Summary Of The Lesson By Toni Cade Bambara

Oppression, Education, but Not Stupidity
“The Lesson”, a short story by Toni Cade Bambara, features a young African American girl, Silvia, in New York during the 1960’s or 70’s. Sylvia is strong-headed, to say the least, and the story follows her and her friends on an outing into uptown New York. An older and well educated woman from their neighborhood, Miss Moore, takes the children into the city to a very well-to-do toy shop called F.A.O Schwarz. As the children look around the shop, Silvia becomes more and more frustrated and angered by the extravagant toys and the price tags whose numbers could feed her family for a year or more. After the children leave the store and return home, Miss Moore asks a crucial question, “what did you think” (Bambara 103). After several answers, Silvia becomes so angered and confused that she storms off, leaving her cousin, Sugar, in the dust, to find somewhere to think about the day. This story contains a very powerful message about the racism of the time and how the oppression of the African Americans in the United States affected everyone, even the children. The theme of oppression runs deep within the story and can be found in the setting of the story, the diction of the characters, and the behavior

The majority of the twentieth century was plagued with oppression of minority groups. To be even more specific to the story, it is set not in upstate New York, but in a slum where the drunks, “cluttered up [the] parks and pissed on [the] handball walls and stank up [the] hallways” (Bambara 98). This kind of description makes it clear to the reader that the characters live in a poor neighborhood, and where there is poverty, generally, there is oppression of some sort or another. Setting the story in this time and under these conditions allows for a strong understanding that the characters being followed are underprivileged and mistreated by their