A Lesson Before Dying Social Prejudice Analysis

Scouting out Prejudice

Halie Selassie said that “We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing our ultimate allegiance not to nations but to our fellow men within the human community.” Throughout literature, many novels impress upon the idea of overcoming racism to influence their reader. Harper Lee and Ernest Gaines utilize social systems and racist actions to explain how characters are effected by prejudice. In Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying, the actions taken towards Tom Robinson and Jefferson illustrate racial and social prejudices and have an impact on their self-worth.

The idea of racial and social prejudice is portrayed in To Kill A Mockingbird through the social system and the

The lawyer that was assigned to his case defamed him when he said, “Gentlemen of the jury… do you see a man sitting here? Look at the shape of this skull… do you see a modicum of intelligence?”(Gaines 7). They claim that because he is African American, he must be too stupid to commit the crime. Through this, he is exposed to the judgments that many hold against him. Degrading comments such as these stuck with him throughout his time in jail. He often referred to himself as a hog that did not deserve to live. Jefferson never would have felt this way if people had treated him with the respect that every human deserves. Another discriminatory man is Professor Antoine. He displays his prejudice when he says “Don’t be a damned fool. I am superior to you. I am superior to any man blacker than me” (Gaines 39). As a man of mixed race, he should understand what African Americans go through. However, he decides to make Jefferson feel worse in order to make himself feel better. This comment only adds to his extremely low self-worth. For both Jefferson and Robinson, it seems impossible to escape the continuous