A Marxist Reading Of The Lesson By Toni Cade Bambara

Camaraderie of the Riches: A Marxist Reading of “The Lesson” Published in 1972, Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Lesson” is a short story that follows a student, Sylvia, her classmates, and teacher in a costly toy shop, F.A.O Schwarz. Within the store, Sylvia’s class reacts in awe to the toys’ prices. By her reaction we learn about conspicuous consumption, commodification, and why people buy expensive items that aren’t much use to them. The reason: to impress others with an item’s sign-exchange value, regardless of its use value. To begin, in the toy shop Sylvia reacts puzzled to the exchange value of cracked glass at $480, “My eyes tell me it’s a chunk of glass cracked with something heavy… But for $480 it don’t make sense,” (paragraph 12). We can tell by her confusion she doesn’t believe that is a good use of money for something as silly and damaged as cracked glass. This leads us to wonder why someone would spend a lot of money on something you can just get at home. The answer: it’s sign-exchange value, which is the social status it conveys to the owner. You see, no one is actually buying the …show more content…
She asks, “Who’d pay all that when you can buy a sailboat set for a quarter at Pop’s, a tube of glue for a dime, and a ball of string for eight cents? It must have a motor and a whole lot else,” (paragraph 27). Well, the sailboat doesn’t actually have a motor. In fact, it likely has the same use value, what it can do, as the cheaper sailboat. However, due to one’s conspicuous consumption, buying costly goods in order to impress people with their wealth, do we see this sailboat being sold at this price. Despite Sylvia believing their has to be something special with this boat, there isn’t anything, besides its sign-exchange