A Lesson Before Dying Themes

At the center of almost every social interaction, conversation, and even inner thought of the characters in A Lesson Before Dying lies the question of race. In pre-Civil Rights Louisiana, skin colo...

In A Lesson Before Dying, the lives of most of the characters is set, and not because of their own actions but rather because of what others expect of them. Most of those expectations and prejudice...

Well, if you can't figure out from the title, A Lesson Before Dying has something to do with the act of dying. In this case the theme of death shows up first in a murder, and then ends with an exec...

Even though the protagonist of A Lesson Before Dying spends five days a week in a church, he has a big problem with religion. The school where he teaches is housed in a plantation church in rural L...

When Jefferson, one of the characters in A Lesson Before Dying, is sentenced to death by electrocution he has to grow up fast before he faces his fate. He starts off as a 21-year-old, but in his si...

A Lesson Before Dying's narrator and protagonist is a teacher, so you shouldn't be too surprised that education is an important theme in the novel. It might not be exactly what you expect though;...

At the center of A Lesson Before Dying is a huge injustice: a young man wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death by electrocution. However, it's important to notice all the tiny little in...

It's a hard-knock life for the characters in A Lesson Before Dying. Most of them are barely scraping by, working long days in the fields and living without luxury. What makes it even harder to swal...