The Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara - Research Paper Example

? Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Lesson” Introduction This paper attempts to critically analyze one of the famous stories by Toni Cade Bambara, published in her initial collection by the title “The Lesson”. These stories commemorate African-American community and culture, At times in opposition to white society. The author confronts her characters to reorganize thoughts of conventional social norms and values along with challenging the readers to behave in a similar way. Most of her short stories entail or revolve around an intelligent, young narrator who attempts to inquire about the world surrounding her life. As the process of investigation goes on with the central character, the reader also discovers. "The Lesson" basically analyzes the actualization of economic inequity in United States in 1960s via the eyes of the central character, a young girl. In this story this role has been named as ‘Sylvia’ who is portrayed as a sensitive, proud, and tough girl, possessing the smartness to neglect the realisms surrounding her. The author also provides a host of various characters who offer help to Sylvia in her exploration and in the demonstration of issues of minorities and poor people within the U.S. Being a symbol of societal development, Bambara, during her career made use of her fiction compilation as a way of teaching people the ways to demand and improve their lifestyles. At the time of its publication, the story collection was referred as a real voice. Concurrently the author aptly described the African-American community, she also instructed about its future. Such stories depict the intention of author to contribute a lesson absent forfeiting her artistic form to didactic morals or thoughts (Butler?Evans 100). About Bambara In order to comprehend the story behind “The Lesson,” the place and time at which the Toni Cade Bambara attended college and then started creating her short stories is needed to be investigated. Bambara is a well known essayist, novelist, lecturer, filmmaker and educator. She always insisted that commitment to society cannot be separated from the creation of art. Bambara's initial years work as a welfare worker and dedication as a community organizer inclined her contributions from the very beginnings. In 1960s, Bambara along with Harlem were at the forefronts of the feminist movement, radical politics as well as African American culture (Harlem, 2008). That’s why her writing discloses the inequalities and injustices forced on African Americans that conventional America averted and could not pass through. The story is a window as well as a lesson for the audience into reality of Bambara to a similar extent as it is a window and a lesson for Sylvia, the main character. Summary It is first person narration by a poor, young black girl who was brought up in Harlem in an undetermined time depicted in the story as “Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and Sugar were the only ones just right” (Bambara, 116). One afternoon, Sylvia is made obliged to recognize the cruelty and unfairness of the economic and social system, prevailing in 1960s within the United States. Sylvia is shown to be a resident of "slum area" as her family moved from the South most probably to improve their financial conditions, as was done by numerous southern African Americans during the 20th century but they discover themselves existing in the ghetto. Only a single person within the neighborhood differentiates herself and that is Miss Moore, a representation of shifting times. Contrasting the other African Americans, she is an educated lady and talks in Standard English. She disliked visiting church. These differences are more evident from her physical appearance alone. Most essential for the children of her neighborhood, she assumes the responsibility of the education of the young ones and provides them exposure to the world beyond their neighborhood and its reality. The story basically involves the trip of Miss Moore and students towards an expensive toy store named F. A. O. Schwarz. Going through the commodity prices, it can be assumed to be depicting the period of 1970s.It entails a trip started by a woman living in the neighborhood, being the only educated individual in the community desperately. This initiative of Miss Moore, was taken to help needy individuals and to let the inappropriate children living in the neighborhood realize the disparity in their lives and the lives of others. So the author destines FAO Schwartz within Manhattan to be a practical exposure to the reality. The lesson behind the story was however shown to be lost as the children being contemptuous to lead themselves towards the education and learning opportunities provided by considerate Miss Moore, end the story in planning to spend the remaining cab fare change stolen by them from Miss Moore. As at the last moment, Sylvia turns towards her friend and sets off alone to meditate the outcomes of the day. Critical Analysis According to Doerksen, in her first collection of short stories, Gorilla, My Love, Nambara “celebrates urban African?American life, black English, and a spirit of hopefulness inspired by the Civil Rights movement." By the time this collection was published in 1972, Bambara had been priory recognized as an supporter for women and African?American rights, and most of her stories were a fictional call to weapons; Bambara utilized her writing as an opportunity to initiate confrontation to the racist and cultural norms of that period. One extraordinary facet in this is the quantity of characters incorporated. Miss Moore fetches eight children towards the store, and all of them possess a distinct perspective on the proceedings of the day. The children are identical in that they recognized the very expensive cost of the toys, predominantly a sailboat costing $1,195. Though all of them can be grouped into three fragments on the basis of their perceptions. One may include those acknowledging the fact of shocking prices of the toys. This group includes Big Butt, Flyboy, Rosie Giraffe, Q.T. and Junebug. The other group may include those not revealing the understanding of the increased importance of those toys as shown by Mercedes; and those who tacitly or openly recognize the economic injustice demonstrated by the toys like Sugar and Sylvia. The inquiry of uniqueness of personal description within the background of community emerges as a main motif for writings of Toni Cade Bambara. Her female leading characters originate as strong as they act, not due to some intrinsic "eternal feminine" eminence decided at conception, but rather by learning lessons from their interactions with community (Bryan 31). Thus it can be deduced that in the central character, identity is something acquired but not bestowed. Hence the main focus of Bambara's short is on learning to build one’s identity. Very cautious in presenting scenarios in an orchestrated way, Bambara depicts the troubles that her leading characters are required to overcome. These stories demonstrate a planned emphasis on the core of community. Various writers concentrate so particularly on the plot line or character development that community appears only a foil opposing the reactions of the characters. For Bambara, however, the community turns into an essential component such as a venue for growth and not merely as a source of explained tension. Therefore in her creations, community as well as the characters may encircle each other as growth and learning takes place. The women depicted by Bambara in her stories, learn the ways of managing themselves through the course of varying situations often contravening, strata that since hard outcomes result from hard knocks, so the learning in Bambara’s stories is not achieved easily. Nonetheless, the women not merely tolerate; they persist, developing through these scenarios with increased awareness of their personal identities and uniqueness their potential for more self-actualization. More important, women guide each other to accomplish such awareness. So this personal uniqueness is attained by the characters of Bambara as a consequence of their participation within the quest for knowledge which produces and yields power. Her writing skills secure her characters from facing various stereotypes. Using a universal theme, Bambara describes communities to grow above the common. More comprehensively delineated than the male characters, women in Bambara’s writing come across as unique individual residing in a specific place (Vertreace 155). All of these typical attributes of Bambara are evident in “The Lesson.” A terrible experience of disenchantment seems in what is possibly the best of all the fifteen stories of Bambara, "The Lesson." This story owes and focuses on much of its vital force to its first?person teller, a determined, strong young girl, “Sylvia”. She has been depicted to be sassy, arrogant and tough with a terrible vocabulary, she is also shown to be bright, vulnerable and witty. During the course of this story, she learns something that disillusions her regarding the world and society she is a constituent. She is obliged to recognize this unfairness and disparity sue to being a black individual within the community. Though she struggles and refuses to accept this realization, the reader gets a clear image that the young lady is irrevocably impacted by all the events that took place on the day presented in the story. It is specifically a quality work as it sensitively portrays the main character with her black dialect (Hargrove 225). Conclusion Overall the story depicted in ‘The Lesson” is not conveying a distinct message but provides a similar message in different setting as other stories of Bambara show. The work not only hits the economical and social disparity that prevailed in those days of United States, but also provides a learning theme for the suppressed people to educate them and to create awareness for improving their lives. Works Cited Bambara, Toni Cade. “The Lesson.” In Literature: The Human Experience, 116-121. Macmillan Higher Education, 2006. Print. Bryan, C. D. B. “Review in the New York Times Book Review,” 31. October 15, 1972. Print. Butler?Evans, “Elliot, Race, Gender, and Desire: Narrative Strategies in the Fiction of Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker”, 91-122. Temple University Press, 1989. Print. Doerkson, Teri Ann, "Toni Cade Bambara." In The Dictionary of Literary Biography,Vol. 218: American Short Story Writers since World War II, Second Series, Patrick Meanor and Gwen Crane (eds.), Gale Group, 2000. Print. Hargrove, Nancy D."Youth in Toni Cade Bambara's Gorilla, My Love." In Women Writers of the Contemporary South, Peggy Whitman Prenshaw (ed.), 215-32. University Press of Mississippi, 1984. Print. Vertreace, Martha M. "The Dance of Character and Community." In American Women Writing Fiction: Memory, Identity, Family, Space, Mickey Pearlman (ed.), 155-71. University Press of Kentucky, 1989. Print. Read More