Toni Cade Bambara The Lesson

The narrator chose to portrait Sylvia in a very interesting way. We can actually say that Sylvia could be one of the girls from this era. Sylvia was illustrated as a young ghetto character. It seemed like she lived in a dirty place “the winos who cluttered up our parks and pissed on our handball walls and stank up our hallways”. From the place where she lived, we then notice why she was so disobedient, careless and disobedient. Note that kids who live in places like those are mostly from careless parents (most of the time).
I feel like the trip to F.A.O. Schwarz helped Sylvia see things in different perspectives and opened her eyes to the world. “I read it again for myself just in case the group recitation put me in a trance” I have the impression that Sylvia was not mad at the price of the toy. She was mad at the way her life was. “So me and Sugar turn the corner to where the entrance is, but when we get there I kinda hang back. Not that I’m scared, what’s there to be afraid of, just toy store. But I fell funny, shame. But what I got to be ashamed about? Got as much right to go in as anybody.” Maybe she felt poor and useless or maybe even felt like she was less than everyone else in there because she could not afford anything in there. The trip helped Sylvia realize that she could be more than what she was. I bet it gave her many thoughts of what she could be and what she deserved in life.
Miss Moore is trying to teach them various lessons in this story. One of the lessons is that poor people need to get up and work for what they deserve “poor people have to wake up and demand their share of the pie”. She wanted them to understand that they needed to get out of the dump they lived in and fight for a better future. And show them that they were worth more than what they thought. She also wanted them to see how society was messed up “imagine for a minute what kind of society it is in which some people can spend on a toy what it would cost to feed a family of six or