The main character in Toni Cade Bambara’s short story called “The Lesson” ironically is not even named until midway through the story.Sylvia is a tough girl from the ghetto who uses her experience at the museum and the toy store to become more self aware.In “The Lesson,” Sylvia learns a lot about herself, but nothing that she will share; instead she will use her knowledge inwardly to.
The predominant theme in “The Lesson” composed by Toni Cade Bambara is creating an understanding to adolescents of all the opportunities life has to offer; a lesson on social class and having a choice which society you choose to live in. Miss. Moore who takes on the responsibility to educate the young ones has intentions of more than just taking the children to the store for amusement.
In Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Lesson,” the character of Ms. Moore reveals to a group of black children the level of disparity between their lives and those of the white upper classes. As the story develops, a group of children undergo a process socialist awakening as they are made class consciousness by the vulgar extravagances of the upper classes.
The Lesson, written by Toni Cade Bambara, the question of inequality and poverty arises in response to the juxtaposition of the two neighborhoods in the story, Harlem and Manhattan. Bambara introduces children as the most important occupants of a typical New York slum, mainly in regards to their ability to escape the constraints of their own environment.
Essay The Lesson By Toni Cade Bambara. In the stories “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, and “The Struggle to be an All American Girl” by Elizabeth Wong, and the poem “Indian Boarding School: The Runaways” by Louise Erdrich, each of the writers focus on the positive and negative aspects of education.
After reading Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Lesson”, the reader is left with a sense of hope for the narrator Sylvia and her friends. Following her and her friends from the slums of New York to a Fifth Avenue F.A.O. Swartz, one gets an idea as to the kind of environment they came from, the type of education they received, and the sense of economic imbalance they bear to witness.