Monday, February 13, 2006

 

Book Review: A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines

Writing Style-7.0
Originality-6.8
Plot-6.9
Merit(whatever that means)-7.4
Overall-6.8

This is another great book by Ernest J. Gaines. It’s familiar territory if you are familiar with him. A Louisiana plantation where whites, blacks, and Cajuns coexist.

The main plot here is that a young black man is convicted of murder when he unwittingly joins in on an attempted robbery where a white store owner is killed. The young man is unarmed and unaware of the robbery plot, but he was at the scene and implicated. At his trial his attorney argues that the judge should not give him the death penalty because it would be like putting a hog to slaughter. This is a reference to the fact that the defendant is mentally challenged. But still, he is sentenced to the death penalty.

His grandmother’s last wish for him is that he not die like a hog but like a man. She and a friend enlist the town’s black school teacher to act as a mentor to the young man in jail and teach him how to be a man before he is executed.

This schoolteacher is the main character of the book. He reluctantly agrees to help out. He is college educated and hates his environment and would like to leave Louisiana with his girlfriend.

Like the other Gaines novels that I’ve read there is tons of local color. And every single word carries the weight of oppression. Gaines describes how every single act or even the tiniest gesture between a white person and a black person carries some message and reveals and reminds those involved that there is a deeply ingrained power structure there. To me this is the most important aspect of his writing. The central theme tends to be letting some semblance of pride or subtle revolt shine through from this horribly oppressive environment.

I still think I like A Gathering of Old Men most of the books of his that I’ve read. Maybe because it was the first, but I really think it was the characters and their particular ‘subtle revolt’ (not so subtle in this instance, really) that I liked best.

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