A Lesson Before Dying Analysis

BayonneThe lesson before dying is learned between October 1947 and April of 1948 in and around Bayonne, Louisiana. The town is fictional, but the way of life is very real. Almost everything about t...

Professor Grant Wiggins, the protagonist, is also the (kind of grouchy) narrator of the novel. That grouchiness puts a pessimistic filter on everything we get to see, so we have to take into accoun...

What do you expect from a teacher? Grant is used to talking to kids all day, so it's no surprise that he's the narrator of a young adult novel. It doesn't necessarily have to be read by teenagers;...

Grant, the narrator, is a frustrated guy and that comes out in the tone of his narration. He's tired of trying, wishes he could run away, and his desperation comes out when he describes situations...

A Lesson Before Dying is told in chronological order with very little rewinding or fast-forwarding. It starts at the start, and finishes at the finish. It doesn't try anything sneaky like flashback...

Well, right from the start we know there's a lesson to learn, and we know that someone is going to die. Heavy. But the title, A Lesson Before Dying, doesn't tell us who is going to learn the lesson...

Most of the time when Grant is standing in front of his students at school he's wielding his terrifying ruler or using it on their poor little hands and noggins because he is so irritated with them...

A Lesson Before Dying is a good story, well told. It is straightforward and fairly easy to understand. You might run across some pronunciations that are new or Cajun words that you haven't heard, b...

The End of the LineJefferson, a black man from teacher Grant Wiggins' hometown, in Louisiana, has been sentenced to death by electrocution for supposedly committing murder during a robbery. The def...

Okay, fine, there's no gooey, slimy monster in A Lesson Before Dying. However, there is an ugly shadow looming over the land. It's a monster called racism, and it is threatening the whole society....

This act lasts from the trial to the time where Grant finds himself stuck going to the prison to visit Jefferson on his own. A plot is formed when Grant's aunt and Miss Emma join forces to get Gran...

Like the characters in the novel, Ernest J. Gaines was also born on a plantation in Louisiana. He bought it and built a house on it. (Source.) The novel was adapted for the theatre in 2000. (Source...

Besides a tumble in the hay, er, sugarcane fields, there isn't a lot of steaminess happening in A Lesson Before Dying. The most provocative word is "nipple." Sure, you wouldn't want your grandmothe...

John Keats: English Romantic poet (1.13)Lord Byron: English Romantic poet (1.13)Walter Scott: Scottish Romantic poet (1.13)David and Goliath (12.10)W.B. Yeats: Irish poet (12.13)Sean O'Casey: Irish...