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Marta Salinas's The Scholarship Jacket

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Marta Salinas’ realistic fiction story, ”The Scholarship Jacket” occured in the setting of a small school in Texas in which Martha attends. Martha (the protagonist) was an intelligent, fourteen-year-old, Mexican girl in eighth grade who qualifies as her class’s valedictorian for maintaining the highest grades for eight years. In addition, she was fairly small and lived with her biological grandparents because of financial issues her parents dealt with. A day in May arose with negative events for Martha. Since the valedictorian mertits the annular gold and green (her school’s colors) scholarship jacket for his/her hard work and determination, Martha would receive the jacket, but her School Board decided to change the regulations in order …show more content…

Dialogue (defined as a person broadcasting his/her voice) within the story created a suspenseful mood to the reader, questioning what the person would say next. For example, a statement that had come unexpectedly to Martha from her principal was, “This year the Board has decided to charge fifteen dollars, which still won’t cover the complete cost of the jacket”. This evidence demonstrates that certain situations in life are sudden, impactful, and unfortunate because Martha was looking forward to receiving the scholarship jacket, but this event completely transformed her perception of the scholarship jacket. In addition, Salinas chose to include this specific dialogue because indicates how the Board ultimately promoted unfair rules. Dialogue was one of the few craft moves Salinas utilized to express the mentioned theme. Salinas’ use of first person point of view throughout the story causes the reader to be informed on what the person narrating is thinking about and also analyzes the narrator’s moves. Within this craft move, life situations carry out unexpectedly is demonstrated. Martha directly speaks to the reader when she thinks, “Why did they have to change the rules just when it was my turn to win the jacket?” (110). This connects to the theme of everything going unexpectedly for Martha because the rules were …show more content…

Martha’s principal said that an exception would be made in her case: Martha would receive the scholarship jacket. This section of the story truly proves that Marta Salinas’, “The Scholarship Jacket” was turn of events, back to back. Events occured ways Martha had not intended. Marta Salinas creates this lesson through the use of dialogue and primarily writing the entire story in first person point of view. The moral of the story is to remember to not celebrate too early because plans may shift on

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