John Yowan                                                                                                                 Hour 1

Ms. Keeley                                                                                                                  Type 3

Freshman English                                                                                                                     

16 January 2003                                Split Cherry Tree

 

            The three main characters in the story Split Cherry Tree were Luster, his son Dave, and the schoolteacher, Professor Herbert.

Dave is a high school student from a farm family and is the only one of eleven children in his family to ever go to high school. Dave is a very hard worker at home, his jobs at home were to take care of the animals and help his father around the farm.

Luster was Dave's father he was a farmer. His skin was rough from working hard all his life. He was a big man that thought he could take care of disagreements with people with his gun. He was not well educated and lived the life of a simple man.

Professor Herbert taught Biology at the County High School. He was an educated man that was trying to teach the kids things that most of them had never learned about or even knew about.

There is a common problem that the three main characters must face. The common problem is that they didn't see beyond their own world. They didn't think about how other people lived and what was important to others.

All of the main characters in the story grew from learning about different things. Luster learned that school had changed from what he remembered as a child. He learned that you could learn from more than just books. Dave learned that his father was more open-minded than he thought. Professor Herbert learned that being just and honest was very important to Luster, and he respected him for it. The good thing about them changing, is they learned to accept other peoples differences.

The characters are very realistic. There are still people like all of the characters in the book around today.

 

The book Split Cherry Tree was about a high school student named Dave, his father Luster, and his Biology teacher Professor Herbert. The story starts the evening after Dave and his five classmates have broke a cherry tree down during a school outing that the kids were on looking for lizards, snakes, and bugs. They climbed the tree trying to get a lizard out of it and it split apart. The owner of the tree, Eif Crabtree saw this happen and told the boys that they must pay six dollars for the tree. So each boy had to pay one dollar. Dave did not have a dollar, so Professor Herbert paid the dollar and then made Dave work it off after school by cleaning the school with the janitor. He got paid a quarter an hour and was to work two hours for two days after school. Dave's dad gets mad because Dave got home late and his dad had to do most of the work.

The next day Luster goes to school with Dave carrying a gun. Luster was mad at Professor Herbert and wanted to know why the Professor was not teaching them from books, the way Luster had learned. Luster thought it was silly to take the kids out to hunt for bugs and things like that. Professor Herbert wanted to know if Luster had ever heard of a germ. Luster said, "Yes," "but I don't believe in germs. I'm sixty-five years old and I ain't seen one yet!" Professor Herbert and Luster ended up spending the day together and talking. Later on in the day Professor Herbert showed Luster a germ that Luster had scraped off of his teeth. Luster then started understand that there more to learning than just reading books. After school the Professor told Dave that he could go home with his father and he would forget the money owed. Dave's dad told the professor that they were just and honest people. So he would help Dave work to pay the school back. Dave and his dad did the work together and on the way home Dave's dad told him that he should keep going to school and he would never have to work as hard as he did. All of the characters learned something new about themselves and the world they live in.