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A Lesson Before Dying Summary

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“A Lesson Before Dying”
By: Ernest Gaines
Published in 1993

The book “A Lesson Before Dying” taught us, the readers, that we need to be responsible for our actions toward other people and set good examples. The book is in the late 1940s, and takes place in small town Bayonne, Louisiana.

Jefferson, a young African-American, was running an errand on a late evening, when two other African Americans pick him up from the side of the rode, to give him a ride, to where he needs to be, but they needed to make a pit-stop before dropping Jefferson off. A brawl started in a convenient store between, the clerk, and the two African-Americans, but the brawl ended in the two getting killed, and the clerk (a white man). The police had no one else to convict, but Jefferson, because he was the only one still alive, and because of his race. The jury gave Jefferson the death sentence, and during his trial his own lawyer started calling Jefferson a “worthless hog”. After being held in his holding cell for a coons age, Jefferson started believing what his lawyer, the papers, the white men and women had said about him. …show more content…
Emma asks him too. Grant tries to change Jefferson into a man and change him back to his old self before he is executed. While Grant is trying to change another man, he is secretly a low self-esteem, unhappy, un-religious and not even a man himself, which probably isn’t a smart idea, to help someone else become a man if you’re not

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