Toni Cade Bambara's "The Lesson" is about a group of inner city, minority children who are led on a trip to FAO Schwartz by a woman, active in the community. The feeling of apprehention that the children experience as they enter the store points to the obvious class differences in American society. And though this lesson in social equality (or inequality) is designed to bring awareness to the children, the reader can't help but feel the anger that it generates in Sylvia. In the end it only reinforces her ghetto mentality, she is most concerned with the change she stole from Miss Moore.
I have a very special connection to this story. My sister and I were brought to the US by our parents when we were children. And even though we were very very poor for the first couple of years, our parents did their best to show us the world around us. I remember that feeling of apprehention on my first trip to FAO Schwartz. I remeber the tears in mother's eyes because my 5 year old sister did not even ask if she could have a toy, she knew we couldn't afford it. I was also surprised on my last trip there a few years ago to find out that the prices in that store are pretty reasonable, I even bought something for my nephew.
This whole "we need to redivide the pie" business falls on deaf ears with me because there in this country, more so then any other country in the world each of us has the ability to make something of themselves without breaking the system. And even though some have better odds then others, it does not excuse that ghetto attitude (like Sylvia's) "If I can't buy it then I'll steal it". I think the lesson here should be - You want it? Work for it!
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4 comments:
I grew up poor in Brooklyn. I remember going to FAO when I was a kid and being in awe. My mom couldn't afford to buy me anything there at the time either. The place was so different than any other toy store I had been in that the place seemed more like a museum than a store to me. As far as Sylvia, I agree at the moment she is more concerned with the money she never gave back to Miss Moore but..her question " What kinda work they do and how they live and how come we ain't in on it?" implies she might be thinking beyond her ghetto mentality. The story ends with her saying she wants to 'think this day through.'
I feel that I can relate to this story and your story as well. I also immigrated to America at a young age, and I remember going to Toy’s R Us and feeling terrible because I was not allowed any of the toys in the store. We just walked around the store as if we were in a museum, just the life the kids felt in FOA Swartz. I feel that it was those types of incidents in my life, where I learned to push and try harder.
I appreciate your personal connection to the story and the grit of your work ethic. "Sylvia!" I missed her name on my first reading, but I think she has more on her mind at the end of the story than the four dollars she and Sugar are going to spend in the next few hours. She was deeply affected by Ms. Moore's lesson; I think it piqued her ambition. However, I still question "what" she actually learned. Is her newfound motivation not to let anyone do her one better simply one of Sylvia's dominant character traits, in other words something she would have done anyway even without Ms. Moore's intervention. Yet I am plagued by the suspicion that Sylvia's desire to "make it" in life will lead her to trample anyone or anything that gets in her way--law of the jungle-like. So what did she really learn from Ms. Moore? I also cannot help but notice Ms. Moore's naivete. I don't blame her for trying to "teach these kids" but she will have to do more, much more to effect any real change.
Nice personal connection, but I have to disagree about Sylvia. Read my opening comments as well as Richard's and Steve's blogs and my comments on them. Look carefully at those ending scenes. It's the "ghetto" attitude that she is, whether she is fully conscious of it or not, abandoning (has already abandoned; you might seet it lingering on in some of the other characters, though). Sylvia is the character who undergoes the most substantial change in the story. This doesn't mean, of course, a complete change of character. The (perhaps ghetto-bred) competitiveness remains,but,as the story implies, will serve quite a different function as a result of the "lesson"(lessons)...
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