Gorilla, My Love, is a book written by Toni Cade Bambara. Bambara wrote the book between 1950 and 1970, and it contains a collection of fifteen short stories. The Lesson is one of the stories published in the book that all told through a first-person point of view by a narrator who is often a tough, brave, and caring young girl. Tony Cade Bambara was an African-American author, documentary filmmaker, social activist, and college professor. Bambara was born on March 25, 1939, and grew up in Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Queens New York. She graduated from Queens College in 1959 with a Bachelors Degree in Theatre Arts/English Literature and completed her Masters Degree in American Studies at City College in New York. Bambara was an active participant …show more content…
in community organizations. The Civil Rights and Black Nationalist movements of the 1960s influenced her to write about black colored people rights. She went on propaganda trips to Cuba in 1973 and to Vietnam in 1975. Later Bambara moved with her daughter to Atlanta, GA, and became a founding member of the Southern Collective of African-American Writers. Her work was explicitly political, concerned with injustice and oppression in general and with the fate of African-American communities and grassroots political organizations in particular. Female protagonists and narrators dominate her writings, which was informed by radical feminism and firmly placed inside African-American culture, with its dialect, oral traditions and jazz techniques. She was always influenced by the people of Harlem and by her strong-willed mother, Helen Bent Henderson Cade Brehon, who urged her and her brother Walter (an established painter) to be proud of African-American culture and history. Her writing exposes the injustices and inequalities imposed on African-Americans that mainstream America avoided. (Wikipedia) “The Lesson” is told in a first-person narrative by the main character Sylvia, a school girl that lives in Harlem during the late 1960’s to early 1970’s.
Through Sylvia’s observations and language, readers learn a great deal about the environment Sylvia has grown up in as well as how she views the world. During the story, Sylvia goes from being outspoken and sarcastic to reserve as Sylvia learns the lesson. In the story, it is summer time, and she is on summer vacation. Summer vacation for Sylvia is spending time at the park, at the show, and at the pool. This may sound ok, but as Silvia describes it, the park is full of alcoholic bums. The apartment where she lives is also littered with bums throughout the stairwells and hallways of her apartment building, most likely located in a project. During the story, Sylvia, and her cousin Sugar discover the uneven distribution of wealth that is part of American society. Even though they are cousins, Sugar and Sylvia are also good friends who have grown up together in the same poor conditions. By the end of the story Sylvia and Sugar are like the two sides of a coin. Sylvia takes the lesson with her and puts it to use while Sugar forgets about it. The lesson is taught to them by Miss Moore, a college educated woman who tries to pass her knowledge to the children of the neighborhood. This is something Miss Moore does over the summer, and her lessons are often hidden is situations or questions that she leads to children into those …show more content…
situations. Other characters in the story such as Junebug, Flyboy, Fat Butt, Rosie Giraffe, Mercedes, and QT. Junebug is somewhat childish and most likely younger than Sylvia. Flyboy like Sylvia is outspoken. He is also smart; it is mentioned in the story that he can manipulate white people in school to sympathize with him. Flyboy’s brother is Fat Butt whose name is Ronald and is described by Sylvia as a glutton. Ronald shows some interest in the microscope at FAO Swartz and could have some academic potential if he were able to gain access to a better education than the inner city schools are likely to provide. Rosie like Silvia is outspoken. Mercedes have things the other children do not have such as a desk and stationary that her godmother had given her. The jokes and aggression towards Mercedes may stem from jealousy over these items. Last is QT which is younger than the other children but seems to understand the sailboat at FAO Swartz is very expensive after staring at it for a long time. On the surface “The Lesson” is simply a story about a woman, Miss Moore, taking a group of children on a field trip to FAO Swartz.
“The Lesson” actually turns out to be a journey of discovery and responsibility for the children. The story starts and coincidently ends at the mailbox. The mailbox may represent a place where mail and information are sent and received. From the mailbox, the story switches to a taxi ride where Miss Moore gives Sylvia five dollars to pay for the cab. The taxi is a luxury that the children or their parents could not afford. Sylvia is not quite ready for the responsibility of handling the money and shows it when she decides not to tip the taxi driver. Sylvia also fails to give the change from the taxi ride back to Miss Moore; this was another test of responsibility that Sylvia failed. In the end, Miss Moore allows Sylvia to keep the money as a gift that Sylvia would too proud to take any other way. After the Taxi ride, the children realize they are on Fifth Avenue because of the fancy clothes people are wearing. Sylvia says white people are crazy as she notices a woman in a fur coat in the middle of the summer. The children next stop outside FAO Swartz where they just look in the windows first. FAO Swartz is not a store the children or their parents would be able to afford to shop in, and Miss Moore lets them look until the children start realizing the prices of the things in the window. This shows Miss Moore’s intelligence, and she does it to
reinforce that this is a place they would not normally be able to shop at.3 Sylvia and Sugar start to understand the lesson when the go to enter FAO Swartz and hesitate because they begin to feel shame, the same shame Sylvia felt in the CatholicChurch. Mercedes go right in the store demonstrating that she has not started to understand the lesson. When Sugar touches the boat in the shop, Sylvia feels like she wants to hit someone and is not sure why. Violence is a reaction to the unknown and demonstrates that Sylvia still has more to learn at this point. After leaving FAO Swartz the children and Miss Moore take the subway instead of a taxi again, so the children will compare the two after seeing what they do not have. Upon returning to the mailbox where they started, Sugar can express that price of a toy could feed a family of six or seven easily and that the chance to pursue happiness is not equal for everyone because this could only be true is everyone had an equal shot at the money as well. Sylvia then begins to walk off with Sugar following. With a weird feeling in her chest, she brushes Sugar off when she catches up. Sugar does not seem to notice and says “Well, we got four dollars anyway,” At this point, the Sugar has forgotten the lesson and feeling in Sylvia’s chest is her realization of the lesson.
This paragraph shows that Sylvia was trying to think about the meaning why Miss Moore took her students to there even though she knew that no one could buy anything there. Cartwright says, “Nothing could make Miss Moore happier than Sylvia’s commitment ‘to think the day through (Cartwright, 114).’” Miss Moore knew that Sylvia was trying to understand the real theory of this field trip. She did not say anything when she was asked what did she think about this field trip to Miss Moore because she did not understand exactly what the genuine purpose of this field trip at that point. Although Sylvia did not understand, Sugar seemed like she got the lesson of this trip, as she said “ this is not much of a democracy if you ask me. Equal chance to pursue happiness means an equal crack at the dough, don't it? (336)”. Miss Moore expected more answers from Sylvia, since she looked like she was thinking so hard. This is the reason why Miss Moore looked at Sylvia when she asked to her students a same question again, “Anybody else learn anything today? (336)”. She said “anybody”, but she was expecting the answer from Sylvia in this scene because she looked like she was thinking about it harder than the other students as she got a lot of question such as “What kinda work they do and how they live and how come we ain’t in on
The negative attitude and bitterness makes Sylvia unreliable, she is prejudice against Miss Moore because she prevents Sylvia and the other children from having fun, which seems to be the only thing that matters to Sylvia. Sylvia states, “I’m really hating this nappy-head bitch and her goddamn college degree. I’d much rather go to the pool or to the show where it’s cool” (Bambara, 209). Sylvia is still young and naïve, so she doesn’t view getting an education as something she wants to do, she just wants to have fun and not learn anything but she eventually realizes that Miss Moore just wants her and the other children to
The short story is set in the period of The Great Depression, and lower classes especially struggled in this hard time. The Great Depression attacked the nation by society class. The lower levels struggled even more than usual. Lizbeth lived in a small rural town with a few members of her family. Her father and mother worked all day and Lizbeth and her brother, Joey, would hang out with other teenagers in their community to waste the daylight. The community always helped each other out but there was this one woman, Miss Lottie who played an important role in young Lizbeth’s
To start off the first difference that I noticed between the stories was the age that the characters matured and the person who taught them. Sylvia is taught a lesson while she is still very young, when reading the text you can assume that Sylvia is between 10 and 13 years old. Sylvia was taught a lesson as child by an adult. The lesson Miss Moore was trying to teach her was that getting an education is key for them to change their lives and have a better future for themselves. On the other hand, in “Sonny’s Blues” the narrator is an adult, and we can assume he is around the age 30 because he has two kid, a wife, and is a school teacher. Unlike In “The Lesson”, the narrator is taught a lesson as an adult, by someone who is younger than him. The lesson that the narrator is taught is that, all the struggles his brother has gone through he expresses them through his
One of Miss Moore's defining qualities is her intelligence. Her academic skills and self-presentation is noticeable through her college degree and use of “proper speech” (Bambara, 385). Miss Moore also makes her intelligence evident from the methods she uses to teach Sylvia and the other children. Unlike planting them in classrooms, she takes them out on trips to show them the real world. Despite all the insults she receives from th...
...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).
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...
To begin with, Miss Moore, Sylvia, and the other children are from the “slums”. However, what differentiate Miss Moore and everyone else in the neighborhood is that she has a college education, and speaks Standard English. As a result, Miss Moore plays the role as teacher to the neighborhood children. Most of the children from the neighborhood were poverty stricken and had a ghetto vernacular. Especially, Sylvia, who mouth is atrocious and has a strong animosity towards Miss Moore. For instance,“Miss Moore was her name. The only woman on the block with no first name. And she was black as hell, cept for her feet, which were fish-white and spooky.” Moreover, Miss Moore has high expectations of the children, so she takes them on a trip outside the hood to unveil the real world. Before going on the trip to the toy store Miss Moore tried to explain the value of money to the children. For example, “So we heading down the street and she’s boring us silly about what things cost and what our parents make and how much goes for rent and how money ain’t divided up right in this country.” At first, Sylvia is t...
Toni Cade Bambara was a native of New York City who devoted her life to her writing and her social activism. Throughout her career, Bambara used her writings to convey social and political messages about the welfare of the African-American community and of African-American women especially. According to Alice A. Deck in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, the author was "one of the best representatives of the group of Afro-American writers who, during the 1960s, became directly involved in the cultural activities in urban communities across the country." Deck also pointed out that "Bambara is one of the who continued to work within the black urban communities (filming, lecturing, organizing, and reading from her works at rallies and conferences). In addition, Bambara established herself over the years as an educator, teaching in colleges and independent community schools in various cities on the East Coast." Bambara's influence derived from the combination of her duties such as writer and social activist. "It's a tremendous responsibility and honor to be a writer, artist, a cultural worker...whatever you call this vocation," she explained in an interview in Black Women Writers. Bambara showed the world from a different perspective through the eyes of a factory worker or welfare children. Her objective was to describe the urban black community without resorting to stereotype.
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...
At the beginning of the story, Sylvia is unaware of the fact that she is poor and that there are rich people in the world. However, by the end of the story, Sylvia’s ignorance has disappeared and she has become educated about how money works in her society. The growth that Sylvia’s character shows over the course of the story is caused by hands-on learning, proving its effectiveness. Sylvia did not understand the lesson when Miss Moore tried to merely explain it to the children, and she remained ignorant. When Sylvia goes to the toy store and has the lesson taught to her through hands-on learning, she loses her trait of ignorance as she begins to understand Miss Moore’s lesson. Hands-on learning is beneficial to students because it is often more effective at imparting the lesson to students, and makes the lesson more likely to have an impact on them. By the end of the story, Sylvia shows a determination that she did not previously have, showing that Miss Moore’s lesson had an impact on her. At the very end of the story, Sylvia says, “She [Sugar] can run if she want to and even run faster. But ain’t nobody gonna beat me at nuthin.” This shows that not only was hands-on learning effective at teaching Sylvia the lesson, but it also allowed the lesson to have a greater effect on her and resonate more, as shown by her determination at the end of the story and her emotional response in the toy store. Sylvia’s character growth throughout the course of the story shows how hands-on learning effectively taught her the lesson, and aided in having the lesson resonate with her and have a greater impact. Just as hands-on learning was beneficial to Sylvia, this style of learning is also advantageous to students in general because of its effectiveness at teaching the lesson and its tendency to cause greater
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.
The narrator of the story is a young, black girl name Sylvia and the story is also told from her perspective. The setting is not clear. Perhaps it started in Harlem and then to downtown Manhattan on Fifth Avenue and the time of the story took place is also unclear. Bambara uses a great deal of characterization to describe the characters in the story. For example, Bambara describes Miss Moore as “black as hell” (Bambara 330), “cept her feet, which were fish-white and spooky” (Bambara 330), and “looked like she was going to church” (Bambara 330). She later tells us that she’s been to college and her state of mind is she believes it’s her responsibility for the children’s education. The plot started when Miss Moore rounded up all of the children by the mailbox. Then she gets the kids in a cab and took them to Fifth Avenue to a big toy store where the rich people would shop. The story then continues with the children and Miss Moore in the toy store and the kids looking around and noticing they can’t afford anything. Which will soon end the plot with a lesson that society is not fair, “that this is not much of a democracy if you ask me. Equal chance to purse happiness means an equal crack at the dough, don’t it?”(Bambara 330). Hence, the lesson Miss Moore is trying to teach these
Toni Cade Bambara’s story collection, Gorilla, My Love focuses on the substance of overlooked people in small quiet moments, and “Playin’ with Punjab” in particular is notable in that it observes urban life from the eye of a social worker and not from the perspective of those living those urban lives. Exploring the Harlem backdrop from this outsider point of view allows for a more effective and complete observation of the culture Bambara is trying to present. Notably, Miss Ruby, the social worker, notices and resents that the people living in the area wouldn't vote. She is uniquely able to see this issue, as she is not from there and the apathy is new to her, while others living there already might not notice something so mundane. Miss Ruby