A Lesson Before Dying Analytic Paper

A Lesson Before Dying

In Ernest J. Gaines’ novel A Lesson Before Dying, the author focuses a lot on the characters maturing into men. One becomes a man when he isn’t afraid of speaking up their minds. In A Lesson Before Dying, Grant Wiggins becomes a man because he learns to defend what he believes in.

He learns to stand up for what he believes, because he wants to be respected. In, A Lesson Before Dying, Grant struggles to get his points across that he doesn’t have what it takes to teach someone to be a man. Grant says, “I’m a teacher and I teach what the white folks tell me to teach, reading, writing, and rithmetic. They never told me how to) keep a black boy put of a liquor store.”. By saying what is in his mind helps show that he is not afraid of the reaction of others. When he says, “...they never told me how to keep a black boy out of a liquor store.” It lets the reader know how Grant is close minded, and can see that he is looked up to and respected. Grant feels he should be respected because he is a teacher, but he has that frustration of knowing all these subjects still can’t help him to a man out of trouble.

In this scene, Grant is expressing to Vivian, his frustration towards telling Jefferson “how to be a man.” Grant yells out to Vivian, “…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 ill trying to find out how a man should live. Am I supposed to tell someone how to die, who hasn’t lived?” Vivian is the person whom Grant puts first before anyone else. He cares what she thinks of him and how she views him as a man. The fact that he isn’t showing his charming side, but the opposite, is showing how he doesn’t care how important you are, if it matters to him to tell you, he will let his thoughts be shown. Grant believes that he will be no help; he cannot help out a man how to be in peace with himself to die when Grant himself doesn’t know how to live. Grant addresses that in the quote, “Am I supposed to tell someone how to die, who hasn’t lived?” As much as he drives for the respect of people he breaks down in front of Vivian, that’s shows Grant’s struggle which makes her think of him as the bigger person.

He learns to stand up for what believes because he finally understands the value of life. In the novel, Grants has an issue connecting the Joyce story, “Ivy Day in the Committee Room,” to his people. Grant thinks to himself, “I read the story and reread the story, but I still could not find the universality that the little Irishman had spoken of. All I saw in the story was some Irishmen meeting in a room and talking politics. What had that to do with America, especially with my people? It was not until years later that I saw what he meant ... I began to listen, to listen closely to how they talked about their heroes, to how they talked about the dead and how great the dead had once been. I heard it everywhere.”

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