In the short story the characters Rosie Girafee and Sugar had two different takes from the toy store. I think Rosie sees the surface level of the problem opposed to the actual depth that Sugar sees and actual points out. The kids are having a good time and admiring the toys they simply never could have. By the end Sugar realizes that what they all eat in one year could sum to the amount the white kids are getting to purchase in toys and to actually see that in front of her made her understand the differences. As for Rosie Girafee she sees the prices and just thinks to herself that white people are ridiculous for spending that kind of money but nothing deeper, nothing as to the race differences and the fundamental issues that lie in front of them at this store. It could be that she’s too young and naive to understand but it seems to hit Sugar like a truck. She left the toy store with a whole new perspective on life.
Daily Archives: February 18, 2022
Choose two characters from “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara and compare their response to the experience of visiting the FAO Schwarz toy store. In “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, there are two characters and their response of visiting the F.A.O Shwartz toy store that stuck out. Those characters are Sugar and Sylvia. Sugar and Sylvia stood out to me because of their close friendship and separate attitudes of their experience at the toy store. Sylvia is more timid about the experience then Sugar is, Sugar was able to touch the toy boat, angering Sylvia because it is not something she can bring herself to do. She feels ashamed to be there, even when she tells herself that she has no reason to be. Sugar is more open to the experience then Sylvia is. I kind of want to say that Sylvia is more on the why thought and Sugar could be on the how? Sylvia is in her thoughts and to herself, maybe even “too big” to say anything, whereas, Sugar wants to know and can let her thoughts ne known. ……………………………….
The short story ‘’The Lesson’’ by Toni Cade Bambara brought me many reflections of my childhood, as I also grew up very financially limited, and in an emerging country. Therefore, as a child I’d usually get upset for not understanding why I could not have the toys I’d seen on the TV advertisements, or at my trips to the mall with my mom. However, as time passed and I started to enter my teenager years, my family started to grow financially and we could finally afford the things we wanted. Based on that, from all the eight kids that Miss Moore had taken on the toy store, the ones that called my attention and that I was able to emphasize the most were Mercedes and Sugar. Mercedes presented herself as someone who had a different lifestyle from the other teenagers. She was the only one who had a studying space with a desk, and stationary itens on a box. Also, Mercedes didn’t seem surprised by the price tag on the toys, instead she seemed hopeful that she would have money enough to come back and pick something for herself as a birthday gift. In addition, Mercedes seemed to be the only one who did not understand the purpose that Miss Moore was trying to reach by taking them to the store, and the reason for that is because she was financially privileged enough to not need to. Meanwhile, Sugar seemed to be the most upset about the prices, or on the fact that her family was not financially able to provide such things for her. Sugar manifested her incomprehension about wealth and social inequality as rage towards Mercedes, the system and Miss Moore. Moreover, one could argue that the reason why Sugar resented Miss Moore so much was a way […]
After visiting the FAO Schwarz toy store, Mercedes loved it. She stated that she had a desk at home for doing her homework compared to other students. So, she felt at home in the FAO toy store. Mercedes is different from the others because she wants to be like the rich, the price tags meant nothing to her or what they represented about America. All she wants is to come back with her birthday money to buy herself a new toy. Miss Moore on the other hand is a college-educated woman who came to live in a poor neighborhood of New York. She took the children to the FAO store to expose them to various issues and way of life. She is teaching the children about the larger community and the problems that African Americans and poor people face in the world. When going to the FAO store she challenged the children to think about what they saw like the prices on the toys and to question the status quo. She shows the children that wealth and race are linked, and that white people and African American people are different. She discusses with the students how much things cost, what their parents earn and the unequal division of wealth. Both characters understand what things cost and how people are treated unequal. Mercedes knows that she wants to live the rich life, to be like the white people and Miss Moore is an educated woman that knows what this other life consists of. Miss Moore is encouraging the children to question the inequality in the world around them.
Silvia and Mercedes are strong contrasts in Toni Cade Bambara’s short story “The Lesson.” They are children in the temporary care of Miss Moore, a college-educated black woman with proper speech who desires to impart a lesson on the injustices of the economic system by taking them and four other children to FAO Schwartz, which is an expensive toy store. Silvia hates Miss Moore since she forces her into these lessons instead of enjoying her summer vacation. In contrast, Mercedes doesn’t seem to be very bothered by these lessons and seems to enjoy the outing. When they arrive at the toy store, they see all sorts of expensive toys in the window, from a 35 dollar clown to a 1,195 dollar sailboat. Silvia’s reaction to what she sees ranges from disbelief to disgust at the prices. It is all very alien to her upbringing since she is used to being poor, and she wondered what kind of people could afford to spend that much on toys. Even the least expensive item would be far beyond what is expected and could buy many things like bunk beds and a visit to family in the country along with the money for rent and some change for piano fees. She also feels jealousy and anger when she sees her friend Sugar run her fingers along with the very expensive sailboat, although she doesn’t know who to direct these feelings. When Miss Moore asks everyone what they learned from the visit, Silvia is defiant and doesn’t say anything. She also tries to silence her friend Sugar when she says that it costs less to feed everyone in their group for a year than what it costs for the sailboat. In the end, despite her resistance to Miss Moore’s teachings, her emotions are disquieted by […]
The two characters from “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara would be Sugar and Sylvia. These two characters response to the experience they had at the FAO Schwarz store were very different. Sugar’s first response at the FAO toy store was whether or not stealing was a viable option at the location. But before long she came to a realization that the price tags set up in the store for a toy was able to feed an entire family of 6-7 for a year, and this struck her hard as not everyone had the opportunity to get a cut out of the promised “equal opportunity” that democracy has offered. Sylvia on the other hand, was still hung up on the idea of the four dollars she was able to get and still didn’t seem to pick up the unfairness of society and was content with what she had in her little town.
The Lesson, by Toni Cade Bambara, depicts a scene of a group of kids from Harlem who are taken to f F.A.O Schwarz by Miss Moore, an educated woman who teaches kids in Harlem. Sylvia is a rebellious girl who has resentment for Miss Moore. Sylvia also seems to know more about inequality than the rest of the group. When they arrived at the toyshop, Sylvia is shocked at how expensive the toys are. Sylvia talks about how there are better ways to spend money and she cannot justify spending the amount of money on toys. Immediately after entering the toy store, she hesitates to enter because she feels out of place. By the way Mercedes comments on the toys, it is clear that she comes from a wealthier family. She also mentioned how she has a desk, something the other kids in the group don’t have, and how she is much more comfortable with the prices at the shop. Whenever Mercedes talked about her family’s money, she would be mocked by the kids in the group. Sylvia comes from a lower class family while Mercedes comes from an upper family, and they both have opposing views on the price tags.
In the article “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara, There are two characters that have different personalities and experiences when it comes to the F.O.A store. One character is Mercedes and the other is Sylvia. These two characters have both visited the F.A.O schwarz store and different ideas on how it was. The F.O.A is an expensive store that sell high priced toys. Sylvia was close to the poverty bracket and only one was surprised that there are toys that are this expensive. Sylvia was thinking about the toys and how one toy clown was $35 and she was saying that she can do so much with that for her family like visit her grand daddy Nelson in the country. But with Mercedes she couldn’t wait to get into the store and come back to buy something with her birthday money. These 2 characters have different morals because Sylvia would want to use the money for her family when Mercedes would just want to buy toys. Mercedes was interested and asked the employees of the shop questions about the toys. As you can tell Mercedes has more money than Sylvia or Mercedes is just not responsible with money.
Sylvia was the child who had the strongest notion of money from the fact that when they were on the taxi, only she was “trying to figure out how to spend this money” that Miss Moore gave her as taxi fare. She wanted to save that money as much as possible even though her idea was not legitimate. Obviously, after they left the toy store, she was also the one who got the most angry about money being distributed to people so unfairly. It is unacceptable for her the first time in Miss Moore’s class learning a meaningful life lesson by knowing the distance between rich and poor. From $300 microscope to $1195 hand-crafted sailboat, she gradually realized she was actually at the very bottom of social economic hierarchy, to the extent where she started to doubt whether the toy store was real to them. When they finally grouped near the mailbox, unlike Sugar speaking out of the truth, she decided to carry out a more practical way to eliminate this inequality. Mercedes, on the other hand, seemingly was the only one who learned the least from the trip. To her, it was common to visit toy stores such as FAO Schwarz. Different from other kids, she was not scared away by the outrageous toy price. Instead, the only thing she cared about was whether she liked that sailboat or not because “My father’d buy it for me if I wanted it.” The action of buying a luxury toy can be done in the moment to ask parents, which all other kids can never imagine in their childhood. The meaning of this trip for her was nothing more than knowing another toy shore where she can pick up one toy on her next birthday. However, I am curious about what […]
I think Sugar’s reaction to being in the Toy Store was very interesting. She understood why Miss Moore brought them there, to show them the difference between their lives, and the people who could spend money like that on these luxury toys for their children. And then .Q.T., who seems to probably be the youngest out of the group, has this innocence about him. He seems excited about the toy boat, and asks if it’s for children to play with. Not really seeming to catch on to the price until the older kids start talking about it.
These two characters Sylvia and Sugar from “The Lesson” stood out the most to me because of their differences. When Miss Moore asked the kids what did they learn today, both of their attitudes were different after the visit to the FAO Schwarz toy store. Sugar actually learned something like equality, when she says ” equal chance to pursue happiness means an equal crack at the dough” (6). Sugar for me is saying that there’s no equality, that the system is broken and needs fixing to become a fair system, and Sylvia didn’t nor did she want to learn and for that Sylvia is the government for me, they hear people like Sugar and find it annoying, heard it and won’t make a change. This was just a toy store visit but you can tell that Miss Moore was trying to teach the kids more about how money is being spent when it could feed families and Sugar was one of the kids that learned and a realization of rich versus poor.
In the article “the lesson” is teaching these kids a lifelong lesson if they want to do better for themselves in the future. Ms.Moore comes into these kids’ lives and tries to show them to make a difference in the future if you want to live a life like this you have to work for it. Sylvia is one of the characters in the story, she feels some type of way when Ms. Moore brings them into the Fao Schwartz store because she feels like it is way out of what they can afford or league as I should say. At the end of the story, Sylvia slowly starts to see why Ms. Moore brought them into the store she realizes that she has a choice the choices were either she can stay be unsatisfied with what ms more did for them or she can do something to make a change in the future so they won’t have to keep living the way they are living. Sugar is another young lady from the story she learns from Ms.Moore right away unlike Sylvia, Sugar basically learned that they can also be successful and experience happiness just like these people in any way.
“The Lesson” consists of a story of when a group of youngsters is brought to an expensive toy store by Miss Moore in an attempt to start them thinking about the inequalities of the world. Sylvia, the young narrator, responds to Miss Moore’s lesson with derision. She is a stubborn one, who is angered by both the audacity of this woman, to bring them to a store so clearly out of their league, and by her own response to it. One can clearly see that the lesson that Miss Moore was trying to instill was right at her fingertips, with how she said that the price of that sailboat “pisses [her] off,” and how she didn’t dare to touch it. By the end of the trip, she is upset at how she’s beginning to realize the lesson that Miss Moore was trying to teach, with how resistant she was in the beginning and how much she dislikes Miss Moore. Sugar initially was a cohesive unit with Sylvia. The majority of her mentions in the story up until the very end are always with Sylvia saying “me and Sugar,” as if they were two peas in a pod. When Sylvia hesitates to open the door to the store, she steps aside for Sugar to do it, but Sugar hesitates as well. When looking at the sailboat, Sylvia is angered by the opulence, and the fact that Sugar is able to touch it when she can’t. However, at the end it takes a competitive note after Sugar betrays Sylvia in a sense by “pushing [her] off her feet like she never done before” and replying to Miss Moore’s question by telling her what she wanted to hear. Sugar seems to reject Miss Moore’s teachings to pander to upset Sylvia, though.
Miss Moore takes the children to the F.A.O. Schwarz toy store in Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Lesson.” This was a high-end toy store, and she was curious to see how the kids felt about it. Sylvia and Mercedes are the two characters I’m going to compare in this narrative, which takes place in Harlem, New York. Mercedes differs from the other characters in that she appears to be mature than the other children in the narrative. Mercedes appears to have the financial means to purchase such pricey items, and she even claims that her parents would buy her anything if she asked for it. Mercedes also seems to have more comprehension than the other kids due to her social status even though she still lives in a poor neighborhood. Meanwhile, Sylvia recognizes and is irritated that individuals can buy these toys for the sheer joy of them, but her parents can do several things for the same cash. Miss More had given them a crucial lesson about social status and where they were in society in comparison to people who could buy those expensive toys, but Sylvia refused to accept it. This reading also emphasizes that miss Moore is attempting to persuade the kids too take action that will have a positive impact on society. This would necessitate they’re standing out and speaking up, to be unique.
