A Lesson Before Dying
The novel A Lesson Before Dying is an outstanding book that portrays great acts of kindness and shows how one can overcome everybody else while confined and put in the worst of conditions. It shows how friendships go hand in hand and how people use each other for support when it is most needed.
In the heart of Cajun country a young man by the name of Jefferson is walking down the road and two of his buddies offer him a ride not realizing what he had just gotten himself into. He enters the liquor store with his friends and they buy booze on credit and get in an altercation with the owner which led to a shootout and everybody getting killed except for Jefferson. In a panic he picks up a bottle and drinks it down to ease his nerves and grabs cash from the register, but before he could make his getaway he was caught by two white men. Things could not be worse through Jefferson’s eyes he knows what would happen to an African male caught in the middle of a robbery he was sure to be sentenced to jail. Jefferson was arrested and given the death penalty, the court room sat in shock. How could an all white jury convict Jefferson and this be called justice? A local school teacher and former slave, Grant attended the trial and returned home from work to find his aunt and Jefferson’s Godmother sitting at the table beginning to help Jefferson become a man.
Grant is flustered at first thinking to himself how can he teach somebody else to become a man when he himself is not sure that he is even a man? Grant can only do so much, during this time in the 1940’s a black man robbing a store did not look very good and most judicial systems did not even want to hear excuses from a minority. Grant starts to visit Jefferson in jail though, it takes a while for Grant to open up to Jefferson because Grant realizes he has a problem criticizing people himself and often scolds his school children for the slightest mishaps. Neither Jefferson nor...