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"I was not there, yet I was there. No, I did not go to the trial, I did not hear the verdict, because I knew all the time what it would be..." So begins Grant Wiggins, the narrator of Ernest J. Gaines's powerful exploration of race, injustice, and resistance, A Lesson Before Dying. If young Jefferson, the accused, is confined by the law to an iron-barred cell, Grant Wiggins is no less a prisoner of social convention. University educated, Grant has returned to the tiny plantation town of his youth, where the only job available to him is teaching in the small plantation church school. More than 75 years after the close of the Civil War, antebellum attitudes still prevail: African Americans go to the kitchen door when visiting whites and the two races are rigidly separated by custom and by law. Grant, trapped in a career he doesn't enjoy, eaten up by resentment at his station in life, and angered by the injustice he sees all around him, dreams of taking his girlfriend Vivian and leaving Louisiana forever. But when Jefferson is convicted and sentenced to die, his grandmother, Miss Emma, begs Grant for one last favor: to teach her grandson to die like a man.
As Grant struggles to impart a sense of pride to Jefferson before he must face his death, he learns an important lesson as well: heroism is not always expressed through action--sometimes the simple act of resisting the inevitable is enough. Populated by strong, unforgettable characters, Ernest J. Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying offers a lesson for a lifetime. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Grant Wiggins is a young man in the south, during the days of "Separate but Equal". He's six years out of University, a little too educated for most white folks' taste, but he keeps his learning in line by teaching at the black school in the quarter (short for ex-slave quarters) on the old plantation where he lives with his Aunt. He's resigned himself to his fate. He knows the rules and he plays by them. He ends sentences addressed to white men with "sir", and he doesn't look a white man in the eyes unless the white man is speaking to him. He'd be angry if he thought it wasn't pointless.
Then comes along an event that changes everything. Not so much his world, as much as the way that he sees it. His old Aunt's friend's godson, has the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This puts him on trial for the murder of a white man. His court appointed defense attorney appeals to the jury of 12 white men, that Jefferson, guilty though he may be, should not be put to death. "What justice would there be to take this life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this." Even with such a strong argument, the jury gives him the death penalty.
These are the words that changed the course of Grant Wiggins' life. Jefferson's godmother wants "the teacher make him know he's not a hog, he's a man. I want him know that 'fore he go to that chair...". But for Grant to do that, he's got to know it himself. The teacher has much to learn from his former student.
A Lesson Before Dying is a novel of such striking poignancy, that long after the last page is read, the story goes on and on in your mind. You grow to love the characters BECAUSE of their humanity, as much as IN SPITE of it. Your breath catches when you realize, as Grant does, that maybe it was Jefferson all along that was the man, and Grant that learned what being a man really means. A wonderful book, but try it for yourself! Pick up a copy. Another book I need to recommend -- very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off Amazon is "The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition," an odd, compelling little novel I can't stop thinking about.
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