Comparison of “The Lesson” and “White Torture” Works that are analyzed in this essay look totally different at first sight. The Lesson is a short story written by Toni Cade Bambara. It tells about one day from a life of Sylvia and her friends; all children live in a poor district and (probably) are representatives of minorities. They were taken to a rich toyshop by the new neighbor Miss Moore. The woman wanted to show children the inequality in the modern society with the aid of this excursion. It looked like Miss Moore achieved her goal; children were shocked by toys’ prices, and Sugar’s words “this is not much of a democracy if you ask me” (Bambara 5) demonstrated at least one person understood the main theme of the lesson. The final scene …show more content…
Setting of The Lesson focuses on two areas (the shop and a street where children’s live) that participated in the current events. While surroundings are different and create an opposite impression, as the interrogation room creates a gloomy mood and the sunny street and a toyshop makes people think about something exciting, they have similar goals. Settings make characters feel uncomfortable. It is possible to say a type of “white torture” is present in both stories. While there were not any elements of isolation and sensory deprivation in The Lesson, the visit to the shop created a huge psychological discomfort that could affect participants’ personal …show more content…
First is Human with Human; the character of the White Torture conflicted with her former husband and possibly tried to start a conflict with an interrogator, who could be her son. Sylvia conflicted with Miss Moore and Sugar. Second is a conflict of a person and the society. Moshiri’s protagonist conflicted with the country’s regime both with her “money” demonstration and earlier disobedience to husband and decision to break up with parents. The Lesson did not show the direct conflict with the society, but it demonstrated an appropriate basis for its development. Children understood the inequality in the social system and got enough evidences for forming a feeling of protest in their minds. The internal conflict is the third type; main characters of both stories conflict with themselves. Moshiri’s protagonist showed signs of rebellious personality for many years, but she needed a final impulse (an image of Mitra in a beaten girl) to release it after several decades of the passive rage. Sylvia also has an internal conflict, but it is less developed because of the character’s young age. The girl has her own world perception and ready to attack people who try to disrupt it. “Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and Sugar were the only ones just right” (Bambara 1), while Sylvia does not reject new ideas immediately, she does not want them to destroy the mentioned
The killings made by the slaves are saddening, too. Mutilating the whites and leaving their bodies lying is inhumane. It is such a shocking story. This book was meant to teach the reader on the inhumanity of slavery. It also gives us the image of what happened during the past years when slavery was practised.
Another internal conflict is how Lilly feels responsible for her mother?s death. When she was four, she accidentally shot her mom, and wasn?t able to forgive herself. The reason she runs away in the first place is because her dad tells her that her mom left her, which is both an internal, and man versus man conflict. She?s mad at her dad for saying it, but can?t fully convince herself that it isn?t true. There?s a man versus society conflict when men beat up Rossaleen because of her color, and another internal conflict when May is so overcome with grief that she cant stop crying.
The main category of conflict is character vs self. This is when a character has an internal problem. They fight throughout the story to overcome that problem. The first example of character vs self is Elie. Throughout the story Elie is fighting himself to keep himself going. This is because of all the things happening around him. It drove him to the point where he almost gave up because his legs were
I. Conflicts in the Play - There are many types of conflict evident in this play. Some are as follows:
The Lesson takes place in New York?s inner city. The fictional story begins with a group of poor, uneducated, lower class city kids standing in front of a mailbox, preparing themselves for another day of being taught by Mrs. Moore. Mrs. Moore felt that it was her duty to help underprivileged children learn because she was one of the only women in the neighborhood to earn a degree. The main character is Sylvia, who tells the story in a first person narrative. Sylvia is a young African American girl, probably around fourteen years old, who is very judgmental about the world around her. By Bambara?s choice of words, the reader can tell that she is extremely opinionated, presents a very tough, hostile exterior and not at all happy about having to be taught anything by Mrs. Moore. For instance, she states ?we kinda hated her too, hated the way we did the winos who cluttered up our parks and pissed on our hand ball walls? (Bambara 121). On this hot summer day, Mrs. Moore felt that there was a lesson to learn at FAO Schwartz, a very expensive, upper class toy store in downtown Manhattan. After stepping out of the cab and peering into the window, Sylvia knows that this is not just any toy store and they are not just there for any reason.
In the short story “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, Miss Moore is moving into an apartment in the same block as Sylvia. Miss Moore is unlike any other African American in the neighborhood because she always dresses so formal. She is volunteering to take Sylvia and her cousin Sugar to educational events for their benefit. A few days before Christmas, Miss Moore takes the children on a field trip and she starts off by talking about how much things cost, what their parents could earn, and the unequal division of wealth in the United States. The children see so many expensive, yet valuable items outside of F.A.O such as: an expensive paperweight, a microscope, and a sailboat that costs $1,195. They begin to wonder why the sailboat costs way more
conflict. Both the conflicts within these stories are long lasting, and have been going on for
Living in a world where anything can be judged by anyone, misunderstood, and alter your own point of view about what is certainly a mundane topic, this compare and contrast essay between the two stories of The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs and Dinnertime by Helen Epstein, could be effortlessly, one of these flaws, and this is a commodity we must consider analyzing. The Monkey’s Paw is a story of a family that happens to get a mystical object, in this case, the title of the story, which capacitates them with three wishes, what they didn't know where the tricky ways this object granted those wishes. Dinnertime is a story about a family that has to deal with the past of the holocaust where the parents itself had been tagged by their past in concentration camps, which is narrated by the daughter of this family, and explains their troubles that were dragged with this terrible past. The elements that are going to be prioritized in this stories are the: Motif, Setting, and plot of each
In both “Hungry” and “On Being Educated,” Joy Castro uses “academic” prose through her use of emotional, descriptive, and explanatory words and sentences. It is through her experience and lense that she is able to connect such little things to such major historical occurrences and creations. When telling a story, Castro does not leave it at one short explanation, but she furthers the conversation. Instead of simply stating that when she moved in with her birth father she ate lots of food and bought lots of clothes, Castro chooses to say that she was “devouring tuna, wheat bread, peanut butter, putting on weight, putting on the clothes [her father and his wife] bought for [her] in bulk at the outlet store, since [she’d] run away with nothing”
The narrator and the children are referred to as having “went to school, sat in rows, ate white bread (Meyer Line 2)”- the lines use imagery very well to pass along the impression that the children suffer from dullness and are being conditioned for everyday life (Branchini). The concern of this education system is not the education and growth of the children, but rather the attendance of the individuals themselves and learning to conform to the expectations of the rest of their
In the book, Shattered, the book is about a teen who begins to mature as he ages. The main character is starting to become more mature after he gets a placement at a soup kitchen. He starts to realise that there are many problems going on in the society. There are many types of conflicts that are going on around him. The four types of conflicts going on in the book are Human vs. Society, Human vs. Self, Human vs. Human and Human vs. Self. The one conflict that is really making this story apparent is Human vs. Society due to the Rwandan genocide. The Human vs. Self, Human vs. Human, Human vs. Self are the other conflicts that are making this story interesting after the Human vs. Society conflict.
The narrator Sylvia and the children in her impoverished neighborhood are prisoners in a dark cave, which is the society that encompasses ignorance and puppet-handlers. “The Lesson” begins with Sylvia as she talks condescendingly about her neighborhood of Harlem, New York: “Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and Sugar were the only ones just right, this lady moved on our block with nappy hair and proper speech and no makeup. Quite naturally we laughed at her… And we kinda ha...
Conflict is the hurdle between characters of a story which create worries for the readers about the next plot of that story and which will be resolved in the next plot. Children’s literature can only engage the reader and make the story successful on the basis of conflict. Conflict produces the drama and which makes their readers more involved in that story. In literary elements, there are three common of conflict in a story: 1. Character vs Character 2. Character vs the world 3. Character vs him/herself. (module 2). Hana’s suitcase story has conflict of character versus the world and The Paper Bag Princess’s story has conflict of character versus society. There are the two different conflicts in the two stories. In Hana’s suitcase, Hana is
Within every story or poem, there is always an interpretation made by the reader, whether right or wrong. In doing so, one must thoughtfully analyze all aspects of the story in order to make the most accurate assessment based on the literary elements the author has used. Compared and contrasted within the two short stories, “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, and John Updike’s “A&P,” the literary elements character and theme are made evident. These two elements are prominent in each of the differing stories yet similarities are found through each by studying the elements. The girls’ innocence and naivety as characters act as passages to show something superior, oppression in society shown towards women that is not equally shown towards men.
Anderson makes effective use of fantasy to teach a moral lesson. He builds up the story in such a way that the reader does not care for the validity of the incidents. The moral lesson is that the proud and the disobedient must suffer.