The Lesson: A Marxist Criticism

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The Lesson : A Marxist Criticism

Through experience , a person gains a broader understanding of what life is like . Children may believe that they possess a wealth of knowledge but new lessons , even if valiantly resisted , are absorbed to create a new way of looking at things . Toni Cade Bambara 's The Lesson ' deals with social inequality , a concept which Miss Moore tries to introduce to her young charges through practical lessons that reveal what society is all about . More importantly , the short story

is about learning life 's lessons even if they are harsh . Thus , the lesson referred to by the title is not the typical lesson that one would expect this is not a lesson that can be learned from just any four-walled classroom but this is one that is learned through living . Moreover , the short story teaches the readers that there are people like the young narrator Sylvia , who do not know , and do not exert an effort to know , what life is like beyond their own communities and social status . These same people are content , thinking that they have the right kind of life Therefore , they do not strive to better themselves in to claim equality with people considered to be part of the much wealthier , upper class . On the other hand , they may just be showing symptoms of a defense mechanism where they try to show that they do not really care if they are poor and downtrodden they are tough and do not want to see themselves in any other light

Bambara makes use of dialect in for Sylvia to become a fully realized and realistic narrator . The reader can almost hear the impoverished and black , but confident and often abrasive girl who refuses to listen to anything that Miss Moore teaches her and the other children

.this lady moved on our block with nappy hair and proper speech and no makeup . And quite naturally we laughed at her , laughed the way we did at the junk man who went about his business like he was some big-time president and his sorry-ass horse his secretary .Miss Moore was her name (Bambara

Sylvia may not be fully aware that she and her friends are prejudiced against Miss Moore . This can be compared to some students who are terrified of one subject , for example Math , and actually do terribly in the subject because their fear has frozen them and has made them easily give up . Sylvia is not the type of girl who gives up but she is the type of girl who questions authority . Miss Moore , with all her lessons is authority . Therefore , she expects that this lady with the goddamn college degree (Bambara ) must be uppity and arrogant about what she knows , not genuinely caring about her pupils . In some way , like the students who are blocking lessons because of fear and difficulty , Sylvia is blocking Miss Moore 's lessons

World wealth is unfairly distributed according...