Free If Grant And Jefferson example essay topic

A Lesson Before Dying In the novel A Lesson Before Dying, Grant and Jefferson are black men in the era of a racist society; but they have struggles with a greater dilemma, obligation and commitment. They have obligations to their families and to the town they are part of. They lived in a town were everybody knew everybody else and took care of each other. "Living and teaching on a plantation, you got to know the occupants of every house, and you knew who was home and who was not. I could look at the smoke rising from each chimney or I could look at the rusted tin roof of each house, and I could tell the lives that went on in each one of them. ' [pp. 37-38] Just by Grant's words you can tell that that is a community that is very devoted to each other. It was a little bit harder for Jefferson to remember his commitment to his nannan and to the town.

He had been charged with a crime he did not commit and didn't know how to deal with it. They were asking a lot from a man who knew he was going to die soon. ' Me, Mr. Wiggins. Me. Me to take the cross.

Your cross, nannan's cross, my own cross. Me, Mr. Wiggins. This old stumbling nigger. Y'all axe a lot, Mr. Wiggins. ' [p. 224] It takes a strong man to forget about yourself and do something for someone else when your in the position that Jefferson is in. It took a while; but Jefferson did what had to be done, in the end. Grant's task is to affirm that Jefferson is not a hog, but a man.

The mission is doubly difficult because Grant isn't sure he knows what a man is. Besides not knowing what a man is, Grant doesn't feel that he, a well educated man, should have to go and make Jefferson believe that he is not a hog; which shows the amount of arrogance Grant has about himself. Even in the courtroom Grant wasn't even paying attention to what was going on. "I was not there, yet I was there. ' [p. 3: the first sentence of the novel] He doesn't want to do it and holds his aunt responsible for helping to humiliate him.

"Everything you sent me to school for, you " re stripping me of it,' I told my aunt. 'The humiliation I had to go through, going into that man's kitchen. Now going up to that jail. Anything to humiliate me. All the things you wanted me to escape by going to school. Years ago, Professor Antoine told me that if I stayed here, they were going to break me down to the nigger I was born to be.

But he didn't tell me that my aunt would help them do it. ' ' [p. 79] The only reason that Grant went to the jailhouse was because he was devoted to his aunt, Miss Emma, and Vivian. When they ask him to do things he has no choice but to do it. He more than just arrogant and overly prideful. He is also very loyal to those whom he cares about. If he didn't have that loyalty he wouldn't have gone to the jailhouse at all. He has compassion for everyone in the quarter and understands how it must feel to have not been able to leave from a place, meet new people, do new things, or further your education.

He knows how heavy the burden is and how hard it must be for Jefferson to take on the burden of stopping the cycle black people had been repeating for generations. "We black men 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. I can give them something that neither a husband, a father, nor a grandfather ever did, so they want to hold on as long as they can. Not realizing that their holding on will break me too. ' [pp. 166-67] Reverend Ambrose said it best.

"Yet they must believe. They must believe, if only to free the mind, if not the body. Only when the mind is free has the body a chance to be free. ' [p. 251: Reverend Ambrose] If Grant and Jefferson did not have faith in themselves and have a devotion for their families, they would not have been able to surmount their circumstances. Jefferson would not have gone to that chair as a man and Grant would not have been able to appreciate what a man really is. This is how Grant and Jefferson are able to honor the debts they owe to Miss Emma, Tante Lou, and everyone else who is in their lives.