Toni Cade Bambaras The Lesson Story - Admission/Application Essay Example

Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Lesson”, as its implies, puts an emphasis on the role of lessons in inspiring change. Rather than teaching from the pedestal, Miss Moore takes her students, one of whom is the narrator, into the community to learn about the material first-hand. Unfortunately for some, the experience is traumatic, realizing the economic disparities that exist between them and those who can afford to shop on Fifth Avenue. What “The Lesson” shows is not so much the value being taught in the story, but the value of lessons, learning, and thinking themselves (Heller 290). By the end of the narrative, Sylvia needs “to think this day through”, which stands in deep contrast to her initial judgments of Miss Moore as a foreign and unwelcome element to the neighborhood in which she stands out. It is this commitment to the human quest for knowledge that, according to some critics, will lead Sylvia to a new sense of personal identity and a successful path in life. Bambara’s short story deals primarily with teacher Miss Moore and her student-narrator Sylvia. Miss Moore is unlike the other African-Americans in the urban neighborhood: she has attended college, speaks proper English, and goes by her last name. She gives her students a lesson in economics and about money, focusing on the unequal distribution of wealth in the United States. Afterwards, they take a field trip to a famous Fifth Avenue toy store named F.A.O. Schwartz, which astounds the young children with outrageous prices for toys, among them a sailboat, a paperweight, and a microscope. Entering the store, Sylvia is hesitant to go in. Feeling ashamed but unaware of why, she follows the students around the store. Miss Moore asks Sylvia is she is angry, but she does not give an answer. On the return trip, Sylvia thinks about what $35 dollars is worth to her, and why some people have so much money. With that thought in her mind, she schemes to keep the four dollars Miss Moore gave her for the taxi. When asked what the children thought about the toy store, Sylvia’s friend Sugar says she does not think the United States is much of a democracy if opportunity is not equal. Miss Moore focuses on Sylvia and asks again what the children learned. Sylvia is quiet and leaves. Sugar and Sylvia leave together, and she lets Sugar run ahead of her. She plans on going off to be alone to think about the day. By the late 19th century, ethnic dialects, like that apparent in the narrative voice of Sylvia, formed a voice for social commentary and political satire. The power of voice in constructing this realism and response to larger social, cultural, and racial issues was often used to reflect back to the perspectives of an oppressed black audience of peers and contemporaries (Heller 280). This seems to apply in the case of “The Lesson”, insofar as the African-American Vernacular English the narrator is using is an assertion of a primary identity. A primary identity is the account of oneself a person gives based on the linguistic community to which he or she belongs. From the voice the narrator uses, the fact of her African-American selfhood is apparent through her diction, syntax, and a number of other grammatical indicators of a Black speaker. This African-American English implies then that the narrator’s perspective is inseparably tied to the Black experience, which is characteristically tied to the phenomenon of inequality and social/economic injustice. As a result, events taking place within the narrative are to be analyzed in the context of such conditions (Eldred 693). This is why Sylvia’s rage in the presence of an awareness of injustice marks a large difference in the style of speech she uses in narration. When her manner of speaking brushes up against the nature of the injustice, the voice turns into one of resentment and hatred. Because the story is told in the first-person, the reader is given an opportunity to see the events unfolding in the plot from the perspective of a realistic protagonist. Though she is arrogant and bright, and foul-mouthed, she is also witty: incorporating a lot of humor that is often lost on readers of contemporary fiction. Because of her position as a young Black girl in a society operating against that primary identity, she is forced to deal with the realization that she occupies a low rung in the ladder of society. But she refuses to acknowledge it, and part of refusing to acknowledge it is using the African-American Vernacular English, which is contrasted so effectively with the Black yet white-educated voice of her teacher Miss Moore (Hargrove). This realization is made all too clear to her by a field trip her and her class take to an expensive toy store on Fifth Avenue. The field trip consists of seeing the sheer outrageousness of the toy prices, like a $1,195 toy sail boat. Sylvia is clearly affected by how she would never be able to purchase or play with any of the toys in the store. The ordinarily aggressive Sylvia keeps her distance. She says, “I feel funny, shame. But what I got to be shamed about?” (Bambara). Later Sylvia reveals to the reader that shame was not shame, but anguish, which comes from her sense of injustice seeing the toys she wanted but could not have. These emotional reactions are tied to Sylvia’s language in describing the event. Her childish naiveté about how people have so much money strikes the reader, especially since that childhood innocent comes across through the voice we as Americans typically identify with economic disadvantage. And, returning back to the issue of a primary identity, one sees clearly in the passage where Sylvia complains about the store on the way home the issue of her own identity. She wonders how some people accumulate the money to “spend that much for performing clowns” while it costs “thirty-five dollars and the whole household could go visit Granddaddy Nelson in the country” (Bambara). She asks herself “how come we ain’t in on it?” (italics mine). The use of the “we” in this case is interesting because it creates a class separation not seen at any earlier point in the story. Of course, Sylvia had some idea of the social and racial distinctions alive in the world, but now, since visiting the toy store, it seems alive in her mind the idea of economic disadvantage as tied to Blacks in the urban community (Hargrove). Asking why “we ain’t in on it” is the same, for her primary identity, why we [black people] do not have the same kind of privilege or opportunity to purchase these discretionary items. Because the African-American Vernacular form of the English language is using demonstrates the Black identity as Sylvia’s primary identity, seeing this “we” as the source of her outrage is understandable. This outrage comes as a humbling of sorts. The reader sees repeatedly throughout the experience Sylvia losing that sense of defensive arrogance characterizing her tone. This can be taken to reflect her realization of her place within the economic system. Sylvia refuses to share her thoughts on the trip to Fifth Avenue, and when her friend Sugar shares her thoughts, it is seen as a betrayal. As the story ends, Sylvia, comfortable back in her familiar setting, she returns to the top of her hierarchy, a return to her former arrogance and superiority (Hargrove), saying, “But ain’t nobody gonna beat me at nuthin’” (Bambara). Connected with her primary identity is this notion of social hierarchy and values Sylvia came face-to-face with during her field trip. During that experience, Sylvia caught a glimpse of reality behind the class and race distinctions she had only minor familiarity with before. Although bothered by the experience, she returns to her normal existence by the end of the story, except now there is perhaps a new normal in how Sylvia perceives the world. Though her voice and attitude does not change by a traumatic encounter with what is really going on, she still might see money differently. Sugar says, “Well, we got four dollars anyway,” which, for them, is good enough, especially since it came from Miss Moore, who “ain’t so smart” (Bambara). By that token, Sylvia is allowed to shrug off the notion of the intellectual superiority of those from the other side of the class/race distinction. The contrast between her voice and Miss Moore’s is apparent; however, Sylvia does not take this difference as one implying Miss Moore is better than her. In the end, it is Sylvia and Sugar with the money from the taxi (Heller 288). By the end, the gap (or the central conflict) between Sylvia and Miss Moore is not resolved, even though Sugar and Miss Moore are brought closer together by the experience. The central conflict of language conventions in the short story is clearly defined in the beginning, where Sylvia says, “… this lady moved on our block with nappy hair and proper speech and no makeup. And quite naturally we laughed at her” (Bambara 87). The laughing at her “proper speech” is clearly a rejection of white cultural standards, representing an intractable distinction for Sylvia at least. Miss Moore essentially moved into the neighborhood to teach the children about white class and power structures: a goal that Sylvia is deadest against allowing her to achieve; and when Sugar absorbs the lesson, Sylvia is disappointed. But like the toys in the toy store, when Sylvia hears Miss Moore’s proper speech, it is a noise that “resounds with aspirations that cannot be realized” (Eldred 692). This is an interesting insight because it reflects the equivalence of race/class language with economic positioning in the social hierarchy: a young child like Sylvia from the black neighborhood can only aspire (if she wanted to, that is) to speak like Miss Moore; however, such aspirations are not realistic, just as the aspiration for a sailboat is unrealistic. Thus, it seems Bambara’s narrative is constructed around the introduction of two distinct voices and ideologies, which compete for dominance as the action unfolds: (a) the white-educated voice of Miss Moore, and (b) the youthful, urban voice of Sylvia (Hargrove 693). This contrast in voices plays into a motif of the centrality of community. For Bambara, the community is often a locus for growth and not simply a narrative tension, or a source of character development. And in Bambara’s literature, her women protagonists always seem to handle themselves well within a divergent and frequently conflicting strain of thought within the community (Vertreace). The character development associated with this recurring theme is usually bound to a linguistic problem, much like the contrast between the voices of Sylvia and Miss Moore. And usually, in the context of this linguistic problem, for Bambara the lessons come as powerful tools for inciting social change. The most obvious setting for learning and lessons is the school; however, Bambara likes to move the learner, her protagonist, out into the world and in the community where the lessons become clearly vivid. The learning influences a self-image that comes about from self-determination and a self-defining process. Miss Moore wants to radicalize the students in the classroom, and uses her classroom effectively to do so. She explains the nature of poverty in the context of a Fifth Avenue store, makes them question fairness in society, and asks them what they have learned (Vertreace). With the guidance of Miss Moore, the children merge into a small community of individuals linguistically tied together by the urban language and the perspective associated with it. Although we are given first-hand knowledge of how Sylvia sees the world, one can extrapolate this shocking realization to the other students, who are united by the trauma of their experience. Although Miss Moore’s attempts to galvanize the class community are explicitly rejected by Sylvia’s sentiments at the end of the story, there is still a determination in her mind to defeat poverty. This puts her story firmly within the longer narrative of Sylvia’s life, in which one would probably see Sylvia learn to leave her African-American Vernacular English and become, as Miss Moore is, a member of the white-educated class. As Sylvia says “But ain’t nobody gonna beat me at nuthin”, we see this determination push her forward in a journey that she does not see. Her competitive and arrogant nature makes her the perfect student to be radicalized for Miss Moore; however, as Sylvia’s voice and tone reflects, she is not one to be used as an instrument of the teacher’s ideology. She will drive herself to the top through her own inherent resolve, regardless of whether Miss Moore comes to the classroom to teach ideology. In this sense, it seems the voice aspect of Bambara’s short story indicates that what is necessary is for Black people to find their primary identities, and hone their goals on the kinds of things that Sylvia will eventually strive to achieve. As Martha Vertreace concludes, “[Bambara’s] characters achieve a personal identity as a result of their participation in the human quest for knowledge, which brings power” (Vertreace 170). This could not be more correct: a personal identity is achieved as a result of an acknowledge need for knowledge. If Sylvia is driven to be the smartest, the fastest, or the best in any category for that matter, she will have achieved her personal identity as a result of the quest. The personal identity she takes on as a member of the African-American linguistic community, and as one who speaks the African-American dialect, will change inevitably if she, and others in her classroom community, will be shaped into striving toward easing the poverty under which they all live. But within the context of “The Lesson”, the young narrator’s language makes her ethnicity clear, especially through the use of diction, syntax, morphology, and phonology. Children’s names like Rosie Giraffe and Big Butt reflect their black heritage. Whenever she adapts a word from Miss Moore, she emphasizes that it is from Miss Moore’s code, and not hers, as if she is translating for the reader. Her creative use of compounds and uncensored speech is a sign of her intelligence, and her unconscious will to break social stereotypes of females as fragile. One might say Sylvia punishes Sugar for expressing the feelings that she shares, yet cannot express given the linguistic limitations she must deal with (Korb). That is, Sylvia’s actions speak a different story than her words: being stunned, shamed, and astonished by the toy store means something in the context of her own personal identity, something that she cannot quite express or cannot find the will to express. Sugar’s words only compound the sense of inferiority she feels after being privy to this information about class and racial differences (Korb). She wants to be violent toward Sugar because their characters are so alike, yet she sees Sugar being open about how these realizations have affected her. When Sugar touches the boat, Sylvia misdirects her anger from white privilege to her friend who, for once, is connected to it. What is important to understand about the contrast between the English variants in the story is they stand for deeper, more significant distinctions: like distinctions of opportunities, of wealth, of happiness, amongst others. Because Miss Moore’s skin as “black as hell” (Bambara 87), Bambara essentially spells out to the reader that skin color is not important. The only important thing is how the Black person acts and feels, not the color of his skin. However, it is Miss Moore’s belief that underlying distinctions in class and race should be broken down, which is the reason for her attempts at radicalizing her students. Clearly, these deeper distinctions are reflected in the language characters like Sylvia use to express themselves, and the language they use inside of their minds to express their thoughts. What is misunderstood or underestimated by this attitude of overcoming class and racial differences is the freedom and aptness of the African-American English in expressing the thoughts and feelings of the urban child. Katy Wright notes, “She is in no way silenced by the education Miss Moore urges on her, by the social inclusion promised by economic privilege, or by the self-constraints of adulthood, but speaks freely and with a richness of expression unfathomable in any other words” (Wright). In this sense, Bambara gives African-American English a power and legitimacy that reflects the celebratory and critical nature of the story she constructs. Insofar as Sylvia occupies the margins, alienated from the mainstream, she cannot help but use the language which is rejected by the other half of the voice conflict brought on by Miss Moore’s presence (Wright). Ultimately, Bambara’s short story is an insightful study of racial perception and primary identity, and the source of social change. Works Cited Eldred, Janet Carey. "Narratives of Socialization: Literacy in the Short Story ." College English, Vol. 53, No. 6 (1991): 686-700. Hargrove, Nancy D. "Youth in Toni Cade Bambaras Gorilla, My Love." Prenshaw, Peggy Whitman. Women Writers of the Contemporary South. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1984. 215-232. Heller, Janet Ruth. "Toni Cade Bambaras Use of African American Vernacular English in "The Lesson"." Style: Volume 37, No. 3 (2003): 279-293. Korb, Rena. "Critical Essay on "The Lesson"." Short Stories for Students. New York: The Gale Group, 2001. Vertreace, Martha M. "The Dance of Character and Community." Pearlman, Mickey. American Women Writing Fiction: Memory, Identity, Family, Space. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1989. 155-171. Wright, Katy M. "The role of dialect representation in speaking from the margins: "The Lesson" of Toni Cade Bambara." 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