Poverty In The Lesson By Toni Cade Bambara

What does the negative effects of poverty do to a child’s life chances? In The Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara and Everyday Use by Alice Walker, the distinction of poverty is addressed differently between the main characters, but it is analogous to each character’s success in life because of the inability to withstand some aspect of poverty. Poverty is the state of being extremely poor but one can have great wealth and be emotionally impoverished. The characters in the short stories have the ability to avoid their state of emotional and cultural poverty. Each character experiences their own form of poverty and cope with it in different ways. In The Lesson, the main character Sylvia is a young girl who has not realized her full potential. She …show more content…
The narrator, Mama, has two daughters: Dee and Maggie. Mama, Dee, and Maggie are considered a poor family. When the two girls were young, a fire consumed their family home. Maggie, as well as Mama, seem to pick up the pieces of their family and continue on whereas Maggie’s older sister, Dee, reacts to the fire with satisfaction. This shows the reader that Dee has never been content with her life in poverty with her mother and sister. Mama reveals that Dee was given more than her sister their entire life in order for Mama to keep up with Dee’s unrealistic needs considering their situation. Poverty acts as a conflict in itself in the story and is also a dividing factor between Dee, Maggie, and Mama. Mama and Maggie resolve their personal side of poverty by simply living with it. They make the best of what they have and live practically but do not necessarily strive for happiness. However, Dee resolves her personal side of poverty by moving out, going to college, and moving up. She values materials and uses them to reconcile for what she did not have as a young girl. On the contrary to what she believes, she lacks connection to her heritage though she tries to form of connection to her roots. Dee is impoverished in spirit and culture. By changing her name, she shows that she sees her ancestors simply as people who were subjugated by the white race. She doesn’t realize that while she is connecting to her African roots, she is pulling away from her family history and heritage. Maggie, on the other hand, understands her cultural background. She honors the sacrifices and strengths of her ancestors. The quilts the family dispute over are symbolic of their heritage and clashing beliefs. Dee shows that she has an impersonal relationship to the quilts by wanting to hang them in her fancy apartment. She believes that unlike her sister, she appreciates that they’re family heirlooms. This is contradicting to her new