The Lesson by Toni Cade Banbara

Kelli Parsons

English 102

SJ Glassberg

March 7, 2006

“The Lesson” by Toni Cade Banbara

The theme of “The Lesson” is poverty vs. wealth. The narrator, Sylvia and her friends are “all poor and live in the slums”(3). The children have no concept of what being poor really means. They only know their neighborhood, which is dirty and in poverty. The children’s mentor Miss. Moore tries to teach her students about real life, poverty, and luxury. She shows then her personal view that money is not shared as it is supposed to in a democratic society. Miss. Moore is trying to show the children the contrast between being really poor and being really rich.

In order to show the children the contrast between being really poor and being really rich, they are taken to Fifth Avenue. The children notice how the “white folks”

(3) are dressed. Sylvia noticed how “everybody [was] dressed up in stockings..[and] one lady in a fur coat.(3)” Syliva doesn’t really understand that the fact that Fifth Avenue is a place where only a small percent of our population can afford to live or to shop. When Miss. Moore leads the children to the toy store, they are immediately speechless by the toys in the window. They even call out which ones they are going to buy. Miss. Moore gives the children their second lesion in being poor, here they are shown the price of toys to how much it would cost to feed their families for a year. Sugar tells Miss. Moore that she didn’t “think all of [them] put together eat in a year what that sailboat costs (49).” The children are finding out how different their world at home is much different then this place.

The setting