Preview

Summary Of The Lesson By Toni Cade Bambara

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
274 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Summary Of The Lesson By Toni Cade Bambara
“The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara was published in 1972. The setting takes place in New York. Starting off with Sylvia, the main character along with her friends Sugar, Junior, Flyboy, Fatbutt, Junebug, Q.T, Rosie Giraffe, and Mercedes are enjoying their summer vacation. Miss Moore, an educated black woman who takes the children to learn and expand their mind. Since Sylvia is telling the story we get Sylvia’s internal conflict about Miss Moore taking the children away from their summer vacation. Also Sylvia has a direct conflict with Miss Moore that illustrates that she doesn’t like her. Later on in the story, we find Miss Moore taking the children on another lesson day again. The children and Miss Moore take a Taxi cab off of Fifth Avenue.
Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    Summary: A Lesson Before Dying By Mario Marrero
    • 103 Words
    • 1 Page

    Summary: A Lesson Before Dying By Mario Marrero

    "The motive that these women have on the male characters is a significant one. Gaines eloquently depicts Tante Lou and Miss Emma, both African American women. They were a big part in many of the male characters' lives. Whether it was being house maids at the Henri Pichot's house, or becoming surrogate mothers for our protagonist grant, they were important to those in their immediate community.…

    • 103 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Toni Cade Bambara The Lesson Summary
    • 210 Words
    • 1 Page

    Toni Cade Bambara The Lesson Summary

    The short story “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara is about a group of young poor children as they venture downtown to a toy store. They gaze upon all the toys in wonderment, but mostly they are shocked by the price of the toys. They feel out of place in such an upscale establishment and do not know how to act. Upon leaving the store and heading home, they reflect on how unfair society really is. There are people who are so well off they can afford toys that could feed a family for months, and other people like themselves that barely have enough money to get by. The central idea of the story is the examination of wealth and poverty in America.…

    • 210 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Summary Of The Lesson By Toni Cade Bambara
    • 268 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Summary Of The Lesson By Toni Cade Bambara

    “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara is a narrative told by a young black girl named Sylvia. The main theme of the story is social inequality for African-Americans. Miss Moore is an educated laby who lives in the same neighborhood that Sylvia lives in. Miss Moore’s intelligence and education allows her to take the children out for educated lessons. One day Miss Moore takes the children out to the city to visit the toy store F.A.O Schwartz, in an attempt to show the children something that they would not see in the projects. In the store the children discover that the cost of some of the items in the store could “feed a family of six or seven.” Miss Moore took them to this toy store so that they could realize that they could have that as well if…

    • 268 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    A Lesson Before Dying Summary
    • 1538 Words
    • 7 Pages

    A Lesson Before Dying Summary

    something of you. A Lesson Before Dying shows what it is like to accept what is given to…

    • 1538 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    A Lesson Before Dying Summary
    • 609 Words
    • 3 Pages

    A Lesson Before Dying Summary

    In "A Lesson Before Dying", explores the relationship that develops between two men in a rural Louisiana parish in 1940. A man, Jefferson, is convicted of murder and sentenced to die in the electric chair. The other man, Grant Wiggins, is the local schoolmaster.…

    • 609 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Toni Cade Bambara The Lesson Analysis
    • 477 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Toni Cade Bambara The Lesson Analysis

    The short story, “The Lesson,” by Toni Cade Bambara, portrays one of the most interesting themes in literature, the initiation story. The story illustrates a group of kids who live in the slums in New York city. They are unaware of their environment, and Ms. More is conscious of this situation. In a basis, she teaches the kids life lessons to help them strive for success and attempt to better themselves and their situations. In this occasion, she brings them to a toy story, but not just a common one. Ms. Moore is an educated woman, and she knows that going to an ordinary toy story would not make a footprint in the life of those kids. Ms. She brings them to F.A.O. Schwarz located on Fifth Avenue, the most exclusive and expensive store in the…

    • 477 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Lesson By Toni Cade Bambara
    • 353 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The Lesson By Toni Cade Bambara

    Different symbols are shown in “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, that depicts the economic and social inequality faced by society, specifically the children in the story. The story touches on the situation the children are stuck in living in almost poverty, it is up to the children to change their fate. The use of irony helps portray how the trip ended up teaching Sylvia more than she expected despite her doubt. Towards the end of the story, Silvia realizes that she actually was able to benefit from the trip unlike she thought she would in the beginning of the story, “And she’s lookin very closely at me like maybe she plannin to do my portrait from memory.…

    • 353 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    A Lesson Before Dying By Ernest Gaines
    • 602 Words
    • 3 Pages

    A Lesson Before Dying By Ernest Gaines

    A Lesson Before Dying takes place in Louisiana. Throughout the novel, a young girl, known as Vivian is the most stable and influential character in A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines. Even though she is still “married”, she and Grant have been able to maintain a romance. Although she is not a main character, Vivian plays a vital role in A Lesson Before Dying; she acts as Grant’s conscience and she differs drastically from Tante Lou and Miss Emma.…

    • 602 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Toni Cade Bambara The Lesson Essay
    • 1096 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Toni Cade Bambara The Lesson Essay

    Sylvia’s initiation in the short story The Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara, is striking because Miss Moore gives the opportunity to the children to evaluate the difference between the fifth avenue and their poor neighborhood. However, one of the story’s main themes is that innocence is a handicap and the political and moral innocence that are represented from the beginning to the end of the story brings the main character to many reflections. This idea is revealed as Sylvia’s ignorance towards the different social classes, Sylvia’s questions on the purpose of wealth and the hard realization of the true facts of inequality. Due to the children’s lack of political and moral knowledge,…

    • 1096 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Changes (The Lesson By Toni Cade Barrera)
    • 2043 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Changes (The Lesson By Toni Cade Barrera)

    Some short stories are designed to teach lessons to the people who read them. They teach lessons about life, love, and growing up. People can learn lessons by reading short stories that where the main characters discover something about life and about themselves. There Character and the way the use of actions, words, or thoughts carry throughout the story can relate to many realistic personas. In Toni Cade Bambara's short story, The Lesson, the author presents a lesson to be learned. The narrator, Sylvia a young, self minded, lack of vocabulary, strong feminist African American from a poor neighborhood in New York is in for a great awakening, with her cousin Sugar always by her side their world was untouchable until a black woman named Miss Moore stepped in. They find her unusual because she is a black woman who has, "...proper speech..."(42). Miss Moore was educated and, "...been to college and said it was only right she should take responsibility for the young ones' education" (42). Miss Moore is not the typical black woman in the neighborhood. She is well educated and speaks well which can be found different in the neighborhood she lives in. Mrs. Moore 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. When Miss Moore takes the children to an upper class toy store in the city the children see a, "Handcrafted sailboat of fiberglass at one thousand one hundred ninety five dollars" (44). The children are not sure what to make of the high price but they do realize that for, "That much money it should last forever" (45). They understand that people who make more money can afford higher quality things, and that in order to make more money they have to get an education like Miss Moore. They have to strive the best in life. At the end of the story Sylvia's cousin, Sugar, realizes that even though they are not the wealthiest…

    • 2043 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Toni Cade Bambara The Lesson
    • 795 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Toni Cade Bambara The Lesson

    The kids are amused by the toys in the store including a clown that Sylvia thinks is overpriced. She is mocking the toys to the other kids but in reality she is really envious of the materialistic things that the privileged get to indulge in. Sylvia knows that if she went to her mom asking for a thirty-five dollar birthday clown, her mom would laugh in her face: "`You wanna who that costs what?' she'd say, cocking her head to the side to get a better view of the hole in my head(50).” As Sylvia continues to encounter the material wealth represented by the toys, her frustration becomes a mask for increasing feelings of jealousy. Initially reacting to Miss Moore's teachings, Sylvia denies the importance and truth of her words: "And then she gets to the part about how we all poor and live in the slums, which I don't…

    • 795 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Loss of Innocence in Toni Cade Bambara's "The Lesson"
    • 922 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Loss of Innocence in Toni Cade Bambara's "The Lesson"

    Democracy implies equal chance for all. Such is not the case for the black children of the ghetto, as we learn through reading Toni Cade Bambara 's "The Lesson". During the course of the story the narrator, Sylvia, develops as a character due to the trip that Miss Moore takes her on. Miss Moore, an educated black woman who comes to the ghetto to give back to the children, takes children from the ghetto of New York to F.A.O Shwarz which is an extremely glamorous toy store. She does this to make the children aware of their social and economical situations by forcing them to face the difference between them and the people who would purchase toys from such a store that would sell a toy sail boat for over a thousand dollars. The theme of this story is very similar to the lesson Miss Moore is trying to teach the children. It is that through the loss of innocence and naiveté that poor black children can have a chance to stand up and fight for their piece of the pie. In "The Lesson" all the children come from poor families. They live in apartment buildings where drunkards who reek of urine live in the hallways that reek of urine from the drunks who pee on the walls; they live in what Miss Moore would call the "slums." The children 's families, however, exhibit somewhat of a varying degree of monetary security. For example, Flyboy claims he doesn 't even have a home whilst Mercedes has a desk at home with a box of stationary on it, gifts from her godmother.…

    • 922 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Choice In John Updike's A & P
    • 607 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Choice In John Updike's A & P

    In the story “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, Miss Moore the woman that “has been to college and she said that it was only right that she take…

    • 607 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Bambara The Lesson
    • 1466 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Bambara The Lesson

    Also, on their way to F. A. O. Schwartz, Sylvia notices a lady wearing a big fur coat and points out that it is too hot to be wearing something like that. Sylvia’s observation is foreshadowing what she will notice in the toy store because it symbolizes “frivolous spending and ostentatious flaunting of wealth” (Champion 119). Once they arrive at F.A.O. Schwartz, Miss Moore has the children look into the window before they go inside. At first, Sylvia does not notice an economic structure hierarchically but, as the children get closer to the store, “they begin to use comparisons that suggest they are becoming aware of class divisions (Champion 74). As Laurie Champion states in “‘Passing It Along in the Relay’: Struggles for Economic Equality in Toni Cade Bambara’s ‘Raymond’s Run’ and ‘The Lesson,’” Sylvia becomes progressively aware of the significance of Miss Moore’s trip to F.A.O. Schwartz while she is looking through the window at the toys (Champion 74). The children notice how expensive the toys are and, specifically, point out the clown, paperweight, sailboat, and microscope. Once Sylvia notices the prices, she feels anguish and confusion but, she does not know why she feels that way (Chamion 74). She becomes progressively angry at Miss Moore as she sees the price tags because Miss Moore forced the lesson upon her (Korb 3). At one point, Sylvia claims that Miss Moore is not that smart because she kept the four dollars that Miss Moore gave her for the taxi ride since Sylvia says that the taxi driver does not need the money as bad as her (Bambara 147). “The unpleasant awareness of the unfairness of the social and economic system that prevails…” (Korb 1) is the lesson that Miss Moore is trying to teach the children and Sylvia is unsure of why she is anguished because it…

    • 1466 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More
  • Better Essays

    Toni Bambara The Lesson Analysis
    • 1199 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Toni Bambara The Lesson Analysis

    The Lesson is a short story written by the writer Toni Cade Bambara in the late 1970’s. Sylvia, the narrator of the story is a young African-American female who receives a lesson in class inequality. The setting story of begin the slums of Harlem, New York and is dated as “back in the days” which is described in the opening of the story. Throughout the story Sylvia, realizes its world outside of her neighborhood, not as similar has she once thought. I chose the article, “Sylvia and The Struggle against Class Consciousness in Toni Cade Bambara's "The Lesson” this article analyzes the Sarah Wiktorski writes the article and she analyzes the struggle against class-consciousness and sets the mind of the reader to think about some of the consequences of class-consciousness. It contributes to the study of literature because it helps us understand the book, “The consciousness” by Toni Bambara changes the way the reader thinks and attempts to re-conceptualize his or her understanding of representation of class-consciousness. The writer hopes to present to the world a real picture of disadvantaged minorities and shows how on should change the world and…

    • 1199 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
    Read More

Related Topics