69. A LESSON BEFORE DYING

Ernest J. Gaines 1993

This is a very moving novel, narrated in simple but effective prose. Set in 1940, in Bayone Louisiana, Grant Wiggins a teacher at odds with what his future life should be, debating whether to stay or leave his teaching job at a plantation school, is requested by his aunt and godmother to impart and teach life lessons to Jefferson, a young man falsely accused of murder and awaiting electrocution. Grant is to teach him how to die "like a man". Jefferson's lesson before dying affects Grant's own search of identity, beliefs and convictions.

'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. Still, I was there. I was there as much as anyone else was there.'(Opening lines)

'She knew, as we all knew, what the outcome would be. A white man had been killed during a robbery, one had been captured, and he, too, would have to die.'(4)

'But let us say he was not. Let us for a moment say he was not. What justice would be there to be to take his life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this.'(8)

"The public defender, trying to get him off, called him a dumb animal." I told her: He said it would be like tying a hog down into that chair and executing him--an animal that didn't know what any of it was all about. The jury, twelve white men good and true, still sentenced him to death. Now his godmother wants me to visit him and make him know--prove to these white men--that he's not a hog, and he's a man. I'm supposed to make him a man. Who am I? God?"(31)

'What do I say to him? Do I know what a man is? Do I know how a man is supposed to die? I'm still trying to find out how a man should live. Am I supposed to tell someone how to die who has never lived?'(31)

'I don't know when I'm going to die, Jefferson. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe today. That's why I try to live as well as I can every day and not hurt people. Especially people who love me, people who have done so much for me, people who have sacrificed for me. I don't want to hurt those people. I want to help those people as much as I can.'(129)

"No matter had bad off we are," I said, "we still owe something. You owe something, Jefferson. Not to me. Surely not to that sheriff out there. But to your godmother. You must show her some understanding, some kind of love."(139)

'They sentence you to death because you were at the wrong place at the wrong time, with no proof that you had anything at all to do with the crime other than being there when it happened. Yet six months later they come and unlock your cage and tell you, we, us, white folks all, have decided it's time for you to die, because this is the convenient date and time.'(158)

'We black men have failed to protect our women since the time of slavery. We 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. So he, too, must run away if he is to hold on to his sanity and have a life of his own.'(167)

'And for Irene and for others there in the quarter, it's the same. They look at their fathers, their grandfathers, their uncles, their brothers--all broken. They see me--and I, who grew up on that same plantation, can teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. I can give them something that neither a husband, a father, nor grandfather ever did, so they want to hold on as long as they can. Not realizing that their holding on will break me too. That in order for me to be what they think I am, what they want me to be, I must run as the others have done in the past.'(167)

'A whole gallona vanilla ice cream. Eat it with a spoon. My last supper. a whole gallona ice cream.'(170)

'A hero does for others. He would do anything for people he loves, because he knows it would make their lives better. I am not that kind of person, but I want you to be. You could give something to her, to me, to those children in the quarter. You could give them something that I never could. They expect it from me, but not from you. The white people out there are saying you don't have it--that you're a hog, not a man. But I know they are wrong. You have the potentials. We all have, no matter who we are.'(191)

'I want you to show then the difference between what they think you are and what you can be.'(191)

'A myth is an old lie that people believe in. White people believe that they're better than anyone else on earth--and that's a myth. The last thing they ever want is to see a black man stand, and think, and show that common humanity that is in us all. It would destroy their myth. They would no longer have justification for having made us slaves and keeping us in the condition we are in.'(192)

'I cry, not from reaching any conclusion by reasoning, but because, lowly as I am, I am still part of the whole. '(194)

'Cause reading, writing, and 'rithmetic is not enough. You think that's all they sent you to school for? They sent you to school to relieve pain, to relieve hurt--and if you have to lie to do it, then you lie. You lie and you lie and you lie... You tell them that 'cause they have pain too, and you don't want to add yours--and you lie.'(218)

'i kno i care for nanan but i don't kno if love is care cuttin wood and haulin water and things like that i dont know it thats love or jus work to do an you say thats love but you say you kno i got mo an just that to say an when i lay ther at nite and cant sleep i try an think what you mean i got mo cause i aint done this much thinkin and this much writin in all my life befor

'sun goin down an i kno this the las one im gon ever see but im gon see one mo sunrise cause i aint gon sleep tonite
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First Vintage Contemporaries Edition, June 1994
256 pages
Book borrowed from the library