The Literary Merit of A Lesson Before Dying Essay -- Lesson Before Dyi

The Literary Merit of A Lesson ahead death Ernest Gaines was born during the middle of the Great Depression on January 15, 1933. He was the oldest of xii children. At the age of nine Gaines worked as an errand boy on the River Lake Plantation, the same plantation his book A Lesson Before Dying was set in. Gaines was increase by his Aunt Augusteen Jefferson, much like Grant, the protagonist in the novel, was elevated by his Aunt Tante Lou. At the age of fifteen Gaines rejoined his immediate family in Vallejo, California because there were no high schools for him to attend in Louisiana. Gaines as well wanted to enter a public library which was illegal for hatful of color to use. At this time in U.S. History, books about colored peck were scarce and so Gaines decided to try and write his confess novel. The commit to write led him to San Francisco State and Stanford University where he took creative writing courses. His commencement book, Catherine Carmier, was published in 1 964. He finished his most famous novel, The narration of female child Jane Pittman, in 1971. The success of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman prompted Gaines to write to a greater extent about the black communities of southern Louisiana. The most successful book relations with the colored people of southern Louisiana, A Lesson Before Dying, was penned in 1993 ( about Ernest Gaines 1). A Lesson Before Dying explains the tale of the wrongful conviction of Jefferson, an illiterate colored man who was an accessory to a liquor store snap where a white man was killed. At Jeffersons trial a lawyer calls him a hog. At the end of the trial, Jefferson is sentenced to death by electrocution. Miss Emma, Jeffersons Aunt, wants Jefferson to know that he is a human before he dies. She wi... ...ate representation of its deep insights into the mind of Jefferson. In Chapter 29 one gets an perfect and in depth view into the mind of a colored evoke worker from the deep South during the 194 0s. The way the sentences were structured has not been edit to portray proper English nor have the thoughts been completed. In that passage Jeffersons ignorance is exposed, but in doing so his values and faith shine. In his own way, he acknowledges his fate and then tries to reason why it happened. A Lesson Before Dying provides a pure and true insight into a Jeffersons mind. This is why it should be included in a list of working of high literary merit. Works CitedAbout Ernest Gaines. RandomHouse.com. pp. 1-2. Online. 7 May 2003. operable http//www.randomhouse.com/vintage/gaines/books.html Gaines, Ernest. A Lesson Before Dying. New York Random House 1993.