Summary:
Explores major themes in the short story, The Lesson. Provides a brief plot summary. Describes the main character, Sylvia, and details how she provided the story with its climactic ending.
The title of the story was provocative because I was interested to find out what lesson the writer would try to convey. After reading the first paragraph I was sure that the message would have to be a learning experience or rather one dealing with the impartialities of the upper and lower class. There were different elements in the plot that also made the story very intriguing. A major one was that narrator of the story was a young ghetto African-American girl. Sylvia's out take on life and her eagerness to be in control at such a young age shifted my attention more towards what she saw and experience rather than the situation her and her friends were facing. The story was set sometime before the 1970's. And the neighborhood kids were taken on a trip by a lady who seemed to pride herself on knowledge and pride. She was the only person in the neighborhood who had received a degree. The initial hook of the story was difference in perspectives between all of the children that attended this trip and the Miss Moore. Most of them didn't see any point in wasting their valuable summer on a trip that only Miss Moore was excited about. The suspense also seemed to build as the destination never really was revealed. Once the transition between the suburbs and the city was complete via taxi ride the story began to shape itself into the life lesson that was intended.
The children seemed to be acting like fish out of water. This transition also seemed to be too much to handle for some of the kids as they started to compare what they were seeing in the upscale toy store to what they had in their own homes. As the mood kept changing the one constant in the story seemed to be Sylvia, the narrator that kept us in touch with the her reality. The plot of the story was very fresh and unlike any type of initiation story that I had read before. Besides being a learing tool for these young kids the writer also used this as a way of expressing the disgust with what our economy and structure has become. Towards the end of the story one of the kids lashed out with a phrase that set the writers point into perspective, "Equal opportunity means and equal crack at the dough, don't it""
I think this made the final black moment black enough to get the message across but not black enough to distance ourselves from the characters and backgrounds.
This writer also uses many symbols to create a journey that the reader can flow easily through while still receiving the entire moral of the story. Some of the symbols were the rallypoints where the group met and left from. A mailbox was used for this to show how unconnected these people were from the big city and to kind of make us feel a bit separated from society. Another was the transportation to and from the F.A.O toy store. Initially to get to the store on fifth avenue the group jumped in two cabs, a symbol of having to depend on the rental of someone eles' vehicle to reach the destination, and having to return on the subway which in those days was meant as a last resort to transportation. This form of transportation was one used only by the less fortunate and added to the emphasis of the lesson.
At the end the main character outgrew here counterparts by being the only one to see the purpose of the trip and actually show some discomfort when left alone to ponder what she had learned. While still in the role of child and running down the street, on her way to spend the money she had aquired, Sylvia gave the story a climactic ending by letting it be know that she would not come in second to anyone. It was nice to see the character come to life at the end and established herself as a leader rather than just another onlooker.
This is the complete article, containing 681 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
