The short story “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara is about Sylvia and her friends. Sylvia is the narrator in the story; Sylvia is a black girl who grows up in Harlem. She talks about how a women name miss Moore moves down on her block. Miss Moore is an educated woman who always dresses up properly and she’s “black as hell.” She always volunteers to take Sylvia and her cousin Sugar to educational events. People in the neighborhood thought that Miss Moore was weird but saw the opportunities for their kids. So they let their kids go with her, but Sylvia weren’t learning, on the opposite she was taking advantage of Miss Moore. One day while Miss Moore was taking caring of the kids, she started to quiz them on arithmetic. Kids started begging her
In Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson it brings forth the lesson of perseverance. Mattie had to keep going and persevering even though her world was crashing down around her. When Mother first got sick Mattie had to look after her and attempt to care for her.
The main character in this story is a Jewish girl named Alicia. When the book
Developing character is something that comes with time. I believe that there are three major things that effect how people develop their character—where they are from, which includes their financial status; how they are raised; and the character of the people that have had the most influence on their lives. Sylvia, in Toni Cade Bambara’s "The Lesson," is very much influenced by all of these factors. Sylvia’s living in the slums and being poor makes her defensive and judgmental. Her parents not being around much leaves her without the attention and discipline that children need to develop to their fullest. Lastly, her friends and Miss Moore also have a great influence on how Sylvia thinks and acts, and lead Sylvia to be observant but also angry and stubborn. All of these characteristics not only determine Sylvia’s personality, but also are the basis for why I think Sylvia will not apply Miss Moore’s lesson.
To start off the first difference that I noticed between the stories was the age that the characters matured and the person who taught them. Sylvia is taught a lesson while she is still very young, when reading the text you can assume that Sylvia is between 10 and 13 years old. Sylvia was taught a lesson as child by an adult. The lesson Miss Moore was trying to teach her was that getting an education is key for them to change their lives and have a better future for themselves. On the other hand, in “Sonny’s Blues” the narrator is an adult, and we can assume he is around the age 30 because he has two kid, a wife, and is a school teacher. Unlike In “The Lesson”, the narrator is taught a lesson as an adult, by someone who is younger than him. The lesson that the narrator is taught is that, all the struggles his brother has gone through he expresses them through his
Miss Moore has taken over as an adult authority figure for the time, and she proceeds to offer the kids this kind of outside education monitored in the article. In “The Lesson”, Sylvia says parents speak poorly of Miss Moore, however, they do not turn her down when she volunteers to take the lead of the children’s education. Miss Moore is providing a place for educational activities, which, as noted in the article is involvement behavior, when they are at the toy store, and even during the cab ride when she tells Sylvia to calculate the tip based on the fare. The article also touches on how improved communication between schools and parents benefits the child’s learning. Subsequently, with Miss Moore as a representative of the place of school, the semi-negative attitude towards her from the parents is a reason to believe why Sylvia has much contempt towards Miss Moore and her lessons. If there are at home negative connotations towards school or education, children will be more resistant to the idea of being educated. It does say in the story the parents have no issue sending them off with Miss Moore, which does help her to have influence over the
"The Lesson" by Toni Cade Bambara is not just a spirited story about a poor girl out of place in an expensive toy store, it is a social commentary. "The Lesson" is a story about one African-American girl's struggle with her growing awareness of class inequality. The character Miss Moore introduces the facts of social inequality to a distracted group of city kids, of whom Sylvia, the main character, is the most cynical. Flyboy, Fat Butt, Junebug, Sugar, Rosie, Sylvia and the rest think of Miss Moore as an unsolicited educator, and Sylvia would rather be doing anything else than listening to her. The conflict between Sylvia and Miss Moore, "This nappy-head bitch and her goddamn college degree" (307), represents more than the everyday dislike of authority by a young adolescent. Sylvia has her own perception of the way things work, her own "world" that she does not like to have invaded by the prying questions of Miss Moore. Sylvia knows in the back of her mind that she is poor, but it never bothers her until she sees her disadvantages in blinding contrast with the luxuries of the wealthy. As Miss Moore introduces her to the world of the rich, Sylvia begins to attribute shame to poverty, and this sparks her to question the "lesson" of the story, how "money ain't divided up right in this country" (308).
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
The Piano Lesson written by August Wilson is a work that struggles to suggest how best African Americans can handle their heritage and how they can best put their history to use. This problem is important to the development of theme throughout the work and is fueled by the two key players of the drama: Berniece and Boy Willie. These siblings, who begin with opposing views on what to do with a precious family heirloom, although both protagonists in the drama, serve akin to foils of one another. Their similarities and differences help the audience to understand each individual more fully and to comprehend the theme that one must find balance between deserting and preserving the past in order to pursue the future, that both too greatly honoring or too greatly guarding the past can ruin opportunities in the present and the future.
The narrator of the story is a young, black girl name Sylvia and the story is also told from her perspective. The setting is not clear. Perhaps it started in Harlem and then to downtown Manhattan on Fifth Avenue and the time of the story took place is also unclear. Bambara uses a great deal of characterization to describe the characters in the story. For example, Bambara describes Miss Moore as “black as hell” (Bambara 330), “cept her feet, which were fish-white and spooky” (Bambara 330), and “looked like she was going to church” (Bambara 330). She later tells us that she’s been to college and her state of mind is she believes it’s her responsibility for the children’s education. The plot started when Miss Moore rounded up all of the children by the mailbox. Then she gets the kids in a cab and took them to Fifth Avenue to a big toy store where the rich people would shop. The story then continues with the children and Miss Moore in the toy store and the kids looking around and noticing they can’t afford anything. Which will soon end the plot with a lesson that society is not fair, “that this is not much of a democracy if you ask me. Equal chance to purse happiness means an equal crack at the dough, don’t it?”(Bambara 330). Hence, the lesson Miss Moore is trying to teach these
One of Miss Moore's defining qualities is her intelligence. Her academic skills and self-presentation is noticeable through her college degree and use of “proper speech” (Bambara, 385). Miss Moore also makes her intelligence evident from the methods she uses to teach Sylvia and the other children. Unlike planting them in classrooms, she takes them out on trips to show them the real world. Despite all the insults she receives from th...
Events and jobs of the characters in The Piano Lesson set a basic idea of African American life in Pittsburgh. Doaker Whining Boy’s brother
To begin with, the reader gets a sense of Sylvia's personality in the beginning of the story as she talks about Miss Moore. Miss Moore is not the typical black woman in the neighborhood. She is well educated and speaks well. She has climbed up against the odds in a time where it was almost unheard of for a black woman to go to college. She is a role model for the children who encourages them to get more out of life. Sylvia's opinion of her is not one of fondness. She says that she hates Miss Moore as much as the "winos who pissed on our handball walls and stand up on our hallways and stairs so you couldn't halfway play hide and seek without a god damn mask”(357). By comparing the hatred with something she enjoys, we get to see what a child does in the slums for amusement. Sylvia feels t...
A Lesson Before Dying is set in rural Louisiana in the 1940’s. The setting is ripe for the racism displayed in the novel. Ernest J. Gaines weaves an intricate web of human connections, using the character growth of Grant Wiggins and Jefferson to subtly expose the effect people have on one another (Poston A1). Each and every character along the way shows some inkling of being a racist. However, Paul is an exception. He treats everyone as if he or she is equal to him whether the person is black or white. In A Lesson Before Dying, author Ernest J. Gaines displays the different levels of racism during the 1940’s through his use of characterization.
Being a Southern Black girl, Maya’s life was already hard especially after her parent’s divorce which caused her to move to her grandmother in stamps. Maya’s life was unstable and being away of her “displacement” made it even harder for her to be happy. One way single stories have affected her life was when she develops an excruciating toothache. The nearest black dentist practices twenty-five miles away, so Momma takes Maya to see Dr. Lincoln, a white dentist in town. When they arrive, Dr. Lincoln states that he does not treat black patients. He says “My policy is I’d rather stick my hand in a dog’s mouth than in a nigger’s.” (Angelou 189). The rudeness towards the black community is just shocking. some white people still have the same image of black people as in the past because of the single stories they have heard. They demean the black community because of the past stories told about slavery and power. Another event that degraded African Americans was during the eighth-grade graduation, which was a great event. The white speaker, Mr. Edward Donleavy, gives a speech about the improvements in the local schools. The white school has received new lab equipment for science
In the story, “My Favorite chaperone” The author, Jean Davies Okimoto portrays many themes. The one that I found that fit this story best was that if you help out others than they are most likely to return it when you need it the most. The protagonist or main character in the story is Maya, a student at Beacon Junior High who moved to America with her family. They moved from Kazakhstan and now live in an apartment.The main conflict is that Maya can’t go to the dance because “Mama” thinks as stated on page 5 “Mama says she thinks the school is strange to have parties and events after school when students should be doing their homework. When Nurazahn is in school he is bullied, but he gets tired of it and gets in a fight. Maya rewords the principles