The Lesson The theme of “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, is that learning can cause discomfort but if you never come out of your comfort zone then you will never learn. In the story it expressed how minorities are oppressed due to social inequality. All children in the story have dreams of their own but the education system in the lower social class is not equal to the education system in the higher social class. Children do not have the same opportunity to expand their knowledge because of social inequality. The children in the story were extremely uneducated.
In Tony Cade Bambara’s short story “The Lesson”- the main character Sylvia is a young African-American girl who lives in New York’s inner city. Sylvia, her cousin Sugar, and five other children live in an impoverished neighborhood. Miss Moore, who is also African-American, moves into the neighborhood and takes it upon herself to educate these children because she went to college. One of the lessons Miss Moore teaches the children is about money, so she takes them to a toy store on Fifth Ave. The two settings in this story, the impoverished inner-city neighborhood and Fifth Ave, help explain Sylvia’s journey of her education and awareness of economic inequality.
She also worked on a little bit of screenwriting. Bambara’s short fiction is notable for the creative language and her ability to capture the poetry of black speech. The author stresses the importance of knowledge for both individual growth and collective goodness. Most of her stories focus on young girls determined to make their place in the world. In “The Lesson” it shows us how wealth is unequally divided throughout America.
The symbols present in “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, depict the economic and social injustices faced by specific members of society, specifically the children in the story. The characters in the story are being mentored by Miss Moore, a woman from their block who has taken up the role of taking them out on weekly outings. The story touches on the situation of the children that are stuck in living in almost poverty. “The Lesson” focuses on the socioeconomic disparities between the different racial groups and how. Bambara uses several techniques such as irony, othering, and second person point of view to make the story meaningful and demonstrate the characteristics of the characters.
“The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, is a story about the lesson Miss Moore gives to the neighborhood children. Miss Moore decides to take the children to F.A.O. Schwarz to show them the different toys that are available on Fifth Avenue. Once the children realize the cost of these fancy toys compared to the toys available to them, they become angry. When Sylvia thinks about what her mother would say if she asked for one of the toys she saw in the store, she also thinks about what her family could buy with the money the toy costs.
Dodging Mother Nature’s malevolently behaved elements during efforts to reach land, the boat is represented as the symbol of life in the piece. The story reads, “The boat was much like an animal. As each wave came, and she rose for it, she seemed like a horse leaping over a high fence. The manner of her ride over these walls of water is a thing of mystery.” This description gives the boat an animalistic “character” (Crane 2). This quote from the story
Rhetorical Analysis of Jerome Cartwright’s "Bambara's the Lesson” Jerome Cartwright’s feature article on Toni Cade Bambara’s “the Lesson” was published in 1989. This piece provides a scholarly secondary source for Bambara’s short story because it was featured in The Explicator, a quarterly journal of literary criticism published by Taylor & Francis, Inc. Their website describes the journal as “a must for college and university libraries and teachers of literature”. The purpose of this article is to show readers that although it seems apparent what Bambara wants her readers to glean from her story, Cartwright proposes might just be an underlying theme. His hope is that by examining the text he can prove that the conflict is not the differences between the rich and the poor; on the contrary, the conflict is the sometimes present resistance to learning even at the detriment of the student. Cartwright states, “the dramatic question that powers the story, that moves it forward, is whether Miss
In the poem, Angelou stands up against the people that have torn her down because of her race and femininity. “You may kill me with your hatefulness” (Angelou 23), she tells them, “But still, like air, I’ll rise” (Angelou 24). Maya Angelou is displaying excellence in her poem by achieving her highest potential as an African American woman, regardless of the degrading comments people make about her. Maya Angelou’s poem teaches its readers to accept the person they are, no matter what people, or society, think of
In the essay Maya Angelou’s character Margaret, who’s not yet in her early teens, began working for her white boss Mrs. Cullinan. Miss Glory, another black maid who work for Mrs. Cullinan, taught Margaret to be organize, basic etiquette, and a wide variety of vocabulary. Miss Glory tells Margaret that Mrs. Cullinan was unable to have children. This caused a deep sorrow and regret in the emotions of Margaret towards Mrs. Cullinan, for she had a lot of pity towards. This part of the essay, to my understanding, set it apart from the others, because of Maya Angelou brilliant emotional concept she added to her character “Margaret” to feel pity on her mistress.
Angelou used questions to make the reader feel and understand her point of view. Maya Angelou’s work as a poet had very defined themes and styles. One of Angelou’s most iconic compositions is a poem of self-worth and perververenve deemed “Still I Rise.” The poem quickly draws the reader into the story through the use of rhetorical questions and continues this style as the poem progresses. “Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes?” (“Still I Rise”).