| A Lesson Before Dying |  | Author: Ernest J. Gaines
Publisher: Random House Value Publishing
Category: Book
Buy Collectible: $104.00
Used (1) Collectible (1) from $104.00
Rating:  498 reviews
Sales Rank: 6855031
Media: Hardcover
ISBN: 0517269198
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780517269190
ASIN: 0517269198
Publication Date: November 17, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Fine. No dust jacket as issued. Signed by author. 256 pages First edition thus, signed by the author. Green leather-bound, gilt front back and spine, gilt page-edges and silk moire endpages. Like new copy. Includes certificate of authenticity and a note from Easton Press. Printed on acid-neutral archival paper.
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Amazon.com Review
Oprah Book Club Selection, September 1997: In a small Cajun community in 1940s Louisiana, a young black man is about to go to the electric chair for murder. A white shopkeeper had died during a robbery gone bad; though the young man on trial had not been armed and had not pulled the trigger, in that time and place, there could be no doubt of the verdict or the penalty. "I was not there, yet I was there. No, I did not go to the trial, I did not hear the verdict, because I knew all the time what it would be..." So begins Grant Wiggins, the narrator of Ernest J. Gaines's powerful exploration of race, injustice, and resistance, A Lesson Before Dying. If young Jefferson, the accused, is confined by the law to an iron-barred cell, Grant Wiggins is no less a prisoner of social convention. University educated, Grant has returned to the tiny plantation town of his youth, where the only job available to him is teaching in the small plantation church school. More than 75 years after the close of the Civil War, antebellum attitudes still prevail: African Americans go to the kitchen door when visiting whites and the two races are rigidly separated by custom and by law. Grant, trapped in a career he doesn't enjoy, eaten up by resentment at his station in life, and angered by the injustice he sees all around him, dreams of taking his girlfriend Vivian and leaving Louisiana forever. But when Jefferson is convicted and sentenced to die, his grandmother, Miss Emma, begs Grant for one last favor: to teach her grandson to die like a man. As Grant struggles to impart a sense of pride to Jefferson before he must face his death, he learns an important lesson as well: heroism is not always expressed through action--sometimes the simple act of resisting the inevitable is enough. Populated by strong, unforgettable characters, Ernest J. Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying offers a lesson for a lifetime.
Product Description
From the author of A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman comes a deep and compassionate novel. A young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to teach visits a black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 493 more reviews...
 A Lesson Before Dying January 6, 2009
The play form is easy to read. The book was better. The play doesn't do as good a job with the character development when just read. When performed, in the hands of a good director and actor, it would be better.
A lesson before reading: pick up "To Kill a Mockingbird" instead December 2, 2008
There's a quote from a review by the Independent on the cover of my copy of "A Lesson Before Dying," and it says "Like the best country songs, straight and true." Since I saw and read that quote every time I picked up the book, I inevitably started to evaluate it's merit based on whether or not I agreed with that review. Was it straight and true? Then I realized, more importantly, does that even matter?
"A Lesson Before Dying" is a good book. It's not a great book, or an instant classic, and I don't necessarily think it should be made mandatory reading in schools all over. But it wasn't awful, it didn't have me struggling to get through it, or hating the characters, or not curious about the outcome. It was a three-star book, and here's why.
Grant Wiggins is a schoolteacher who left his home town to go to college, then came back to that same small, racist Louisiana town to teach at the local school for black children. He didn't have to come back, and once he does, he complains often and continually talks about running away and leaving. But when Jefferson, a young man Grant is connected to through a family friend, gets wrongly convicted of a crime and sentenced to death, Grant must stay to help him "become a man" before going to his death.
Religion seems to be a primary focus of the narrator, and many of the secondary characters get into it with him about how he's godless and he is steering Jefferson wrong by not putting more emphasis on praying and repenting. His method of quiet self-reflection gets through to Jefferson more than any of the religious attitudes, yet our narrator is basically still condemned and he also beats himself up over not being a believer. It seemed strange and slightly unreal to me.
The notion that ultimately we control how we live our lives and our attitudes toward ourselves and others, even on death row, is an interesting one. However, for whatever reason, Gaines could not get me to care much about any of these characters. Certainly, I felt bad for Jefferson for being sent to death by a white racist jury, and I had sympathy for his godmother who wanted only to see him walk upright with dignity to his own death before she passed. But I had a difficult time relating to the characters' struggles.
Truth be told, if being "straight and true" really is what makes a book great, then this one is not. Still, it read quickly and it still has me pondering its meaning, so in that sense, it is a good, three-star book.
 A Lesson Before Dying is a lesson for us all. September 16, 2008
This story is set in 1940s Louisiana. A young black man is with friends who plan and execute a robbery--which goes bad quickly. The young man, Jefferson, is quickly arrested and tried for murder--even though he had no weapon and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Enter Grant Wiggins, a young black teacher who is chafing at the racial inequality of the times. He'd like nothing more than to leave this racial backwater bayou and head north for a city with more equality. But Jefferson's grandma is a family friend, and she begs Grant for the things he can provide--knowledge, dignity, and the ability for her grandson to die like a man...not the "hog" the white racists have called him. Very well-written, not preacher-like, I enjoyed this novel immensely. It shows us the frailty of humanity, along with the strength of human dignity. This novel should sit on everyone's shelf of books that made them think.
 Not a "must read" book but not terrible September 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The thought process and inspiration behind A Lesson Before Dying were brilliant; however, the story just fell flat. I felt that the characters were one-dimensional and disengaged one from the story; Grant was a bore, for example, he repeated the same lines and the same ideas, most of the time in the same words. I kept waiting for spectacular and inspiring events to occur and to make me feel proud of Grant's work to reach Jefferson, but I was severely disappointed. This story moved water-drop slow, trickling from one important event through insignificant episodes to another important event. While I do feel that stories need time to develop the characters; however, in this story, I didn't see much character development. At the end of the book, Grant was the same man, same selfish mannerisms, yet in life, people change all the time. I would think that witnessing an execution and the injustice of the death penalty would be enough to change most people for better or worse. Then the story became absurd when Jefferson, an ignorant teenager who was brainwashed by a racist society, transformed into a man overnight because Grant made an inspiring speech to him. Why should Jefferson listen to Grant, who happens to be a selfish, cowardly and "educated" black? This book disappointed due to the fact that exaggerations are laced throughout, and it only delved into skin-deep into the death penalty issues. The story contains few descriptions of the execution (the climax), and so many descriptions of tedious events such as Grant's brawl with two bricklayers. Jefferson's execution was brief at best; it just didn't achieve the heart-wrenching ending that it was supposed to accomplish. Save your money and buy a book like Rain of Gold that can achieve true engagement between reader, characters and story; nevertheless, guaranteeing a first person perspective of the book.
 A Lesson Indeed August 24, 2008
This book seems to have been created for the express purpose of selling a film option and padding the Oprah Winfrey Book Club list. Trite, sentimental, peopled with unmemorable characters, and written in a flat and artless style, 'A Lesson Before Dying' is a lesson to avoid. Skip class at the Ernest J. Gaines school of writing, go down the road and jump the fence at Harold Bloom's orchard to pick something from Western Canon instead.
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