1. The Friday Everything Changed

2. Plot line Exposition (introduction, setting) One room school house
Rural North America
Post World War II
Likely 1950s

3. Plot line Complication or initiating incident:
Alma Nile’s question: Why can’t the girls carry the water bucket?
Conflict: Man vs. Society
Girls vs. Boys on a basic level
Women vs. Society to gain equal rights

4. Plot line Rising action:
Miss Ralston surprises them by taking the question seriously
The boys intimidate and beat up the girls
The girls come together in each other’s defence
Miss Ralston observes but does not intervene

5. Plot line
Climax:
Miss Ralston grabs the bat and tells the pitcher, ‘Come on!’
She has taken up the girls’ fights and wants to show that girls are just as good as boys, even in baseball.

6. Plot Line Falling action: Dénouement (resolution):
Miss Ralston hits the ball into the ox pasture
Dénouement (resolution):
Two girls are chosen to carry the water, thereby changing tradition
Miss Ralston sweeps the dust off her desk in a gesture of satisfaction and pride

7. Miss Ralston Story’s protagonist Round character
represents the new ‘modern woman’
Pretty and feminine yet firm and tough
Role model for the girls
Becomes an advocate for the girls (stands up for them in their fight for equal rights)
Able to compete with the boys
Isn’t afraid to stand up for what is right

8. Characters The boys and girls are mostly flat characters
Not described in detail
Not identifiable from each other
Not so much ‘individual personalities’ as they are ‘boys’ and ‘girls’

9. Similes
National Geographics… ‘like huge butterflies folding up their yellow wings’
As for Alma… ‘we stuck to her like burrs’
‘when… we’re hanging around the entry door like a lot of scared chickens’

10. Irony Girls fighting to carry water
What do you know about those developing countries they read about in the National Geographic?
What is one the daily occupation for girls?
Who gets to go to school?
Miss Ralston’s ball soars into an ox pasture
An ox is usually a castrated male bovine (not a cow or bull)
The author did NOT choose a ‘wheat field’!

11. Metaphors The story itself ‘such a bombshell’: Alma’s question
Fighting for the right to carry the water bucket represents women’s fight for equal rights throughout history.
‘such a bombshell’: Alma’s question
The dancing dust motes
Only visible when the sun shines and otherwise invisible
Miss Ralston is like the sunlight enabling the girls to be seen and recognized.
the girls can dance and celebrate their rights.
It feels good to help others achieve equality.

12. Topic and Theme Theme: Directly stated: Equal rights Indirectly:
Topic: Challenging tradition
Theme:
Directly stated: Equal rights
Indirectly:
The courage, patience and determination it takes to change any tradition
Specifically, change for women’s rights but also generally, for everyone’s rights: children, LBGT, the poor, mentally ill, seniors, etc.

13. Characterization Direct Indirect
Author’s description of the character and how she behaves
‘she was young…she was pretty big…she was strict’
Indirect
What the reader understands or interprets by what the character says or does

14. Indirect characterization
But the unusual thing about Miss Ralston was the way she sometimes stopped in the middle of a lesson and looked at us as if we were real people…
‘I’ll think about that,’ she said, -- as if, you know, she would – ‘and I’ll let you know next Friday.’