The two characters I picked from “The lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara are Sugar and Sylvia. In this story, a well-educated woman named Miss Moore has taken it upon herself to expose the unappreciative children of the neighborhood to the world outside of their broken-down community. The location where the central part of the story takes place is the FAO Schwarz Toy Store in Manhattan. Slyvia, the Black narrator, and her younger cousin Sugar are roped into accompanying Miss Moore on an educational day trip. Slyvia and Sugar dislike Miss Moore because of her “proper” way of speech and her preaches about the value of money but Sylvia would much rather spend the day at the pool or the movies where she and Sugar can “terrorize the West Indian Kids and take their hair ribbons and their money too. When the group arrived at Fifth Avenue the children begin to look through the windows at the toys on display. They’re astonished by both the high price tags and the items themselves: Big Butt wishes he could afford a $300 telescope, and all of the children are shocked by a $480 paperweight. The kids are particularly fascinated by a toy sailboat that costs $1,195, and they wonder why any parents would ever spend that much money on a toy when it would be so fragile, and they could just make their own toy boat for cheaper. Eventually, Miss Moore suggests that they go into the store. Sylvia and Sugar lead the way, but both of them feel suddenly anxious and ashamed as they get to the front door. Sylvia remembers feeling the same way when she and Sugar snuck into a Catholic Church—they were going to pull a prank on the parishioners, but Sylvia couldn’t go through with it
