20 pages • 40 minutes read
Toni Cade BambaraA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
By taking the children to a fancy toy store, what lesson does Miss Moore intend to teach the children? How does she expect them to act on this lesson?
What lesson does the narrator actually learn? How is it different from the lesson that she is supposed to learn?
At the end of the story, the narrator gets a sort of revenge not only on Miss Moore but on her cousin Sugar as well. Why does the narrator trick Sugar in the way that she does?
The narrator says of Miss Moore that she is always “wait[ing] for somebody to say that poor people have to wake up and demand their share of the pie and don’t none of us know what kind of pie she talkin about in the first damn place” (94-95). What does the narrator mean by this? How does this quote show the difference between Miss Moore’s and the children’s way of communicating?
Why do the people in the neighborhood laugh at Miss Moore, and why do they go along with her demands? How is she different from the people around her?
The narrator is frightened to enter the toy store, comparing her fear to the fear that she felt upon going into a Catholic church on a dare. Why does she make this comparison?
Based on their different reactions to Miss Moore’s excursion, what are some differences between the narrator and Sugar as characters? How does their relationship change over the course of the story?
By Toni Cade Bambara