Topic > Comparison of similar stories in The Lesson and Sonny's Blues

To start, the first difference I noticed between the stories was the age at which the characters matured and the person who taught them. Sylvia is taught a lesson when she is still very young, reading the text one can assume that Sylvia is between 10 and 13 years old. Sylvia was taught as a child by an adult. The lesson Miss Moore was trying to teach her was that getting an education is the key to changing your life and having a better future for yourself. On the other hand, in “Sonny's Blues” the narrator is an adult, and we can assume that he is around 30 years old because he has two children, a wife and is a school teacher. Unlike “The Lesson,” the narrator is taught a lesson as an adult, by someone who is younger than him. The lesson the narrator is taught is that all the struggles his brother has gone through he expresses through his own