The Lesson

Fiction | Short Story | YA | Published in 1972

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Character Analysis

The Narrator

The narrator of this story is, by her own admission, brash and nervy. Speaking of her reluctance to enter the Fifth Avenue toy store—which recalls to her how intimidated she was by a long-ago Catholic church service—she says of herself, “I have never been shy about doing nothing or going nowhere” (93). She is, however, made shy by silence and formality, as these qualities are alien to her nature and her upbringing. This is what she confronts at the toy store and also in the person of Miss Moore.

Beneath her brashness, the narrator is sensitive and astute. This is why she is deeply troubled by the outing to the toy store, which the other children on the trip—including her cousin and best friend Sugar—seem to more or less shrug off. It is significant that at the story’s end, the narrator does not follow Sugar to their usual neighborhood store to buy candy with her stolen money. While this is partly because the narrator is angry with Sugar for what she perceives to be her minor treachery, it is perhaps also because the outing to the toy store has made her weary of the whole trap of consumerism and instant gratification. In holding on to her stolen $4, the narrator maintains a provisional independence.

Sugar

Sugar is the narrator’s best friend and all-around partner in crime. The first sentence of this story, however, implies that their closeness will not last forever: “Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and Sugar were the only ones just right […]” (87). While this sort of tight conspiratorial bond is typically adolescent, and thus unlikely to last forever anyway, the suggestion is also that the events of this story may have created an initial distance between the two girls.

While we do not have access to Sugar’s thoughts in the way that we do the narrator’s, Sugar comes across as the more conventional and less reflective of the two girls. Their bond seems to be cemented on a mutual love of gossip, mischief and daring, as well as on their shared family background; for Sugar is the narrator’s cousin, as well as her best friend. However, this is not enough to sustain the narrator after the outing to the toy store. Sugar’s obedient response to Miss Moore’s queries about the outing makes the narrator understand that Sugar’s rebelliousness only goes so far. While Sugar will happily buy candy with stolen money, she will not, as the narrator does, question the entire imperative to spend money on toys and candy in the first place.

Miss Moore

Miss Moore is a well-meaning but tone-deaf character. Although she appoints herself as the teacher and guardian of the neighborhood children, she does not really know how to reach them. Nor is she even clear about what lesson she intends to impart to them in the first place. She knows only that she wishes to get some sort of reaction out of them, by taking them to a toy store where they cannot afford to buy any toys. However, she expects their anger and sense of unfairness to be reasoned and adult, rather than the confused and flailing anger of children. She expects them to get angry at an abstract notion of social injustice, rather than to get angry at her herself, for bringing them to this grand and unfriendly place.

Miss Moore stands out in her neighborhood, inviting both mockery and a grudging respect. As an unmarried childless woman, an intellectual and a social justice agitator, she is in all ways unconventional, even while also being proper. Her very propriety causes her to stand out and makes the narrator wary of her. In the story’s first paragraph, the narrator describes Miss Moore variously as “this lady […] with nappy hair and proper speech and no makeup” and as being “black as hell, cept for her feet, which were fish-white and spooky” (87). Miss Moore to the narrator is an unnerving combination of black self-acceptance and aspirational whiteness, and she compares her presence in the neighborhood to that of “the winos who cluttered up our parks and pissed on our handball walls […] so you couldn’t halfway play hide-and-seek without a goddamn gas mask” (87). As with the stink of the winos’ urine, there is something about Miss Moore’s presence that constricts the narrator and makes it hard for her to breathe.