The Taxi Fare Symbol Analysis

The taxi fare that Mrs. Moore gives Sylvia represents Sylvia’s shift from anger at Miss Moore to anger at injustice. Before Miss Moore takes Sylvia and the other neighborhood children on a field trip to the toy store FAO Schwarz, she gives Sylvia a five-dollar bill for her taxi fare and tells her to calculate a tip for the taxi driver. After spending some time trying and failing to calculate the tip, Sylvia decides not to tip the driver, and keeps the leftover money after the fare. Over the course of the story, Sylvia’s relationship to this small amount of money represents the changing dynamics between Sylvia and Miss Moore’s lessons.

In her initial gift of the money to Sylvia, Miss Moore makes the money a math lesson, which makes Sylvia angry because she finds Miss Moore’s lessons boring and patronizing. By giving up on calculating the tip, Sylvia rejects Miss Moore’s attempts to teach her and feels that she has gotten one over on Miss Moore. The money thus represents Sylvia’s anger, resistance, and independence at this point, as well as Miss Moore’s inability to get through to her.

By the end of the story, though, Sylvia’s attitude toward the money shifts. On the way home from FAO Schwarz, Sylvia gets angry about the wealth inequality she became aware of at the store. Then, Sugar voices what Sylvia was privately thinking—that people in the U.S. don’t have equal opportunities to earn money—before suggesting that they go to buy ice cream with the leftover four dollars from the taxi fare. But Sylvia brushes her off, and she thinks to herself that “ain’t nobody gonna beat me at nuthin.” Sylvia’s decision to keep the money and her resolution to succeed are connected: now, she sees money as a valuable resource she can use to advance in life, not as a petty way to get back at Miss Moore. The taxi fare thus represents her shift from resenting Miss Moore to understanding what Miss Moore was trying to teach them and directing her anger toward economic inequality instead.