A Loaf Of Bread Literary Analysis

The short story “A Loaf of Bread” had many themes depending on how the reader interpreted it. Some themes consisted of racism, capitalism, equality, having too much pride, and sacrificing things for the people you love. The overall theme I would come to in this story is putting yourself in others shoes before judging them. One of the main characters, Harold Green, was a grocery store owner who owned three different grocery stores in three different neighborhood. The story focuses on the grocery store he owned in a predominantly African American neighborhood. It was known for a long time that Green would overcharge the African-American customers that comes to that store a lot more than what he would charge the Caucasian customers in his other

He decided to plan a meeting with the leader of the protest, Nelson Reed. He comes up with a solution where he will “explain himself to Reed, in as finite detail as possible, the economic structure of his operation. He vowed to suppress no information. He would explain everything: inventories, markups, sale items, inflation, balance sheets, specialty items, overhead, and that mysterious item called profit. (McPherson).” He proceeds and tries to explain his point of view to Reed, but Reed does not want to hear it. They kept bickering back and forth until Green asks him “If you were running my store in this neighborhood, what would be your position? Say on a profit scale of fifteen to forty percent, at what point in between would you draw the line? (McPherson)" Reed pauses and says he is a church man so closer to fifteen than forty. Green keeps pushing him to answer exactly how close and finally Reed realizes that at the end of the day, if he was in Green’s shoes, he would have done the exact same thing Green does.

Still, Ruth Green tells Harold Green once again, that he will do what she said earlier or he will not be able to see his children again. She comes to him with tears running down her face and this causes Green to reevaluate himself. He soon realizes he was being very selfish and that he needs to prove to himself and his family that he “is a moral man” (McPherson). He realizes he

He opens the store that Saturday morning like it was a regular Saturday, except he decided to give his employees the day off. His first customer of the day was Nelson Reed’s wife. She fidgets around as if not exactly knowing what she came in to buy, this goes on for a little bit until finally she picks up a loaf of bread and proceeds to pay for it. At this moment, Green was probably having an internal battle with himself about proving himself to his family or maintaining his pride. He finally makes his decision and replies with “Free” (McPherson) and continues saying this all day to everybody that came in. This goes on the whole day until finally, there is literally nothing left in his store. Reed comes in later that day to pay Green back for the loaf of bread he gave for free to Reed’s wife earlier that