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"The Lesson" by Toni Cade Bambara

In the short story "The Lesson" by Toni Cade Bambara, a group of African-American children are confronted with class and economic distinctions for the first time during a trip to F.A.O. Schwartz in New York. Sylvia, the story's narrator, is clearly affected by this discovery, as she learns a powerful lesson at the hands of her neighbor, Miss Moore, who shows her the economic inequalities that exists in the world they inhabit. Yet, while it is a story that deals with the bleak reality of both racial and class injustice, there is a sense of hope at the conclusion because Sylvia is determined to rise above her current circumstances and create a better life for herself. In this sense, the story is about more than simply racial or economic inequalities; it is about the importance of being open to all of life's lessons and the value of learning itself.

As the story begins, Sylvia and her friends are largely insulated in the neighborhood in which they live. They are thus unaware of the way that other people live, particularly the rich, white patrons of the toy store that they later encounter. In fact, Sylvia is so ignorant of the economic differences that exist in the world that she perceives that people like she and her cousin Sugar are at the top of the social structure as they look down at others in the neighborhood. She explains that they laughed:

athe junk man who went about his business like he was some big-time president and his sorry-ass horse his secretary. And we kinda hated her [Miss Moore] too, hated the way we did the winos who cluttered up our parks and pissed on our handball walks and stank up our hallways and stairs so you couldn't halfway play hide-and-seek without a goddamn gas mask (Bambara 659).

Indeed, while Sylvia seems to grasp the notion that a social order exists, but she does not understand that there are others in the world that might judge her in the same way that she does the junk man an...

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"The Lesson" by Toni Cade Bambara. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 09:09, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1696557.html