Use Of Social Inequality In The Lesson By Toni Cade Bambara

Throughout mankind history, there has not been a period of time where there was not the division between rich and poor. However, this gap increases year after year. Consequently, the writer Toni Cade Bambara uses setting and characterization to address the social inequality in her story “The Lesson.” The author uses the poor black community of Harlem as setting to aim the economic inequality. The characters live in poverty, which is shown persistently in the story. For example, the narrator says that “we all poor and live in the slums” (Bambara 56). This quote is the first clue in order to know the conditions in which these people are living. Furthermore, when Miss Moore asks her students if they have a desk in their house, the answer is,

She is a different kind of girl, and she gets mad when she realizes the problem of the society. She is not a common girl because she does not behave femininely. Additionally, she really knows the slang of her community; in fact, she uses a great variety of words, such as “bitch”, “faggot”, and other vulgar words. Furthermore, the Sylvia says, “[A]in’t nobody gonna beat me at nuthin” (Bambara 60). She means that she will not let anyone to trample her, and she will fight for what she deserves. During the story, she gets mad because of the inequality. Also, when she knows the price of the boat, and her cousin touches it: “[I] sure want to punch somebody in the mouth” (Bambara 59). She is angry because of the differences in the social-economic level between people, and she just realizes it recently. In addition, the storyteller says that, “For some reason this pisses me off” (Bambara 57). It shows that she is really furious because she is not able to believe that someone would spend that amount of money in a toy instead of helping others or save it for a better purpose. Moreover, rendering the narrator, “That much money it should last forever…” (Bambara 58). In the social-economic environment in which Sylvia lives, the amount of 1000 dollars is seemed as an incredible high quantity of money that is