Toni Cade Bambara The Lesson Essay

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Throughout history knowledge, culture and information has been passed down within communities. Life lesson were often taught by older, wiser or formally educated people within the community. This idea still holds true today, especially in low-income communities as illustrated in the short story “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara. I am led to believe that story took place in a low-income community in the early to mid-sixties as African-American families moved to find better opportunities, when extended families moved north as groups and then spreading out into their respective community (507). Miss Moore, who had obtained a college education, assumed this role within her community by saying “it was only right that she should take responsibility …show more content…

This got the children thinking about the money that ordinary people within their community spent on everyday survival. Their field trip brings them to a fancy Fifth Avenue toy store “F.A.O Schwartz” (512), where they admire toys form the window. The children begin to notice the outlandish prices that the toys were being sold for, which further waters the seed embedded in their little minds earlier. Their eyes settled on a sailboat displayed in the window. Its outrageous price tag read, one thousand one hundred ninety-five dollars (510). Shocked and taken back they could not believe that anyone would pay that much money to entertain a child, one child immediately asked, “This boat for Kid’s, Miss Moore?” (510). This growing seed in their minds sparks the question of, why some people can afford such expensive toys and not others, as they enter the store. As they finish in the toy store and get home, Miss Moore prods the children to see if they had grasped the lesson as she intended. Sugar, one of the children spoke and said “You know, Miss Moore, I don’t think all of us here put together eat in a year what that sailboat costs” (512). Miss Moore was elated to find that the message of social inequality had been relayed to at least …show more content…

This is particular evident in Sylvia as she asks “Watcha you bring us here for, Miss Moore?” (511), as if to say we can’t afford any of the toys anyway. The rational she uses to compare the price of a clown in the toy store and applies it to her everyday reality was mature, Bunk beds for Junior and Gretchen’s boy, a family trip to the country to visit Granddaddy Nelson or pay for rent and piano bills (511). A very bright young lady, Sylvia asks herself all of the right questions such as, who are these people that spend that much for performing clowns and $1,000 for toy sailboats, What kinda work they do and how they live and how come we ain’t in on it? (511). Her comments throughout the story leads me to believe that she is a strong-willed young lady and will do whatever it takes to succeed in life, “But ain’t nobody gonna beat me at nuthing

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