A Lesson Before Dying (Oprah's Book Club)
by Ernest J. Gaines
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ernest J. GainesEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1994-09
ISBN: 9780375702709
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of A Lesson Before Dying (Oprah's Book Club)
Book Review: "...that's what we all are...all of us on this earth, a piece of drifting wood, until we-each one of us, individually-decide...
Summary: 5 Stars
...to become something else."
It's late October of 1949 (p 87) when, grudgingly, a 28-year-old teacher named Grant Wiggins agrees to his septuagenarian aunt's request on behalf of her (similarly elderly) friend, that he meet with her imprisoned 21-year-old godson, Jefferson, to make a man out of him in preparation for his execution (p 20), "I want a man to go set in that chair..." in spite of his initial defeatist feelings about the situation (p 14) "There's nothing I can do anymore, nothing any of us can do anymore." Since obtaining his degree, Mr. Wiggins, a teacher at the same church school he attended as a child, has gained the respect of blacks, but resentment from whites. He has his work cut out for him in trying to transform this simple young man, who is understandably upset at his defense attorney's choice of words during closing arguments (he describes him as being less than human, going so far as to compare him to a hog) and holds on to that feeling in disregarding the efforts of the visitors to his jail cell. Jefferson is guilty of little more than being a black man in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong era in American history, and, in the confusion of criminal circumstances, making a foolish, and ultimately fatal, decision.
Over a period of about six months, Wiggins helps change Jefferson, local persons both black and white, and, unintentionally, himself for the better due to his efforts on behalf of the condemned man. A Lesson Before Dying, a book about capital punishment and the ruinousness of racial injustice, is a better book than Helen Prejean's Dead Man Walking (which I read just prior to this one). Also good: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell.
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