s, then the whole thing put into an oven or something. But for $480 dollars it don’t make sense. “That’s a paperweight made of semi-precious stones fused together under ttemendous pressure,” she explains slowly, with her hands doing all the mining and the factory work.“So what’s a paperweight?” asks Rosie Giraffe.“To weigh paper down with, dumbbell,” says Flyboy, the wise man from the East.“Not exactly,” says Miss Moore, which is what she say when you warm or way off, too. “It’s to weigh paper down so it won’t scatter and make your desk untidy.””(Bambara 472)The last item the author comments on is a sailboat. “We all start reciting the pricetag like we’re in assembly. “Handcrafted sailboat made of fiberglass at one thousand one hundred ninety-five dollars.”“Unbelieveable, “ I hear myself say and am really stunned.” (Bambara 472) The prices of the previous two items stunned the children, but the sailboat really brought home the idea.At the end of the story is when Miss Moore’s motive was revealed. She did not want to bring the kids on a field trip. She was interested in giving them a drive to succeed by showing them that some people are very successful and can afford such things. She hopes that they will want to be one of those people instead of a person that, like so many others, are just content with what they have.Works CitedRoberts, Edgar V., Jacobs, Henry E. “Literature.” The Lesson. 470-475. Toni Cade Bambara. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. 2001...
