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Summary: Excellent book, terribly sad
Review: A Lesson Before Dying made me so sad. However, it is well-written and holds your interest. Although I see racism every day as a I work in an urban school and my family is biracial, it is sad to realize as you read this book how some people are just stuck because of where they live. Some places in the US are worse than others. I think that this should be recommended reading in high schools.
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Summary: I understand what Oprah saw in this book.
Review: This book has so many good aspects to it. It deals with so much including racism, society, family, respect. It brings a lite these ideologies in a orginal and new fashion. You can't not see this book for what it is and must look beyond the words written. It is a definite think book. It is wonderful and a good, solid read. The basic plot deals with Grant, a black teacher, living in a small racial segregated town in the late 1940s. Jefferson, is a black man condemned to die for a crime that he says he didn't commit. It is a struggle between right and wrong and between responsibilty and free will. It will open your eyes.
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Summary: A very touching and meaningful novel
Review: what a poignant and meaningful book! I have to admit that at first I did not like this book, but as I read on it grew on me. By the time I got to the end of the novel, I was very involved with the characters. I really liked the way Gaines made the characters evolve through the novel, particularly Paul Bonin. Because Gaines tells you what will happen from the very start of the book, it allows you to concentrate on teh metamorphasis of the characters rather than on the unfairness of Jefferson's punishment.
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Summary: Segregation and racism present in the 1940's.
Review: A LESSON BEFORE DYING, by Ernest J. Gaines, presents a young African-American man, named Jefferson Cole, who is sentenced to death. He was accused of committing a crime that cannot be forgiven. Grant Wiggins is his only hope to become free. I recommend this novel if you are the type of person who likes realistic stories because the book describes, in detail, how the atmosphere was in the southern part of the United States during the 1940's.
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Summary: John-o's review
Review: The novel, A Lesson Before Dying, by Earnest Gains is one of the best books I've read. The more I read, the more I didn't want to put this book down. In fact, I stayed up one night finishing it. This book gets every emotion in your body strring,from the decision of Grant and Jefferson, to the actual death. If you like suspense, then you'll love this book. Gains didn't disappoint you when he wrote this book.If I had to give this book a rating from one to five, five being the higest , this book would recieve a 4. If you only read one book this year, this is the one to read.
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Summary: perfect for the modern classroom
Review: I'm glad to hear many of the students who reviewed this book say that they found it more piercing than some of the "older" novels they read in class. Although as a teacher I wouldn't throw aside Hawthorne for Gaines, I think this book is a terrific addition to the American classics read in middle and high school. It makes a good pairing with To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee's classic (and still as moving as ever) focuses on the trial of a black man, unfairly convicted, whereas Lesson accepts the inevitable death sentence and explores the journey towards salvation. Our narrator is the only "educated" person in the novel, but for all his education, he has no soul and no religious faith. After being asked to meet with Jefferson, the condemned man, to convince him that he is in fact a man, not a hog, the narrator discovers as much about himself as the prisoner. The minor cast of characters are well drawn -- the pain evident in their lives is present on ever page. We witness the indignities they suffer in the hands of the white justice system, including being forced to wait hours just to speak to the sheriff. I'm glad Gaines includes one "good" white man (Paul) as a gesture of good will that there are always smaller heroes among villains. The friendship between the narrator and Paul makes for an inspiring finale.This book is very moving and well-written. Highly recommended.
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Summary: A lesson on the value of life
Review: A Lesson Before Dying is a lesson about life. Jefferson is a young black man that is accused wrongfully of a murder he did not commit. His crime? Being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But because he is black, and there are no other survivors to this crime, he is locked up in prison and sentenced to die in the electric chair. Another black man, Grant Higgins, is asked to talk to Jefferson in his jail cell. Grant is to help Jefferson become a dignified person before he is put to death. Jefferson refers to himself as a hog, because that is what the white men call him when they sentence him to death. So, Grant's aunt who is a friend of Jefferson's godmother, known as Nannan, asks him to intervene. Nannan wants to know that Jefferson dies with dignity,as a man. Through Grant's eyes we see what Jefferson goes through as he prepares himself to die. We also witness what life is like for the black man in a segregated world. Jefferson had no chance of proving himself innocent. In this world of Loiusiana, circa 1940, the black man was guilty because of his color. No one fought this verdict. It was accepted. Even Grant Wiggins, who was educated (rare for a black man in his day) and taught in school, did not try to prove Jefferson innocent. I found myself reading the book with acceptance, knowing that it was Jefferson's fate to die in that chair. But when I came to that last chapter, the idea hit me hard and as other reviewers have noted, it is a 3 hanky chapter. A Lesson Before Dying, in my opinion, is destined to become a classic.
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Summary: One heck of a book
Review: Most of the books we read in english class were stodgy classics that came out of an era filled with 12 letter words and 30 word sentances. A Lesson Before Dying avoids this pretension and states its powerful message in a readable way. It makes a great fast paced, interesting novel, that can be breezed over, and it can be perused more carefully because it is worth the invested time and effort. However you choose to read it, rest assured that it will entice you and enlighten you.
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Summary: Pride for what's given and taken...
Review: "A Lesson Before Dying" is a touching and powerful noval set in the late 1940's in Bayonne, Louisiana. It tells the story of a twenty-one-year-old African American field worker, Jefferson, who is wrongfully accused of robbing and murdering a white man than sentenced to death by electrocution. His godmother, Miss Emma, wants Jefferson to die with dignity. She than turns to Grant Wiggins, a black teacher at the local plantation school, and asks him to teach Jefferson to be a man. Grant's pretty much convinced he could do nothing but agrees to visit Jefferson in jail. Grant later on teaches Jefferson to regain dignity and reconnect with their community. Friends, family, and the black community try everything possible to save this innocent man's life and convince this wasn't his doing. As the story goes through a whole time order of events and trial's, the reader is able to tell that Jefferson gets stronger and stronger and is more ready for what has to come. He's ready to experience "the importance of standing" and be a man. This is a very powerful noval. It shows how the African American community had to suffer just to get justice and respect, and still today, have to put up with many of the same things their ancestors had to go through. I recommend this book to anyone who is intrested in history and truth. This book would make any reader anxious for what could happen next and yet reluctant and afriad for what might happen to an innocent man...
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Summary: A beautiful, painful and powerful novel...
Review: A beautiful, painful and powerful novel, 'A Lesson' is set in Louisiana in the 1940s, a time well before "desegregation". A poor black man, Jefferson, is sent to jail for the death of a store owner he did not kill. The governor will decide when he will be executed (electric chair). Another young black man in town, Grant Wiggins, the local schoolteacher, is pressed by his grandmother and the condemned man's godmother (who raised him) to visit the man in jail and "make him a man" before he dies. The condemned man has been called a simple animal by his lawyers, a 'hog' specifically, and his godmother refuses to let her son be executed buying into the white man's label. The local school teacher would rather have no part in any of it. This is an excellent book. The last section as Jefferson and Wiggins being to communicate is extremely powerful and well done. Every high school should make this required reading(particularly in white upper middle class school districts). Although it is fiction, it is historically and sociologically relevant, and so thought-provoking and heart-wrenching all in one.
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