A LESSON BEFORE DYING BY ERNEST J. GAINES

An Introduction

© 2010 L.J. Perales www.apeng3.com

THE AUTHOR: ERNEST J. GAINES He was born on a Louisiana plantation

in 1933 during the Great Depression He was raised by his courageous Aunt

Jefferson, perhaps the reason the hero of the novel carries the same surname.

At fifteen, his family moved to Vallejo, California where he discovered the public library, inspiring his love for literature and later indulgence in writing.

Many of his stories are based on memories from his own childhood.

Gaines worked in the fields digging potatoes just like the schoolchildren in this novel.

LITERARY AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Published in 1993; winner of the 1993 National Book critics Circle Award for Fiction and the 1994 YALSA Best Bok for Young Adults awards.

A Lesson Before Dying connects directly with the Civil Rights Movement in the Postwar Era, the perfect context for a contemporary novel.

The series of laws that create the segregated society in the novel represent real circumstances. Following the Civil War, the Jim Crow laws were passed, a series of laws which legalized the separation of whites and blacks.

Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896 determined that separate facilities for blacks and whites was acceptable, introducing the term “separate but equal”.

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION The setting is the 1940s in a small Cajun

community in Louisiana, not dissimilar from Gaines own upbringing.

Two men, Jefferson and Grant, are brought together through twisting life circumstances. As they develop a friendship, they learn lessons over time that demonstrate many themes of the novel.

Jefferson is a young African American wrongly convicted of murder, now on death-row.

Grant, the narrator, is an African American man who returns to teach in the tiny Cajun town after leaving to attend college.

The characters are realistic and represent recurrent themes in American literature.

A somber mood is maintained through self-pitying central characters, continually pulling down those around them.

MAJOR THEMES EXPLORED

Racism Obligation Redemption Heroes Freedom as a State of Mind

THE CENTRAL CONFLICT

Fatalism vs. Individualism: the debate over Jefferson involves whether people can change their own nature and by doing so effect their own environment. Protagonist - The individualist faction, which

included Vivian, Tante Lou, Reverend Ambrose, believed that a man is capable of determining his own destiny.

Antagonist - The fatalist faction, which included Sheriff Guidry, Henri Pichot, and Mathew Antoine, believed that race determines your fate.

Outcome - By the time Jefferson’s hits the climax in the novel, he understands his own importance as a symbol of pride and dignity for the entire black community.

QUOTATIONS…

“I was not there, yet I

was there.” (first

sentence )

“I suppose every man wonders about death sometimes in his life.” (p.126)

“We black men…stay here in the South and are broken, or we run away and leave them alone to look after the children and themselves. So each time a male child is born, they hope he will be the one to change this vicious circle—which he never does. Because even though he wants to change it, and maybe even tries to change, it, it is too heavy a burden because of all the others who have run away and left their burdens behind… I can give them something that neither a husband, a father, nor a grandfather ever did, so they want to hold on as long as they can. Not realizing that their holding on will break me too.” (pp.166-177)

“A hero does for others.

He would do anything for

people he loves, because

he knows it would make

their lives better.”

(p.191)

QUOTATIONS…

“I need you much more than

you could ever need me. I

need to know what to do with

my life. I want to run away,

but go where and do what?

I’m needed her and I know it,

but I feel that all I’m doing

here is choking myself. I

need someone to tell me

what to do. I need you to tell

me, to show me. I’m no hero;

I can just give something

small. That’s all I have to

offer. It is the only way that

we can chip away at that

myth. You – you can be

bigger than anyone you have

ever met.” (p.193 – Grant

speaking to Jefferson)

“Only when the mind is

free has the body a

chance to be free.”

(p.251 – Rev. Ambrose

speaking)

A LESSON BEFORE DYING BY ERNEST J. GAINES

An Introduction

© 2010 L.J. Perales www.apeng3.com