A Story We Can All Learn From
Grand themes are often found in simple stories. Such is the case with the weighty issues confronted in the relatively compact novel, A Lesson Before Dying. The essence of the story is this; a wrongly accused man is sentenced to die in the electric chair. He does. End of story? No. Just the beginning of a monumental confrontation that still goes on in different ways today.
The place in Ernest J.Gaines’s novel, is Louisiana in the late 1940’s. The remnants of a plantation still remain. And while two world wars have come and gone, things haven’t changed very much at all in St. Raphael Parish. Blacks still go to school in the makeshift plantation church during the month’s when they aren’t picking cotton or cutting sugar cane. They live in the black section of town called the quarters. And of course, they aren’t called blacks, and certainly not African Americans. If you’re too young to have actually lived through that time, or that part of the country, it may be hard for you to accept the reality of the lives lived there by people of color. But fortunately Gaines is able to bring it back to life on each and every page.
The protagonist of the novel, Grant Wiggins, is not the man sentenced to death. He is a young black school teacher who is coerced into helping the convicted man come to grips with what is going to happen to him, and prepare himself for it. It’s not an easy preparation. Made more difficult by the fact that the young man is mentally challenged. He understands things though. He certainly understands during the trial when his defense attorney, in an attempt to avoid the death penalty, likens him to a hog. Telling the jury, you wouldn’t send a hog to the electric chair…well that’s what this boy is…a hog…you shouldn’t send him to the chair either.
Wiggins is coerced by his aunt, whom he lives with, and her best friend, the mother of the prisoner. The mother is adamant that her son go to his death like a man, not an animal. Wiggins is most reluctant because he has absolutely no idea how to help. And because, even though he’s returned to the plantation to teach after getting his university education, he longs to be somewhere else, living his own life, rather than recirculating all the humiliations and pain he grew up with. What follows is the unlikely friendship that develops between the two men, and what each comes to understand along the way.
Ernest J. Gaines perfectly portrays the way people spoke, thought and behaved in the South at that time. He tackles not just the obvious insults suffered by blacks; the segregation, the less-than-second-class citizenship, the way they always had to come to the back door of a white man’s house, the overt and frequently covert hostility that hid beneath genteel manners and soft words. He also takes a hard look at how black men often added to their own people’s plight, through irresponsibility, acceptance of victimization, even abandonment.
In the end, as in all important novels, big questions get asked. Do we want others to behave certain ways to benefit them, or ourselves? Should life be lived totally honestly? Or should honesty be sacrificed if it brings pain to others we care about? What constitutes a life well lived, freedom or service? And like all good novelists, Gaines leaves the answers to the reader.
If you want a bigger, more all encompassing look at the trials blacks have faced in America over the years, check out Gaines other renowned novel, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.
And by the way, a first-rate film was made of A Lesson Before Dying. It starred Don Cheadle in the role of Grant Wiggins. It’s definitely worth seeing, but it shouldn’t be a substitute for reading the novel.
The Fiction Fortune Hunter says, take a stroll through the magnolia trees and the sugar cane fields and the linoleum-floored kitchens of Ernest J. Gaines simple, stirring tale. It’s a journey you won’t soon forget.
Subscribe to Joe's Blog through RSS