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Summary: A Lesson Before Dying
Review: A Lesson Before Dying is set in a small town during the 1940s. It is a story about two black men; one wrongly accused of murder and the other convinced to impart knowledge and pride into him during his last days on earth. It is a great story about the friendship created between two black men in a racially charged society.
Grant Wiggins, has returned to his home town to teach children in a plantation school; and while he is in the process of making a life changing decision his aunt persuades him to visit Jefferson in jail. With all of his problems in mind he visits and trys to help Jefferson. During the story the author shows the many difficults and problems that Grant faces as a black man and the author expresses this through Grants thoughts.
The weekly visits give Grant a chance to impart some knowledge unto Jefferson but he is very reluctant to get involved in a situation he has no patience for. His aunt and nannan have forced him to go but he doesn't realize how much this helps him. He is taken through his mid life crisis partly by the experience and views on life he received from Jefferson.
The plot of this story revolves around the two main characters who are completely different in every way but come together because of family ties. This is a very good plot and story about life's struggles and the problems that we go through. Its conveys morals, values and a sense of humanity that are nobel and should be used by every person in life.
The author creates a setting of cruelty and prejudice throughtout the events in the story. Despite this, the two men forge a bond and together find a way to overcome the power of racism in their lives. Without each other they would not be able to cope with the events of their lives.
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Summary: A Lesson Before Dying
Review: A Lesson Before Dying is a book that had characters that were hard to follow and assosciate yourself with. Throuought the book, the main character, Grant Wiggins, was proving himself to be a hypocrite. When talking to Jefferson, the "hog" who Grant is trying to turn in to a man, Grant tells Jefferson of how he tries to live his life the best he can and that he treats everyone he knows with the utmost respect. Grant tells Jefferson that he tries to love and cherish all his relatives and friends, yet when talking with his aunt and Miss Emma, Grant puts them down verbally and never does anything they say. Grant, a school teacher, beats his students mercifully for not spelling a word right or writing on the board slanted; however, teaching like that was customary in those days. No one was forcing Grant to teach as fiercly as he did. Overall, the fact that Grant is portrayed as an angry and bitter sort of man ruined the book. He treats mostly everyone he knows disrespectfully; he seldom gets along with anyone, including his soon to be fiance. Beware, read at your own risk...
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Summary: Book Review for A Lesson Before Dying
Review: A Lesson Before Dying is a fervently emotional story. The book begins with a boy, named Jefferson, being accused of a murder in which three people died. Jefferson did nothing wrong except that he was there and witnessed the crime. Most people would not think much of a person witnessing a crime and being put on trial, but Jefferson was African American and the time period was 75 years after the Civil War. The state was Louisiana, a state that fought for slavery, so that indicates why he is sentenced to die. Jefferson's defense attorney should have been penalized for mow practice, but that wasn't around back then. Jefferson's attorney said that sentencing Jefferson to the chair would be like killing a hog. That statement put Jefferson's mother into distress. She then asked Grant Wiggins, an old teacher of Jefferson's, to turn Jefferson into a man. Grant did not want to attempt this difficult task but his Aunt, whom he was staying with, forced him to do it. Grant teaches to elementary kids at the church. Grant no longer goes to church and because of this he fails to see inside himself. After visiting Jefferson for some period of time, Grant begins to see where his life is going and in which way he would really want it to go. At the same time, Jefferson becomes more of a man. A Lesson Before Dying can be slow at times, but it is an appealing book that is worth the time reading.
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Summary: A Lesson that everyone should learn
Review: A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest J. Gaines, is a good but not great book that tries to teach people about racism and life in the 1940's. For example, the sheriff of Bayonne made Grant Wiggins wait for several hours in a back room before the white sheriff would see him. Back in the 1940's the white people took every chance they could to degrade, demean, and hurt a black person. Racism was not uncommon at the beginning of the book because several whites felt that the black community should pay for the mistake of a single black man named Jefferson, who in actuality did not even commit a crime. Furthermore, when the superintendent visited Grants school, he treated them more rudely and worse than he does the white schools. Grant's school can't even get enough pencils, paper, chalk, textbooks, or a decent heater for the winter months. The superintendent even checked the student's teeth and fingernails, showing how much he wanted to say that Grant wasn't doing a good job when he really was. Lastly, Paul is a guard at the jail who becomes friends with Grant and becomes sympathetic to the blacks in the community. At the end of the book both blacks and whites came together as a community, proving that they could live together in peace. A man had to die to bring a community together, and no one as well as Paul or Grant could unite the community without the sacrifice of a human. All in all, Grant and Jefferson learned their lessons, and a town came together after the death of Jefferson.
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Summary: The Best
Review: I feel that this book is one of the best books on race relations in the South. Being a Southern white male born after the 1960's I received great insight on how things were. Every teacher should read this book. It will remind you why you do what you do.
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Summary: very very powerful book
Review: this book has emotions, powerful messages, and strong lesson. i think it's a very nice book for summer reading. it is very educational, and also gives us an arguable topic of slavery. i think it's worth reading.
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Summary: A little slow but very interesting.
Review: A young man is wrongly accused of multiple murders and sentenced to die in the 1940's. His nannan requests that the teacher of the town, Grant Wiggins, visit him weekly in his cell and "make a man out of him" before he dies. When the defense declares him dumb as a hog in reference to his being unable to plot such a murder, Miss Emma, Jefferson's nannan, is mortified and wants to prove the white man wrong about her boy. Grant is reluctant to get involved in a situation for which he has no patience. Although he teaches his own students well enough, he is harsh and without any patience with them. The last thing he feels he needs is another problem child. His girlfriend and aunt, however, soon have him convinced that this is something he can do for Miss Emma that will mean enough to her that he should be able to overcome his reservations. Although slow in the beginning, it does pick up and become more interesting. It has a lot of themes about prejudice and cruelty, issues that are just as relevant in the year 2001 as they were sixty years ago. It is for this reason that I would recommend it as a good option. Don't expect to waiting on the edge of your seat, though. It's not meant to be suspenseful.
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Summary: Easy to read and understand.
Review: I liked this book, the author Ernest J. Gaines was easy to understand and had wonderful flow with words. You got lost after just the first few pages. A lesson Before Dying has a lesson for everyone.
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Summary: Irritating narrator!
Review: I'm currently listening to the unabridged audio version of this book and I find the narrator's quirks of pronunciation irritating. I have to remind myself to concentrate on the substance of what's said and not to allow these pronunciation oddities to color my impression of the character. Why does he have to over-emphasize every consonant? Every "t" in the words "often," "sweater," or "water," for example. I know the teacher is a pedantic boor (at least so far), but this narrator makes him seem even worse than intended.
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Summary: A powerful tale of hope and redemption.
Review: The reason I picked up this book was because it was an OPRAH pick. I held off reading it until I saw the movie version on HBO. The characters of Jefferson and Grant were almost mirror images of each other. Where one was ignorant, the other was smart. Where one was brave, the one was weak. They needed each other. The Lesson Before Dying could apply to the 2 of them. Each had a lesson to learn and it had to happen before the execution. Mr.Gaines' use of dialect and characterization added alot to the overall novel. The ladies in the novel were strong and helped their men grow as well. An excellent novel with powerful themes of hope and redemption.
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