Nobody Gonna Beat Me At Nothin
Toni Cade Bambara's short story, "The Lesson," incorporates a unique sense of style and tone to give a new depiction for the character Sylvia. The use of Sylvia’s dialect, her juvenility, and her pride gives Bambara’s voice more gametime throughout the story.
Vernacular used in “The Lesson” truly enhanced the view of Sylvia and where she comes from. Bambara’s use of informal and crude language gives the notion of the everyday life for these children. “And she was always planning these boring-ass things for us to do, us being my cousin, mostly, who lived on the block cause we all moved North the same time and to the same apartment then spread out gradual to breathe” (Bambara 1). It shows how un-swanky Sylvia is when compared to a person from the upper-class of society. The story’s naïve and childish elements, the author captures the way Sylvia’s community lives and thinks.
Being only a child, Sylvia bases her thoughts on what she observes. “And then she gets to the part about we all poor and live in the slums, which I don’t feature” (Bambara 2). Having the words, “we all poor and live in the slums”, grammatically incorrect gives the idea of how well-educated this young girl is and as well as how everyone around her converses. It proves that the area where she grew up and goes to school is not the most learned of places. African Americans have fought for their rights’ and freedom, and in this story, Miss Moore understood that. She wants to teach the children that there is more to life than the “slums” that they grew up in.
When Miss Moore spoke about how the children lived in the slums, it gave Sylvia a sudden feeling of being put-down. However, it demonstrates that Sylvia is proud of who she is, and of where she lives; that she is proud for being a young African American woman. Throughout the story, Sylvia had a sarcastic tone about everything, as if she did not care about what was going on. The...
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