Introduction

  • written by Ernest J. Gaines, published in 1993
  • The author of the novel was born in 1933 in a small town named Pointe Coupee Parish in Louisiana and received, in addition to a scholarship at Stanford University, numerous awards for his educational work and his life's work as a writer
  • The narrative is told from the first-person perspective of primary school teacher Grant Wiggins. It deals with 21 years old Jefferson, who is sentenced to death in the course of a court hearing. The protagonist is accused of killing a white man and two black men, as he was caught by the police at the scene of the incident
  • Jefferson's conviction reflects the racist attitude of the court at the time. Society does not recognise the innocence of the young man and thus does not display the competence one would expect from a judicial body.
  • A Lesson Before Dying is based on a true story in which Willie Francis, a 16-year-old clerk, is sentenced to death. The young black man survives his first execution in 1945 on the electric chair, whereupon a second death sentence is passed on him in 1947
  • The setting is the fictional town Bayonne in Louisiana. The place is a small village in France, which does not exist in Louisiana
  • Ernest J. Gaines introduces the reader to the reality of a black citizen in 1940s Louisiana. Through his straightforward writing style, the author can portray the social injustice and oppression of the black population in an unembellished yet emphatic way
  • A lesson before dying is the Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. Furthermore, the present work is also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, amongst many others
  • The work serves to relentlessly illuminate the socially unjust and racist conditions of America's southern states in the 1940s and 1950s and therefore still constitutes an elementary part of the reading canon in English today