Question

While reading the story, consider the culture (or sub culture) and related communication styles the story reveals.

Consider too, possibly, the values, behavioral norms, social practices, social artifacts, etc.

After reading the story through the lens of this idea, please compose a full academic length (evidence-based 7 to 11 sentence long) paragraph which addresses the following prompt:

What does the story reveal about the culture it portrays and/OR the communication styles the culture shares?

In other words, what does the story teach about the culture and its communication style or styles?

Split Cherry Tree - by Jesse Stuart I don't mind staying after school," I says to Professor Herbert, "but I'd rather you'd whip me with a switch and let me go home early. Pa will whip me anyway for getting home two hours late." "You are too big to whip," says Professor Herbert, "and I have to punish you for climbing up in that cherry tree. You boys knew better than that! The other five boys have paid their dollar each. You have been the only one who has not helped pay for the tree. Can't you borrow a dollar?" "I can't," I says. "I'll have to take the punishment. I wish it would be quicker punishment. I wouldn't mind." Professor Herbert stood and looked at me. He was a big man. He wore a grey suit of clothes. The suit matched his grey hair. "You don't know my father," I says to Professor Herbert. "He might be called a little old-fashioned. He makes us mind him until we're twenty-one years old. He believes: 'If you spare the rod you spoil the child.' I'll never be able to make him understand about the cherry tree. I'm the first of my people to go to high school." "You must take the punishment," says Professor Herbert. You must stay two hours after school today and two hours after school tomorrow. I am allowing you twenty- five cents an hour. That is good money for a high-school student. You can sweep the schoolhouse floor, wash the blackboards, and clean windows. I'll pay the dollar for you." I couldn't ask Professor Herbert to loan me a dollar. He never offered to loan it to me. I had to stay and help the janitor and work out my fine at a quarter an hour. I thought as I swept the floor, "What will Pa do to me? What lie can I tell him when I go home? Why did we ever climb that cherry tree and break it down for anyway? Why did we run crazy over the hills away from the crowd? Why did we do all of this? Six of us climbed up in a little cherry tree after one little lizard! Why did the tree split and fall with us? It should have been a stronger tree! Why did Eif Crabtree just happen to be below us plowing and catch us in his cherry tree? Why wasn't he a better man than to charge us six dollars for the tree?"

Answer 1

Jesse Stuart's short story, "Split Cherry Tree" is an enduring narrative of the struggles of rural people outside the cultural mainstream as well as the problems of the "generation gap." Two sentences that are key to an understanding of these themes are the following:

"A bullet will make a hole in a schoolteacher same as it will anybody else."

As an uneducated man who has never left his rural area, Luster Sexton is culturally very backward. Consequently, because of his sense of inferiority, he reacts defensively regarding Professor Herbert's making Dave work off the dollar that the others have paid for the cherry tree which split when they climbed it. For, he feels that Professor Herbert has singled out Dave because he is poor:It is with this defensive attitude that Pa accompanies the apprehensive Dave to school. However, Mr. Sexton is backward and ignorant of many modern ideas, but he is far from stupid. When Professor Herbert very wisely explains the purpose of the field trip as well as taking Pa around the school's science department, quoting his own father--"Seein' is believin'"--as he tours the area, Pa realizes that his bringing his gun was unnecessary. Ironically, Professor Herbert learns that Pa has a depth and understanding to him, especially about nature. Pa, in turn, has come to realize what a good teacher and decent man Professor Herbert really is