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Short Story The Lesson

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The short story “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara was written in 1972. “The Lesson” was a first-person point of view story, it was told by a young girl named, Sylvia. This story tells about the shopping trip that the teacher of the class, Miss Moore, took the children. The main ideas of this story are the economic life style, social inequality, and lack of equal education for the African Americans. Miss Moore tries to teach the kids there is a better life in a small trip to the toy store. Sylvia gets angry with Miss Moore taking them to the toy store, not understanding why she would take them. The way Toni Bambara wrote “The Lesson” in first-person narration gives the story realism. The story “The Lesson” is told by a little girl named Sylvia, and it is about her class and Miss Moore going to a toy store. Before they leave, Miss Moore tells them how money is not being fairly handed out in the country and tells them where they are living is called the slums and that they are poor. They all get in two separate cabs; Sylvia and a couple of friends are in one, Miss Moore and the rest of the class are in the other cab. When they got out they realized they are on Fifth Avenue, as Sylvia explains “Then we check out that we on Fifth Avenue and everybody dressed up in stockings. One lady in a fur coat, hot as it is. White folks crazy” (Bambara, 1972). Miss Moore directs them to big windows of a building and they see all these nice things in windows saying how much they really want

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