Literary Magnum Opus of Toni Cade Bambara

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For this final essay I selected three literary masterpieces namely the story titled “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, and two Emily Dickinson’s Poems: I heard a fly buzz and The heart asks for pleasure first. The following essay will explore these works in a greater detail focusing on the elements of literature, such as the theme, the character, settings and conflicts. It will find ways to connect, relate or compare one literary work to two others as well as it will analyze the specific element in the selections with some depth. The paper will support points with appropriate examples from the selections and explain how the examples support those points.

The main work in the consideration is a literary magnum opus of Toni Cade Bambara, named “The Lesson”. Just like many stories, this one certainly is designed to each readers some lessons, related to life, lifestyle, relationships, love, family, friendship and growing up. The readers learn from the behaviors of the main characters, related themselves to those and find it necessary to imitate the behaviors in similar situations. Toni Cade Bambara's short story, The Lesson, was no exception to the rule, and as the name may suggest, the author presented a certain lesson to be learnt, namely the lesson that people should not take life and things in life for granted and should rather remain grateful for every day, while personally striving to become the best they can become in life.

The Lesson starts by noting that a group of low class black children meet a black woman by the name of Miss Moore. Unlike other blacks Miss Moore was very unusual because she had “proper speech” (42). Miss Moore was well-educated, she attended college and believed that it was right for her to take resp...

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...te that Toni Cade Bambara fought against the inequality and the injustice present in the US capitalist society in which a man is expected to be an aggressive, uncompromising, factual, lusty, intelligent provider of goods, and the woman, a retiring, gracious, emotional, intuitive, attractive consumer of goods. She fought against the black unprivileged status and her characters serves as a role model to the black children. The works of Emily Dickinson, namely poems I heard a fly buzz and The heart asks for pleasure first has slightly different positions reflecting the author’s personal set of beliefs, yet at the same time they provide different points of view on the meaning of life, on the human desire to maximize pleasure and minimize pain and on whether or not one should do everything to achieve whenever one can or wait for the afterlife as the ultimate solution.

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