The Lesson quiz

Question 1. Which literary genres best describe “The Lesson”?

Gothic Horror & Suspense
Correct answer: Realistic Fiction & Coming-of-Age Story
Fantasy & Fable
Historical Fiction & Wartime Story
Science Fiction & Dystopian

Realistic Fiction & Coming-of-Age Story is exactly right. Ordinary kids take a real trip to a real store, and the narrator comes home seeing the world differently, even if she won't admit it.

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Question 2. At the start of the story, how do Sylvia and the other kids feel about Miss Moore?

They admire her college degree and compete to be her favorite pupil
Correct answer: They laugh at her and resent her, and they find her outings boring
They fear her, because she reports every bit of mischief to their parents
They pity her, since she is new in town and has no family of her own

Sylvia says Miss Moore “moved on our block with nappy hair and proper speech and no makeup,” and the kids laughed at her the way they laughed at the junk man and resented her the way they resented the winos. She is “The only woman on the block with no first name,” and her outings are, to Sylvia, nothing but boring. The parents go along mostly because they are too embarrassed to turn her down.

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Question 3. What does Miss Moore ask Sylvia to do in the cab, and what does Sylvia actually do?

Read the address to the driver, but she gives him the wrong street
Count the stops aloud, but she dozes off before they reach Fifth Avenue
Split the fare with Sugar, but she spends her half on candy at a light
Correct answer: Figure a 10 percent tip, but she gives the driver nothing and keeps it

Miss Moore hands Sylvia “a five-dollar bill and tells me to calculate 10 percent tip for the driver.” The meter reads “eighty-five cents,” and Sugar says to give him a dime, but Sylvia decides “he don’t need it bad as I do, so later for him.” The change stays in her pocket, and it comes back at the end of the story.

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Question 4. What does the cab meter read when the children arrive?

Correct answer: Eighty-five cents
Two dollars even
Four dollars and ten
Ninety-five cents

Sylvia reports that “the meter reads eighty-five cents.” Earlier, Junebug and Sugar had been laying bets on what the meter would say, while Sylvia was busy figuring out how to spend the money.

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Question 5. When Big Butt says he wants the microscope in the window, how does Miss Moore respond?

She tells him it is a toy for rich children and that he should forget it
She scolds him for pointing and moves the group along to the next window
Correct answer: She talks about tiny living things, then asks what the microscope costs
She promises it to whoever can save up the most money this summer

Miss Moore asks, “Like what, Ronald?” and then talks about the bacteria in a drop of water and the living things all around us that are invisible to the naked eye. Then she asks what it costs. The price tag says $300, and she asks how long it would take Big Butt and Junebug to save that much from their allowances. “Too long,” says Sylvia.

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Question 6. What does the talk about the $480 paperweight reveal about the children's lives?

Correct answer: Some of them have no desk at home, let alone a paperweight to put on it
Most of them already own paperweights that their parents bought for them
All of them think the paperweight is worth even more than its price tag
None of them have ever seen a piece of colored glass before this trip

Miss Moore explains that a paperweight keeps papers from scattering and making “your desk untidy,” and asks about their desks at home. Junebug answers, “I don’t even have a desk,” Big Butt adds that he doesn't get homework either, and Flyboy says he doesn't even have a home, a line Sylvia says he uses to win sympathy. Only Mercedes describes a desk, with rose-scented stationery from her godmother.

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Question 7. What does "Vernacular (Dialect)" mean in this story?

Formal, polished language that follows every rule in the grammar book
Lines of verse that rhyme and follow a steady, regular beat throughout
An outside voice that reports every character's hidden thoughts
Correct answer: The everyday speech of a particular community, written as it is spoken

Sylvia narrates in the Black English of her neighborhood, with lines like “she don’t never let up” and “ain’t nobody gonna beat me at nuthin.” Bambara writes the voice the way it sounds, which makes Sylvia funny, quick and proud. Her way of talking also sets her against Miss Moore, who came to the block with “proper speech.”

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Question 8. How does Sylvia react to the sailboat priced at one thousand one hundred ninety-five dollars?

She laughs and says she will ask her mother to buy it for her birthday
Correct answer: She is stunned and angry, and compares it to her own fifty-cent boat
She shrugs, since she assumes every toy on Fifth Avenue costs that much
She is pleased, sure that Miss Moore means to buy it for the whole group

The kids recite the tag together: “Handcrafted sailboat of fiberglass at one thousand one hundred ninety-five dollars.” Sylvia says “Unbelievable,” reads it again to be sure, and finds that the price makes her angry. Her own boat, made from a kit from Pop’s, a tube of glue and a ball of string, cost her “about fifty cents.” Later she rounds the price to $1,000, but the tag says $1,195.

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Question 9. Who first points out the $480 paperweight in the window?

Mercedes
Big Butt (Ronald)
Correct answer: Rosie Giraffe
Flyboy

“This here costs four hundred eighty dollars,” say Rosie Giraffe. Sylvia thinks it looks like a chunk of cracked glass with ink dripped into it, and Miss Moore explains that it is made of semi-precious stones fused together under tremendous pressure.

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Question 10. What happens when Sylvia and Sugar reach the entrance of the toy store?

A guard stops them at the door and asks them where their parents are
They race each other inside to see who can touch the sailboat first
They refuse to go in at all and wait on the sidewalk until the end
Correct answer: They hang back, feeling suddenly ashamed, until the others push in

Sylvia says, “I feel funny, shame,” and argues with herself that she has “as much right to go in as anybody.” Still she can't take hold of the door, and Sugar hangs back too. Mercedes walks in first, and the rest “tumble in like a glued-together jigsaw done all wrong.” Sylvia compares it to the time she and Sugar sneaked into the Catholic church on a dare and couldn't go through with their prank.

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Question 11. What does "Simile" mean in this story?

Correct answer: A comparison of two unlike things that uses the word like or as
A hint early in a story about something that will happen later on
A word that imitates the actual sound of the thing it describes
A reference to a famous person, place or event outside the story

Bambara compares the crowd of kids jammed in the doorway to a jigsaw puzzle forced together the wrong way: they don't fit, and they know it. Another simile follows in the store, where Miss Moore watches the kids the way Mama Drewery watches the sky and the slant of the bird formation, waiting for a sign.

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Question 12. On the train ride home, what does Sylvia do with the thought of the $35 clown?

She plans to sneak back and take it the next time they visit the store
She decides it was the best toy in the store and starts saving for it
Correct answer: She adds up what $35 could buy her family, like bunk beds or the rent
She wonders why anyone would build a toy that breaks the first time

Sylvia imagines her mother's reaction (“You wanna who that costs what?”) and then does the math. Thirty-five dollars could buy new bunk beds for Junior and Gretchen’s boy, take the whole household to visit Granddaddy Nelson in the country, or pay for the rent and the piano bill too. Then come the questions: “What kinda work they do and how they live and how come we ain’t in on it?”

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Question 13. What does Miss Moore mean when she says, “Where we are is who we are”?

People should stay in the neighborhood where they were born and raised
Correct answer: Circumstances shape people, but those circumstances can be changed
Where a person lives has nothing at all to do with who they become
Only people who travel far from home ever really learn anything

Sylvia reports the saying and its second half: “But it don’t necessarily have to be that way.” Miss Moore then waits for someone to say that poor people have to wake up and “demand their share of the pie.” Her point is that the children's neighborhood and poverty shape their lives, but that neither is fixed or deserved.

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Question 14. Where does Sugar suggest they spend the leftover four dollars first?

At the toy store, on the $35 clown
At Pop’s, on two new sailboat sets
At the grocer, on milk for home
Correct answer: At Hascombs, on half a chocolate layer

Sugar says, “We could go to Hascombs and get half a chocolate layer and then go to the Sunset and still have plenty money for potato chips and ice-cream sodas.” Sylvia answers only “Uh hunh.” The story never says what she does with the money.

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Question 15. What does Sugar say back at the mailbox that surprises Sylvia?

Correct answer: That a country where a toy costs more than food isn't much of a democracy
That she would like to go back to the store when she gets birthday money
That rich people must work much harder than anyone living on their block
That Miss Moore ruined a perfectly good swim day with a pointless trip

Sugar says, “I don’t think all of us here put together eat in a year what that sailboat costs,” and then, “Equal chance to pursue happiness means an equal crack at the dough, don’t it?” Miss Moore is thrilled. Sylvia, who has been standing on Sugar's foot to stop her, is disgusted with “Sugar’s treachery.” The birthday-money line belongs to Mercedes.

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Question 16. When Sylvia asks how much a real boat costs, how does Miss Moore answer, and what does it show about her teaching?

She gives the exact price, showing she had studied every fact beforehand
She refuses to answer, showing she is annoyed that Sylvia is talking
Correct answer: She tells Sylvia to find out and report back, so the kids work it out
She changes the subject, showing that she knows little about boats

Miss Moore says, “Why don’t you check that out,” and “report back to the group?” Sylvia grumbles that if you are going to mess up a perfectly good swim day, you could at least have some answers. But this is Miss Moore's method all day long: she asks what things cost, how long it would take to save, and “What do you think?” and then watches the kids “like she waitin for a sign.” She wants them to reach the conclusion on their own.

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Question 17. What does "Dynamic Character" mean in this story?

A character who stays exactly the same from the start to the finish
Correct answer: A character who goes through an important inner change over time
A minor character whose only job is to set off the main character
A character who is based closely on a real person from history

In the morning Sylvia mocks Miss Moore and plots to keep the cab money. By evening she has a headache “for thinkin so hard,” she feels that “somethin weird is goin on, I can feel it in my chest,” and she heads off alone to think the day through. She never says what she has learned, but she is not the same girl who left the mailbox.

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Question 18. What does the story's last line, “But ain’t nobody gonna beat me at nuthin,” most likely suggest?

Sylvia plans to catch Sugar and win the race to Hascombs after all
Sylvia has decided to give the four dollars back to Miss Moore
Sylvia will stop speaking to Sugar for siding with Miss Moore
Correct answer: Sylvia is resolved not to accept the unfairness she has just seen

Sugar runs ahead, and Sylvia lets her go, because she is heading “to the West End and then over to the Drive to think this day through.” Bambara never states what Sylvia learned or what she does with the money, and Sylvia walks away from Miss Moore's question “Anybody else learn anything today?” without answering. The final line implies that the lesson has landed and turned into determination: nobody is going to beat her, not Sugar and not the world that set those prices.

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Question 19. Which theme does Bambara develop most clearly in “The Lesson”?

Correct answer: Unequal wealth shapes lives, and seeing it clearly is the first step
Children should always respect their elders, even when bored by them
Money cannot buy happiness, so the poor are luckier than the rich
Saving an allowance is the surest way for a child to get ahead in life

Miss Moore asks, “Imagine for a minute what kind of society it is in which some people can spend on a toy what it would cost to feed a family of six or seven. What do you think?” The toy store makes the gap between rich and poor impossible to ignore, and the story is about the children, especially Sylvia, beginning to see it and to feel angry about it.

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Question 20. Which of these events actually happened in the story?

Sugar swipes her mama's lipstick before the trip.

Happened

Sylvia says Sugar swiped the lipstick, so they are ready, and the kids put it on each other in the cab.
Miss Moore takes the children to Fifth Avenue on a city bus.

Didn't happen

She hails two cabs, rides in one with half the group, and gives Sylvia the money for the other.
In the cab, Junebug lays bets on what the meter will read.

Happened

Junebug bets on the reading when Flyboy runs out of breath, and Sugar bets on what it will be when they arrive.
Mercedes refuses to go inside the toy store.

Didn't happen

Mercedes is the first one through the door, smoothing out her jumper and walking right down the aisle.
Flyboy says he lost his toy boat at Alley Pond Park when the string broke.

Happened

Flyboy says he took his boat to Alley Pond Park, the string broke, and he lost it.
Miss Moore buys each child a small toy before they leave the store.

Didn't happen

Nobody buys anything. Sylvia slouches around the store acting bored and says it's time to go.
Sylvia feels jealous when Sugar runs a finger over the whole sailboat.

Happened

Sylvia wants to hit her, or at least to punch somebody, and moments later she asks Miss Moore why she brought them there.
Rosie Giraffe says she wants to go back when she gets her birthday money.

Didn't happen

That is Mercedes, and the others shove her out of the group for saying it. Rosie Giraffe's answer is that white folks are crazy.
Sylvia stands on Sugar's foot to keep her from answering Miss Moore.

Happened

She does it twice. The second time, Sugar stops talking.
Sylvia answers Miss Moore's last question by telling everyone what she learned.

Didn't happen

When Miss Moore asks if anybody else learned anything, looking right at Sylvia, Sylvia walks away without a word.

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Questions and answers

Question 1. Which literary genres best describe “The Lesson”?

Question 2. At the start of the story, how do Sylvia and the other kids feel about Miss Moore?

Question 3. What does Miss Moore ask Sylvia to do in the cab, and what does Sylvia actually do?

Question 4. What does the cab meter read when the children arrive?

Question 5. When Big Butt says he wants the microscope in the window, how does Miss Moore respond?

Question 6. What does the talk about the $480 paperweight reveal about the children's lives?

Question 7. What does "Vernacular (Dialect)" mean in this story?

Question 8. How does Sylvia react to the sailboat priced at one thousand one hundred ninety-five dollars?

Question 9. Who first points out the $480 paperweight in the window?

Question 10. What happens when Sylvia and Sugar reach the entrance of the toy store?

Question 11. What does "Simile" mean in this story?

Question 12. On the train ride home, what does Sylvia do with the thought of the $35 clown?

Question 13. What does Miss Moore mean when she says, “Where we are is who we are”?

Question 14. Where does Sugar suggest they spend the leftover four dollars first?

Question 15. What does Sugar say back at the mailbox that surprises Sylvia?

Question 16. When Sylvia asks how much a real boat costs, how does Miss Moore answer, and what does it show about her teaching?

Question 17. What does "Dynamic Character" mean in this story?

Question 18. What does the story's last line, “But ain’t nobody gonna beat me at nuthin,” most likely suggest?

Question 19. Which theme does Bambara develop most clearly in “The Lesson”?

Question 20. Which of these events actually happened in the story?