By: Jesse Stuart
“SPLIT CHERRY TREE”
THE AUTHOR
Jesse Stuart
 Born in Greenup County, Ky.
 Most of his stories/poems involve education
and living in the South

DICTION
Author’s choice of words.
 Authors are very specific about which words they
put into their writing (to convey certain feelings or
messages to their audience)
 Often, diction can be used to display different
dialects, or ways that people of a certain culture
speak.
 Author’s diction is very important to a describe a
character by the way they speak, or their dialogue

GENRE
Type of literature, or what category the
literature fits into.
 This story’s genre is Appalachian Literature

THEME AND CONFLICT
Theme: As times change, so does education.
 Conflict: Man vs Society
 Pa vs. Society/Change

SUMMARY
This story, set in the Appalachian area, focuses
on the narrator, a young boy named Dave, and
his Pa.
 Dave an 5 other boys broke a cherry tree on a
field trip trying to catch a lizard. They must
each pay $1 for the tree. Dave does not have
the money.
 Dave must stay after school 2 hours, for 2 days
to make the money up.

SUMMARY CONT.
When Dave gets home late, Pa is enraged. Dave
has to walk 6 miles to and from school. When he
gets home he has hours of work to do on the farm.
He is the first in his family to go to high school.
 Pa plans to go to school and confront Professor
Herbert. He wants to know why the boys were out
“bug larnin” instead of being in school.
 He plans to take a gun to school! (stereotype)

SUMMARY CONTINUED
The next day Pa goes to school with a gun. He
is very angry and tells Professor Herbert that he
doesn’t think they way they have been teaching
the students is right.
 Professor Herbert calms Pa down and allows
him to stay a whole school day, taking him
around and showing him what they teach and
how education has changed. Pa even sees
germs for the first time!

SUMMARY …
Pa realizes that education has changed with
time (theme).
 Dave realizes that Pa isn’t so bad after all.

 Pa

has a good heart (black snake)
Pa ends up staying with Dave after school to
help him work off the money.