A Lesson Before Dying is set in rural Louisiana in the 1940’s. The setting is ripe for the racism displayed in the novel. Ernest J. Gaines weaves an intricate web of human connections, using the character growth of Grant Wiggins and Jefferson to subtly expose the effect people have on one another (Poston A1). Each and every character along the way shows some inkling of being a racist. However, Paul is an exception. He treats everyone as if he or she is equal to him whether the person is black or white. In A Lesson Before Dying, author Ernest J. Gaines displays the different levels of racism during the 1940’s through his use of characterization.
The author, Ernest Gaines, and the main character, Grant Wiggins, have much in common. Both were raised on a plantation in rural Louisiana. Grant and Gaines are both continue their education outside of the plantation. “The education to be gained in the California school system was better than that of the local plantation” (Napierkowski AB1). Napierkowski’s quote can be applied to both Grant and Gaines. Even though Grant is fiction, they continue their education in the state of California, and they come back home to Louisiana. Grant was heavily influenced by the women in his life in the novel. Jeffry Folks states, “The women that surround Grant in A Lesson Before Dying are all catalysts for his eventual change away from bitterness and doubts. They can be said to be the real force in the novel” (Folks B1). Folks also believes the role of women in A Lesson Before Dying is quite significant as they are the foundations of community and family. Folks is simply stating that Grant was pushed to succeed. In comparison, Ernest Gaines was pushed by his parents to further his educati...
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...ecution of Jefferson” (Folks B2). Jeffry Folks agrees that the women in Grant’s life were cause of his change. “Throughout his growing friendship with Jefferson as brought about by these two women, Grant grows into a true man and is finally able to move forward with his life” (Vancil B2). Grant changes to a completely different man by the end of the novel; he becomes a man. He knows his purpose for teaching the kids on the plantation because of his interaction with Jefferson. Because of the racism in the novel, everything falls into place perfectly. “The story Gaines tells is enormously moving. The author, a native of South Louisiana, unerringly evokes the place and time which he writes. Some passages are redolent with the aura of a memoir” (Swindel CLC 174). Swindel agrees that everything falls into place perfectly to make the novel as moving as it is.
In Ernest J. Gaines novel A Lesson Before Dying, a young African-American man named Jefferson is caught in the middle of a liquor shootout, and, as the only survivor, is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. During Jefferson’s trial, the defense attorney had called him an uneducated hog as an effort to have him released, but the jury ignored this and sentenced him to death by electrocution anyways. Appalled by this, Jefferson’s godmother, Miss Emma, asks the sheriff if visitations by her and the local school teacher, Grant Wiggins, would be possible to help Jefferson become a man before he dies. The sheriff agrees, and Miss Emma and Mr. Wiggins begin visiting Jefferson in his jail cell. Throughout the book, Jefferson has two seemingly opposite choices in front of him; become a man, and make his godmother and other relatives proud by dying with dignity, or, remain in the state of a hog with the mentality that nothing matters because he will die regardless of his actions. The choices Jefferson is faced with, and the choice he makes, highlights the book’s idea of having dignity ...
The narrator Sylvia and the children in her impoverished neighborhood are prisoners in a dark cave, which is the society that encompasses ignorance and puppet-handlers. “The Lesson” begins with Sylvia as she talks condescendingly about her neighborhood of Harlem, New York: “Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and Sugar were the only ones just right, this lady moved on our block with nappy hair and proper speech and no makeup. Quite naturally we laughed at her… And we kinda ha...
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines takes place in Louisiana in the 1940’s. When a young African American man named Jefferson is unfairly sentenced to death, school teacher Grant Wiggins is sent to try to make Jefferson a man before he dies. Throughout the novel, racial injustice is shown in both Jefferson and Grant’s lives in the way other people view them.
Ernest Gaines was born during the middle of the Great Depression on January 15, 1933. He was the oldest of twelve children. At the age of nine Gaines worked as an errand boy on the River Lake Plantation, the same plantation his book A Lesson Before Dying was set in. Gaines was raised by his Aunt Augusteen Jefferson, much like Grant, the protagonist in the novel, was raised by his Aunt Tante Lou. At the age of fifteen Gaines rejoined his immediate family in Vallejo, California because there were no high schools for him to attend in Louisiana. Gaines also wanted to enter a public library which was illegal for people of color to use. At this time in U.S. History, books about colored people were scarce and so Gaines decided to try and write his own novel. The desire to write led him to San Francisco State and Stanford University where he took creative writing courses. His first book, Catherine Carmier, was published in 1964. He finished his most famous novel, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, in 1971. The success of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman prompted Gaines to write more about the black communities of southern Louisiana. The most successful book dealing with the colored people of southern Louisiana, A Lesson Before Dying, was penned in 1993 (“About Ernest Gaines” 1).
“The Lesson” and “Horatio Alger” illustrate that success is not as easy as the myth claims it to be, but rather challenging. Dalton believes that race is such a key factor that it is affecting the system because it is looked down upon. It is dangerous because some people do not like the fact that they have opportunities. “Horatio Alger”, for example, shows that the path of success is easy for anyone to grasp and fails to unveil the real struggles that is being encountered which Dalton is trying to state because, he says, “Black folk certainly know what it is like to be favored, disfavored, scrutinized, and ignored all on the basis of our race. Sometimes we are judged on a different scale altogether” (273). Dalton is trying to state that black people know what it’s like to be judged and because of this it creates a road block because African Americans believe that they need to be treated differently and they cannot be as great as us. In addition, race has become a huge problem that people tend to cause huge tensions and the way “Horatio Alger’s” essay states that everyone is equal would not be true. On the other hand, Sylvia seems to be under the paradox that Dalton has stated about race. Sylvia throughout the story goes on a field trip to a toy store where she sees items that cost a lot of money from the glass window, but when she enters the store an
In A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines, Grant Wiggins is asked to turn Jefferson, a young man on death row, into an honorable man before his execution. Grant faces many difficulties when Jefferson is unresponsive and refuses to comply with Grant and Aunt Emma’s request. Throughout the story, Grant struggles to find motivation to keep working with Jefferson as he faces the difficulty of racism and prejudice. The author of the novel, Ernest J. Gaines, uses characterization to prove the theme that a lack of compassion in individuals can prevent people from uniting to form a better society, because they do not try to understand one another. In the beginning of the novel, Miss Emma and Tante Lou are threatening Grant into going to visit Mr.
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others.”-MLK Jr. In the book A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines explores the relationship between a student and a teacher in Bayonne, Louisiana, in the 1940s, and how their actions affect the society they are living in. Jefferson, a young black man, is accused of a murder, and is sentenced to death because of his race. Miss Emma, Jefferson’s godmother, wants Grant Wiggins, an educated black teacher to “make him a man” before Jefferson dies. Even though Grant was reluctant that it would amount to anything, but he gave his word that he would try, and soon after a couple of visits to the jail, Grant starts to develop a bond with Jefferson. As the book progresses, Jefferson learns that you need to take responsibility for your own actions, you should always be humble, one should never submit their dignity no matter the circumstances, and always remember that even heroes are not perfect.
African-American life in pre-Civil War America and life in pre-African-American Civil Rights Movement have many comparisons and also many differences. Some comparisons are the ideas of racism and segregation and some of the differences include the education during these two times and freedoms. These comparisons and differences are related to the novels Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass which is written by himself and A Lesson Before Dying written by Ernest Gaines. These two texts will compare and contrast how life was being an African American during these different periods of time.
Though Grant may have had some advantages compared with Jefferson, his position in life was not significantly better than Jefferson’s. Grant knows that if he had been the black man sitting in the courtroom, he too would have been convicted. In his powerful opening to the novel, Grant says, "I was not there yet I was there...
Conflicts are the backbone of any novel, without conflict stories would not be nearly as interesting! Conflicts can be caused by many things, in this novel the main problem is racism. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines is a novel based off of many internal conflicts between the characters, causing the characters to make different decisions and actions; this is important because the story is circled around racism causing many conflicts.
After he went and obtained a college degree, Grant Wiggins goes back to live with his grandmother. Being that he is a very educated person, Grant was elected by his grandmother to try and get Jefferson to realize that he was a man and not an animal like the white people had led him to believe. Throughout the entire novel, Grant is battling this idea in his head because he doesn’t feel that even he knows what it is to be a man. He doesn’t believe that he is the right person to talk to Jefferson. But by the end of the novel, he figures out what it is to be a man.
In the novel A Lesson Before Dying, Grant and Jefferson are black men in the era of a racist society; but they have struggles with a greater dilemma, obligation and commitment. They have obligations to their families and to the town they are part of. They lived in a town were everybody knew everybody else and took care of each other. "Living and teaching on a plantation, you got to know the occupants of every house, and you knew who was home and who was not.... I could look at the smoke rising from each chimney or I could look at the rusted tin roof of each house, and I could tell the lives that went on in each one of them." [pp. 37-38] Just by Grant’s words you can tell that that is a community that is very devoted to each other.
Real-life heroes these days are firemen, police officers, emergency room medics. However, there are many stories of everyday people who end up hailed as heroes. In the novel A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines, the main characters do not follow any of the typical ‘hero’ professions. In a small American community, Jefferson, a young black man, has just been sentenced to death for a crime he never committed by an all-white jury. His former schoolteacher Grant Wiggins is forced to visit him by his aunt Tante Lou, who hopes that Grant can teach Jefferson some dignity before he faces the electric chair. Through the actions of Jefferson and Grant we can determine whether or not they are heroes to the African-American community which, after years of suppression and apartheid, is so in need of strong idols to look up to.
One way to distinguish a person from the billions of other people in the world is by looking into their ethnicity. Ethnicity may be simplified as just a person’s origin, but arguments have been made that there is more to the world. Joane Nagel, author of “Constructing Ethnicity”, writes about what makes up the word ethnicity along with its uses in social and political spectrums. Nicholosa Mohr also writes about the different perspective of ethnicity and the way people embrace them in her writing “The English Lesson”. From reading both texts, it is possible to make the argument that Mohr’s text supports Nagel’s ideas on the fluidity and situational nature of ethnic identity in the United States. Mohr finds themes from different scenarios in the classroom that can perhaps correspond to many of Nagel’s ideas and theories about ethnicity.
In the Movie A Lesson Before Dying women can be seen as very influential. Everyone's choices in the movie are influenced by women even if they like it or not. Emma can be seen using the teacher as a way to help her grandson. Tante Lou play with his mind along with his girlfriend by influencing him no matter what to keep going . All of these women are practically making the decisions for him. He know that he has his own say it what is done, but somehow he cannot bring himself to choose.