The Lesson :: Analysis, Toni Cade Bambara

Throughout history knowledge, culture and information has been passed down within communities. Life lesson were often taught by older, wiser or formally educated hoi polloi within the community. This idea still holds true today, especially in low-income communities as illustrated in the short story The Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara. I am led to opine that story took place in a low-income community in the early to mid-sixties as African-American families travel to find better opportunities, when extended families moved north as groups and then spreading out into their respective community (507). Miss Moore, who had obtained a college education, assumed this role within her community by aphorism it was only right that she should take responsibility for the young ones education (507). Initially the lesson of the day was the value of money, but quickly evolved into several assorted lessons for the children in attendance that day.Miss Moore begins her lesson by planting a seed in the mi nds of the children in the form of small talk such as what things cost, how a lot their parents made, how much they spent on rent and how money was not divided up right in this country (508). This got the children thinking about the money that common people within their community spent on everyday survival. Their field trip brings them to a fancy Fifth Avenue take on store F.A.O Schwartz (512), where they enjoy toys form the window. The children begin to notice the outlandish prices that the toys were being sold for, which further waters the seed embedded in their little minds earlier. Their eyes settled on a sailboat displayed in the window. Its outrageous price tag read, one thousand one hundred ninety-five dollars (510). Shocked and taken back they could not believe that anyone would pay that much money to entertain a child, one child immediately asked, This boat for Kids, Miss Moore? (510). This growing seed in their minds sparks the question of, why some people can afford such expensive toys and not others, as they enter the store. As they finish in the toy store and get home, Miss Moore prods the children to see if they had grasped the lesson as she intended. Sugar, one of the children spoke and said You know, Miss Moore, I dont think all of us here put together eat in a year what that sailboat costs (512). Miss Moore was elated to find that the message of social dissimilitude had been relayed to at least one of the children.