side and name the difference in plain words.

A want, obstacle, and change map for "The Key Stall"
QuestionWhat the passage showsWhere
Wantto cut keys at the machineParagraph 1
Obstaclethe uncle's "Shoes first" and the narrator's fear of the scrap binParagraphs 2 and 4
Turning pointthe careful work on Mr. Halvorsen's bootsParagraph 5
Changecuts a key slowly and scraps an imperfect one, as the uncle doesParagraph 6

The Key Stall

1The summer I turned sixteen, my uncle Teodor hired me to work at his stall in the covered market, a narrow counter where he repaired shoes and cut keys. I had pictured myself at the key machine from the first day, guiding blanks against the spinning wheel while customers watched. Instead, Teodor handed me a tin of wax polish and a stack of worn boots.

2"Shoes first," he said. "Keys later."

3For two weeks I polished. I rubbed wax into cracked leather until my fingertips turned brown, and I watched, sideways, every key he cut. He never hurried. He would set the customer's old key in one clamp and a blank in the other, run the guide along the old key's ridges, and then hold both keys up to the light, squinting, before he handed anything over. Once he threw a finished key into the scrap bin because, he said, one notch was "a hair too shy."

4I took this as proof that the machine was a kind of magic he wanted to keep to himself. When a woman came in needing a key copied while Teodor was out buying lunch, I told her he would be back in ten minutes. I did not offer to try. I was, I told myself, following orders, but the truth is that I was afraid of the scrap bin.

5Near the end of July, Teodor set a pair of boots in front of me, the leather so dry it had gone gray. "These belong to Mr. Halvorsen," he said. "He has worn them for thirty years. Make them look like he still cares." I worked on them most of the afternoon: thinning the wax, working it in, letting it sit, buffing, beginning again. When Mr. Halvorsen picked them up, he turned them over in his hands and said nothing for a while. Then he paid and left a coin on the counter for me.

6The next morning Teodor pointed at the key machine. "Today," he said. I cut my first key slowly, the way I had polished the boots, and when I held it to the light beside the original, I squinted the way he did. It was not perfect. I dropped it into the scrap bin myself and reached for another blank.

Worked example Easy

Show the whole passage

The Key Stall

1The summer I turned sixteen, my uncle Teodor hired me to work at his stall in the covered market, a narrow counter where he repaired shoes and cut keys. I had pictured myself at the key machine from the first day, guiding blanks against the spinning wheel while customers watched. Instead, Teodor handed me a tin of wax polish and a stack of worn boots.

2"Shoes first," he said. "Keys later."

3For two weeks I polished. I rubbed wax into cracked leather until my fingertips turned brown, and I watched, sideways, every key he cut. He never hurried. He would set the customer's old key in one clamp and a blank in the other, run the guide along the old key's ridges, and then hold both keys up to the light, squinting, before he handed anything over. Once he threw a finished key into the scrap bin because, he said, one notch was "a hair too shy."

4I took this as proof that the machine was a kind of magic he wanted to keep to himself. When a woman came in needing a key copied while Teodor was out buying lunch, I told her he would be back in ten minutes. I did not offer to try. I was, I told myself, following orders, but the truth is that I was afraid of the scrap bin.

5Near the end of July, Teodor set a pair of boots in front of me, the leather so dry it had gone gray. "These belong to Mr. Halvorsen," he said. "He has worn them for thirty years. Make them look like he still cares." I worked on them most of the afternoon: thinning the wax, working it in, letting it sit, buffing, beginning again. When Mr. Halvorsen picked them up, he turned them over in his hands and said nothing for a while. Then he paid and left a coin on the counter for me.

6The next morning Teodor pointed at the key machine. "Today," he said. I cut my first key slowly, the way I had polished the boots, and when I held it to the light beside the original, I squinted the way he did. It was not perfect. I dropped it into the scrap bin myself and reached for another blank.

At the beginning of the passage, the narrator mainly wants to:

  1. repair the boots of the stall's regular customers
  2. operate the key machineAnswer
  3. run the stall while the uncle buys lunch
  4. earn extra coins from grateful customers

How to solve it

  1. Go to the opening paragraph; wants are usually set up early.
  2. Find the hope: "I had pictured myself at the key machine from the first day."
  3. Match: operate the key machine. The other choices come from later paragraphs or from the uncle's plan.

Why each choice is right or wrong

  • A. Incorrect. Repairing boots is the work the uncle assigns, not what the narrator hoped for; Teodor hands over polish "Instead" of the key work the narrator pictured.
  • B. Correct. Paragraph 1 states the want directly: "I had pictured myself at the key machine from the first day, guiding blanks against the spinning wheel."
  • C. Incorrect. The narrator is alone at the stall in paragraph 4, but only sends a customer away; nothing says the narrator wanted to run the stall.
  • D. Incorrect. A coin appears only in paragraph 5, as an unexpected tip; it is a detail late in the story, not the want set up at the start.

Worked example Medium

Show the whole passage

The Key Stall

1The summer I turned sixteen, my uncle Teodor hired me to work at his stall in the covered market, a narrow counter where he repaired shoes and cut keys. I had pictured myself at the key machine from the first day, guiding blanks against the spinning wheel while customers watched. Instead, Teodor handed me a tin of wax polish and a stack of worn boots.

2"Shoes first," he said. "Keys later."

3For two weeks I polished. I rubbed wax into cracked leather until my fingertips turned brown, and I watched, sideways, every key he cut. He never hurried. He would set the customer's old key in one clamp and a blank in the other, run the guide along the old key's ridges, and then hold both keys up to the light, squinting, before he handed anything over. Once he threw a finished key into the scrap bin because, he said, one notch was "a hair too shy."

4I took this as proof that the machine was a kind of magic he wanted to keep to himself. When a woman came in needing a key copied while Teodor was out buying lunch, I told her he would be back in ten minutes. I did not offer to try. I was, I told myself, following orders, but the truth is that I was afraid of the scrap bin.

5Near the end of July, Teodor set a pair of boots in front of me, the leather so dry it had gone gray. "These belong to Mr. Halvorsen," he said. "He has worn them for thirty years. Make them look like he still cares." I worked on them most of the afternoon: thinning the wax, working it in, letting it sit, buffing, beginning again. When Mr. Halvorsen picked them up, he turned them over in his hands and said nothing for a while. Then he paid and left a coin on the counter for me.

6The next morning Teodor pointed at the key machine. "Today," he said. I cut my first key slowly, the way I had polished the boots, and when I held it to the light beside the original, I squinted the way he did. It was not perfect. I dropped it into the scrap bin myself and reached for another blank.

Which choice best describes how the narrator has changed by the last paragraph?

  1. The narrator has decided that polishing shoes is more satisfying than cutting keys.
  2. The narrator now cuts keys faster than the uncle does.
  3. The narrator no longer feels any need to follow the uncle's instructions.
  4. The narrator now holds the work to the uncle's careful standard.Answer

How to solve it

  1. Name the start: the narrator wants the machine but is "afraid of the scrap bin."
  2. Name the end: the narrator checks a key the uncle's way and scraps it without being told.
  3. The difference is a new standard, not new speed or new independence.

Why each choice is right or wrong

  • A. Incorrect. The narrator does cut a key in paragraph 6 and reaches "for another blank"; nothing says polishing is preferred. This mistakes the turning point for the change.
  • B. Incorrect. The narrator cuts the first key "slowly," and the passage never compares speeds; this choice invents a detail.
  • C. Incorrect. The narrator copies the uncle, squinting "the way he did," so the ending shows the narrator taking on his ways, not rejecting his instructions.
  • D. Correct. The narrator "squinted the way he did" and, finding the key "not perfect," "dropped it into the scrap bin myself," just as Teodor scrapped a key "a hair too shy."

Trap The answer that is true of the story but not of that paragraph

A choice can describe something that really happens in the passage and still be wrong, because it happens somewhere else. In "The Key Stall," the narrator really does polish boots and really does get a coin, but neither is the want set up in paragraph 1 or the change shown in paragraph 6.

Before you choose, check that the choice matches the exact part of the story the stem names: the beginning, a paragraph, or the end.