"The Lesson" by Toni Cade Bambara was told through the eyes of the protagonist Sylvia, a dynamic character, and her relationship with Miss Moore, the antagonist. Throughout the story, Sylvia's attitudes gradually change as she realizes the hidden message that Miss Moore was trying to teach her. The central idea of the story is that THE GAP BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE, POOR AND RICH PEOPLE ARE WIDE, BUT IT CAN BE NARROWED WITH EDUCATION AND DETERMINATION. At the beginning, Sylvia is just a young black girl who comes from a slum, which she describes as a place full of winos. She lives in a tiny apartment clustered with all her relatives, and she has a huge resentment toward a woman she referred to as Miss Moore. Miss Moore has a college degree and volunteered to educate the children herself against their will, which caused Sylvia and other kids to hate …show more content…
In one way or another, the environment that Sylvia is in affects her thoughts and behaviors. She prefers going to the pool or to the show than standing in the sun, listening to Miss Moore's lessons. Sylvia has her own perspective about the world; she accepts her life as how it is and does not want anyone to interfere with it. Sylvia uses mean words and bad manner to describe and treat her "teacher" and despises everything Miss Moore says and does. However, despite everything, Sylvia did in fact pay attention to what Miss Moore said even though she acted as if she did not. For example, when they take the cab, she tries to calculate the tip and she asked Miss Moore a question for the first time about money. Sylvia indeed is a bright kid, who used to her lifestyle and struggling with herself: to learn or not to learn throughout the story. The change began when Sylvia immediately felt shy and ashamed when they entered the fancy toy store on the Fifth Avenue, where white people wear fur
It is easily perceptible that Sylvia’s father was abusive, and “grinded her gears”, which is then revealed she is a victim of
For this activity I chose to read the book “The Last Stop on Market Street” by Matt de la Pea. The story is about a boy (CJ) and his grandmother (Nana) taking their daily Sunday bus trip across town. However, this Sunday CJ seems to be noticing the differences between himself and others on the bus. On the bus ride, CJ’s Grandmother shows him how to respectfully interact with different races of people. His grandmother also shows him to see and respect the beauty in the low-income neighborhood that they are in.
Our first introduction to these competing sets of values begins when we meet Sylvia. She is a young girl from a crowded manufacturing town who has recently come to stay with her grandmother on a farm. We see Sylvia's move from the industrial world to a rural one as a beneficial change for the girl, especially from the passage, "Everybody said that it was a good change for a little maid who had tried to grow for eight years in a crowded manufacturing town, but, as for Sylvia herself, it seemed as if she never had been alive at the all before she came to live at the farm"(133). The new values that are central to Sylvia's feelings of life are her opportunities to plays games with the cow. Most visibly, Sylvia becomes so alive in the rural world that she begins to think compassionately about her neighbor's geraniums (133). We begin to see that Sylvia values are strikingly different from the industrial and materialistic notions of controlling nature. Additionally, Sylvia is alive in nature because she learns to respect the natural forces of this l...
Sylvia’s being poor influences the way in which she sees other people and feels about them. Sylvia lives in the slums of New York; it is the only life she knows and can realistically relate to. She does not see herself as poor or underprivileged. Rather, she is content with her life, and therefore resistant to change. Sylvia always considered herself and her cousin as "the only ones just right" in the neighborhood, and when an educated woman, Miss Moore, moves into the neighborhood, Sylvia feels threatened. Ms. Moore is threatening to her because she wants Sylvia to look at her low social status as being a bad thing, and Sylvia "doesn’t feature that." This resistance to change leads Sylvia to be very defensive and in turn judgmental. Sylvia is quick to find fl...
Different social classes come with different perspectives and challenges, usually the belief is that higher society is much happier than those in the lower rank, but not including race into the education does not give all sides of that story. By evaluating parts in Cane by Jean Toomer, Quicksand and Passing by Nella Larsen, and Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston story of class and race is being told. Color and classism have gone hand in hand for many years and evaluating the lives of characters that are considered the lowest of the low and yet made it up the totem pole brings up an important discussion. The conflicting ideas of race and class actually encourage racism and ruin the lives of characters in the black bourgeoisie.
A great deal of symbolism can be found by simply examining the name Ms. Moore. Marital status does not define her - notice the Ms. Quite frankly, the reader is not even informed if she is married or even if she has children of her own. She is a very independent woman. Not only does the prefix of Ms. Moore represent that she is independent, but her last name also shows the she wants more for the children, because, according to her, they deserve more. Her purpose is to help the children realize that there is a world outside of Harlem that they can aspire to. Although F.A.O. Schwartz is just a small part of that world, the trip here with Ms. Moore shows the children a great deal about what the outside world is like and how anyone can have that piece of the pie. Even though the children could never afford the toys, Ms. Moore brings them to the store to show them they have just as much right to be there and just as much right to live the rich life as anyone else. Sylvia, the narrator, is upset by the inequality. She is jealous of the life she can't have and is angry that Ms. Moore would expose her to these facts. Although, Sylvia would never let her know this.
...siting F.A.O. Schwarz awakens in Sylvia an internal struggle she has never felt, and through criticizing Miss Moore, Sylvia distances herself from realizing her poverty. In her responses to the toys, their prices, and the unseen people who buy them, it is evident that Sylvia is confronting the truth of Miss Moore's lesson. As Sylvia begins to understand social inequality, the realization of her own disadvantage makes her angry. For Sylvia, achieving class consciousness is a painful enlightenment. For her to accept that she is underprivileged is shameful for her, and Sylvia would rather deny it than admit a wound to her pride: "ain't nobody gonna beat me at nuthin" (312).
Sylvia enjoys her stream of affairs, but she's hurt by the fact that her husband won't notice her. She enjoys manipulating people when she’s bored and rejecting men. Sylvia uses sex as a way to control men and gain power. However, some of these had consequences; referring to Brownlie, the banker, whose obsession with her led him to bounce two of Christopher’s checks, causing him disgrace to the army Mess and his club. The only person that she can’t control and is desperate to is her husband. He’s able to resist her attractiveness, something that other men can’t. Christopher did have an attraction to her, but it did not last after he realized that she used him by making him marry her quickly because she was with child, which might not be his. Sylvia usually gets bored of her affairs, but she comes back to Christopher because she knows that he is superior versus her other suitors. At some point, we learn that Sylvia wants a dominating husband, who satisfies her sexual needs while at the same time playing the role of the secret puppet master. “If, you had once in our lives said to me: You whore! You bitch! […] you might have done something to bring us
One of the main feature of societies is that they are socially divided. Different social groups can be able to get access to different amount of power, wealth, and influence. Societies are divided by the inequalities between different social groups and these things determine the life chances of individuals. The moment in which character Sammy imagines the scene in "Queenie's" parent's living room in the short story A&P by Updike and the passage in which character Miss Moore asks about the children's desk at home in Toni Cade Bambara's "The Lesson" were drawn the realistic pictures of social divisions.
Miss Moore wants to teach the kids about money, specifically, how much of it can buy what. Her objective really is to make them see how much they cannot afford compared with what the rest of their fellow citizens can, half of which are Caucasians. If there is one thing that can sure catch the interest of kids, it’s a toy. So Miss Moore took them to an upscale toy store at Fifth Avenue, when all the toys the kids knew and had were from Pop’s. The tone of the story is sarcastic all throughout, from Sylvia’s first person point of view.
One of Sylvia's students is Joe Ferone. Joe is a rebel and a hoodlum. Joe barely ever comes to class. Sylvia really wants to help Joe. Sylvia tries to schedule after school sessions with Joe, but he never shows up. Towards the end of the story I get the feeling Sylvia was starting to fall in love with him.
Sylvia is?a little maid who had tried to grow for eight years in a crowded manufacturing town?, but she is innocent and pure. ? The little woods-girl is horror-stricken to hear a clear whistle not very far away.? Sylvia was more alarmed than before. when the hunter appears and talks to her. She easily agrees to help the hunter by providing food and a place to sleep, although she initially stayed alert with the hunter....
To begin with, the reader gets a sense of Sylvia's personality in the beginning of the story as she talks about Miss Moore. Miss Moore is not the typical black woman in the neighborhood. She is well educated and speaks well. She has 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. Sylvia's opinion of her is not one of fondness. She says that she hates Miss Moore as much as the "winos who pissed on our handball walls and stand up on our hallways and stairs so you couldn't halfway play hide and seek without a god damn mask”(357). By comparing the hatred with something she enjoys, we get to see what a child does in the slums for amusement. Sylvia feels t...
When Sylvia fails to find the children, whom she temporarily abandoned along the side of the road in a burst of frustration, she merely drives back home and hides their backpacks to make it seem like she had not seen them that day. For the rest of the movie, Hochhäusler continually films her passive behavior while the father frantically searches for them. Sylvia idly stands by while the father phones the school, checks all the places his children frequent, and reports the missing children to the police. Her lack of concern sharply contrasts with her husband’s anxiety. Since the audience is left to wonder about Sylvia’s motive for the entirety of the film, her behavior contributes to the uncertainty that pervades the story. By holding the stepmother responsible for the children’s disappearance, Hochhäusler again links his film to the textual
...hat I argued was that Sylvia helped bird or more specifically she helped “The White Heron” simply because birds symbolize freedom and humans symbolize violence and the desire of taking someone else’s freedom, in our story the hunter wanted to take the ‘white heron’s’ freedom. Even though the hunter offered Sylvia material goods to her just to tell him where the ‘White heron’ was hiding, she decided not to take any chances to tell him. The reason for her action I believe is that she wanted to length the birds freedom even though she maybe had given up a great opportunity of marrying a ‘young tall boy’ and also profit material goods. From Sylvia’s actions we can see that not always money is important in our lives, but sometimes it’s more important the happiness of others. She decided to give the freedom to the bird that was hiding from the hunter and the civilization.