Analysis Of Ernest J. Gaines A Lesson Before Dying

A Lesson before Dying, the 1994 novel by Ernest J. Gaines, is the gripping and evocative story of a young man accused of a crime and sentenced to death by electrocution. In the fictional town of Bayonne, Louisiana, the narrator, Grant Wiggins, attends the trail of Jefferson, a twenty-one-year-old uneducated black field worker who is charged with the murder of a white storekeeper. Jefferson claims that two of his acquaintances, Brother and Bear, shot Alcee Grope, the storekeeper. Jefferson’s lawyer rest his argument on the idea that Jefferson lacks the intelligence to commit the murder and sentencing him to death would be like putting a “hog” (18) in the electric chair. In malice of the so called defense, the all-white jury finds Jefferson guilty.

A Lesson before Dying takes place eighty years after the abolition of slavery, but the African Americans in the novel still live as lower class citizens. Gaine’s use of descriptive words leads the reader to understanding the powerful message the novel is telling about race and justice and also gives the reader a look at a time in our history. As the reader digs into the novel, Gaine’s makes the reader feel super relieved to be living in the twenty-first century, even as it makes the reader furious and sad about how American life is like in the 1940’s. The black folks live, work on the plantation and are segregated from the white folks in the town in every aspects of their lives, from bathrooms to the movie theatres. Gaine’s use of description of the novel gets the reader to put down the book a few times due to becoming too furious at the injustice portrayed in the novel.