Faith In A Lesson Before Dying
Faith has always been a lantern in the darkness for those in need In A Lesson before dying by Ernest Gaines the general theme of faith is heavily prevalent. As times seem dark and hopeless the faithful latch onto their faith. To have hope means to believe that something great awaits them in the future. Some without those having faith struggle to find peace with themselves. Grant is a prime example amongst this struggle for hope and change. The general idea of faith is prevalent throughout the book, intensifying throughout the end of the story, becoming a pivotal plot subject of the book.
Many characters in the book possess faith, which affects them in numerous ways. A prime example of a religious character would ve Tante Lou.. Tante Lou is Grant’s spiritual aunt who influences not only the community, but her nephew Grant, in addition. She posses the strength and positive outlook on life that her Nephew doesn’t have Grant remarks about how he’s inherently worse than those who have never had faith when Grant claims“Backsliders were usually worse than those who had never been converted. At least that is what people like him tried to make you believe..” (Gaines 82). Throughout the book, Tante Lou tries to influence Grant, because she does not approve of Grant’s lack of faith. Her faith agitates her
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spirit, as she is moved by her strong belief in the Bible. Other Characters, not including grant lack faith. The professor is the shining example of lack of faith within the book. In a way, the Professor’s lack of faith influences Grant’s. His bitter resentment towards faith influenced Grant from an early age.
His viewpoint on religion starts to become more positive and accepting when he approaches his death. For example, he mentions god when he is near death and Grant questions this "God?" I said. Because I had never heard him say God before. Because when we had said our Bible verses for him, he seemed to have hated the very words we spoke.” (Gaines 52). This did not deter grant from keeping his resentment towards the white man's faith. Grant seemed to view Matthew as a role model, even becoming his replacement, further solidifying his lack of faith like the
professors. Grant's religious views are complex and change throughout the book. Grants start of with his already negative perception of the bible, then is forced to teach it in his classroom. Grant remarks "My classroom was a church" (Gaines 29). as he regrets having to teach spiritual teachings. Grant values the educational teachings far more than he does the religious teachings due to the fact he believes that religion in of itself is a sham. He believes that the sole purpose of religion is to get the blacks to accept their suffering and inferior position in society. His resentment lingers until the end of the novel, where he realizes religion can be a positive way to push one's self forward through life. His experiences with Ambroise and Jefferson teach him that his resentment towards the white man's faith was unjust in a way. Overall, faith was one of the main focuses of the book. Character’s faith affects each character in it’s own way. Faith showed to be a personal outlook on life in addition to the actual belief in the afterlife. Grant obserbves how faith has affected his world and revolves his basis of faith upon his experiences.The general belief of hope brings those in need hope and peace. Many white people used faith as a weapon, which led many blacks to have a loss of faith.
According to his biography, Ernest J. Gaines grew up in Oscar, Louisiana on a plantation in the 1930s. He worked picking potatoes for 50 cents a day, and in turn used his experiences to write six books, including A Lesson Before Dying. While the novel is fictional, it is based on the hardships faced by blacks in a post Civil War South, under Jim Crow and 'de jure' segregation. In A Lesson Before Dying, the main story line is a sad tale in which a young black man named Jefferson, is wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins, a teacher, is persuaded by Jefferson's grandmother Miss Emma to help Jefferson become a man before his execution. The struggle for Grant to get Jefferson to cooperate, and Grant's own internal development are the main plot-points; however, the background commentary on systems of racism is the main theme.
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 ...
Grant Wiggins from A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines and Dee Johnson from Everyday Use by Alice Walker are two similar individuals who both steer away from their families’ traditional way of life, but are different in some aspects. Both characters are unique due to their personality, their education, and their appearance. Dee is a college student in rural Georgia who comes back to visit her mother and sister with her new boyfriend. Dee contradicts herself in trying to reclaim her heritage, but actually steers away from it. Grant is a plantation teacher who is recruited by Ms. Emma to help Jefferson die like a man. He feels that cannot help his family with their present issue because he is not a man himself, therefore he tries to detach himself from the problem.
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 author of the article “A Call to Service in Ernest Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying” is Beatrice McKinsey. In McKinsey’s introduction, she stated her thesis statement: “whatever one’s social class, race, or education maybe, we have a purpose or a call to service. Ernest Gaines uses the main characters, Grant and Jefferson, to demonstrate how men can achieve manliness through service” (McKinsey 77). By stating this thesis statement, McKinsey shows her audience that she will be discussing the main characters, as well as their journey to becoming manly. Overall, this is seen as the purpose for her article.
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.
A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest J. Gaines, is a wonderfully-written novel about a man named Grant, and a tragic part of his life that changes him forever. This book revolves around the lives of Miss Emma, Tante Lou, Vivian, Grant, and a man named Jefferson. In the beginning of this book, Jefferson is thrown into jail for a crime he didn’t commit, and is sentenced to death. Jefferson’s attorney drilled it into Jefferson’s mind that he was a hog. His godmother, Miss Emma, wants Jefferson to become a man before he dies, and with the help of her friend, who just so happens to be Grant’s aunt, she picks a teacher who she thinks can help. Grant, with the support of his girlfriend Vivian, and the
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.
Grant and Jefferson are on a journey. Though they have vastly different educational backgrounds, their commonality of being black men who have lost hope brings them together in the search for the meaning of their lives. In the 1940’s small Cajun town of Bayonne, Louisiana, blacks may have legally been emancipated, but they were still enslaved by the antebellum myth of the place of black people in society. Customs established during the years of slavery negated the laws meant to give black people equal rights and the chains of tradition prevailed leaving both Grant and Jefferson trapped in mental slavery in their communities.
For as long as humans have existed, they have turned to beings above them and around them for guidance. The Egyptians, the Romans, and the Greeks all had intricate mythology surrounding the way the world works. Faith is a prominent theme in A Lesson Before Dying, a book by Ernest J. Gaines. In the story, Jefferson was a young black man who was sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit. Grant was a man who got out of the town he grew up in and got a higher education before moving back. At Jefferson's godmother's request, he helped Jefferson overcome the objectification and stigma he faced. Over the course of the book, Grant's faith in change, children, and Jefferson evolved and helped him understand and overcome problems in his life.
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.
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.
Over the years education has been one of the challenges in the African American Community, in the novel A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines time period focused on education; which was very involved in work and labor instead of education. Learning in the south due to segregation became terrible for African Americans to afford education however the north in urban communities also experience the lack of education. Why does the south have little to no education more than the north in black communities? Education in the south has been inferior to the north due to the lack of funds, discrimination and social differences which is shown in graduation rates.
Life is short and it is up to you to make the most out of it. The most important lesson that everyone should follow and apply to everyday life is “never give up”. In the novel, “A Lesson Before Dying” by Ernest J. Gaines, the important lesson can be shown in the characters Jefferson, Miss Emma and Grant Wiggins.