Rhetorical Analysis Of Bambara's The Lesson

Rhetorical Analysis of Jerome Cartwright’s
"Bambara's the Lesson” Jerome Cartwright’s feature article on Toni Cade Bambara’s “the Lesson” was published in 1989. This piece provides a scholarly secondary source for Bambara’s short story because it was featured in The Explicator, a quarterly journal of literary criticism published by Taylor & Francis, Inc. Their website describes the journal as “a must for college and university libraries and teachers of literature”. The purpose of this article is to show readers that although it seems apparent what Bambara wants her readers to glean from her story, Cartwright proposes might just be an underlying theme. His hope is that by examining the text he can prove that the conflict is not the differences between the rich and the poor; on the contrary, the conflict is the sometimes present resistance to learning even at the detriment of the student. Cartwright states, “the dramatic question that powers the story, that moves it forward, is whether Miss

However, Cartwright uses both the original text and Hargrove’s essay to make his readers side with him. Even to me, it seemed that Bambara alludes to a socio-economic argument even within the African Americans within the story; whereas, after reading Cartwright’s composition I had a change of mind which is why I chose it for analysis. For example, both works have social, historical, and cultural connotations making them ideal reads for people of all backgrounds, ages, and ethnicities. Jerome Cartwright provides us with the specific additional lessons Miss Moore is teaching the children in Harlem; for instance, brotherhood, everyday experience, and most importantly initiative. Furthermore, he includes so many good examples explaining his take on the most important conflict in the story, the one between Silvia and Miss Moore, which satisfies the ethos