Discussion Activities Writing Exercise

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Lesson One

FOCUS:

Biography

Examining an author's life can inform and expand the reader's understanding of a novel. Biographical criticism is the practice of analyzing a literary work through the lens of an author's experience. In this lesson, explore the author's life to understand the novel more fully.

Ernest J. Gaines was born into a family of sharecroppers in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. He attended grammar school in the plantation church and was primarily raised by his aunt. A Lesson Before Dying tells the story of a young black man convicted of participating in the murder of a white man and consequently sentenced to death in Louisiana in the 1940s. Although a work of fiction, this novel reflects the racial discrimination and stereotypes Gaines would have encountered in the pre-civil rights South.

Discussion Activities

Listen to The Big Read Audio Guide. Students should take notes as they listen. What do they learn about Ernest J. Gaines? Based on what they learned about the novel, ask them to identify ways Gaines used elements of his own life to create the world of the novel.

Distribute the Reader's Guide essays "Introduction to the Novel," "Ernest J. Gaines (b. 1933)," and "Historical Context: The South Before Civil Rights." Divide the class into groups. Assign one essay to each group. After reading and discussing the essays, each group will present what they learned. Ask students to add a creative twist to make their presentation memorable.

Writing Exercise

Gaines believes that all great writers are regional writers but that their works are universal. Ask your students to choose a favorite book. Have them write a paragraph on how a novel about a particular place can cross regional boundaries and appeal to readers who have never lived in that period or place.

Homework

Read Chapters 1?4. Prepare your students to read three to four chapters per night in order to complete the book in ten lessons. In the novel's opening lines Grant says, "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." Ask your students to consider why Gaines might open the novel in this way.

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Lesson Two

FOCUS:

Culture and History

Cultural and historical contexts give birth to the dilemmas and themes at the center of the novel. Studying these contexts and appreciating intricate details of the time and place help readers understand the motivations of the characters.

A Lesson Before Dying is set in the 1940s, a gap between two very important eras in American history--the period of Reconstruction following the U.S. Civil War but before the Civil Rights Movement began in earnest in the 1950s. The economy of the South was still primarily based on agriculture. Sharecropping--tending a portion of another person's land in exchange for a percentage of the crops--was common among both black and poor white families.

Discussion Activities

Distribute Handout One: Sharecropping and Handout Two: The Pre-Civil Rights South, and have your students read them in class. Gaines has said that one of the reasons he started to write was so he could memorialize the Louisiana of his boyhood and the people who lived there. Grant describes the fictional setting of the novel:

Bayonne was a small town of about six thousand. . . . The courthouse was there; so was the jail. . . . There were two elementary schools uptown, one Catholic, one public, for whites; and the same back of town for colored. Bayonne's major industries were a cement plant, a sawmill, and a slaughterhouse, mostly for hogs.

Ask your students to locate other descriptions of the setting in Chapters 1?4. Based on what they learned from listening to the Audio Guide and reading the handouts, how accurate are Gaines's depictions of a small Southern town in the 1940s?

Writing Exercise

Many of the characters in A Lesson Before Dying live on a former plantation that is farmed by sharecroppers. Ask students to write a one-page essay on the way Henri Pichot treats Inez and Miss Emma in Chapter 3. Does he treat them with respect? Based on what students learned from the handouts, can they understand why Inez and Miss Emma defer to him? What can we learn about the culture of 1940s Louisiana from reading their exchange?

Homework

Read Chapters 5?9. What differences do you see between Grant's classroom and yours? How does his role as a teacher influence the way he views himself and others?

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Lesson Three

FOCUS:

Narrative and Point of View

The narrator tells the story with a specific perspective informed by his or her beliefs and experiences. Narrators can be major or minor characters, or exist outside the story altogether. The narrator weaves her or his point of view, including ignorance and bias, into telling the tale. A first-person narrator participates in the events of the novel, using "I." A distanced narrator, often not a character, is removed from the action of the story and uses the third person (he, she, and they). The distanced narrator may be omniscient, able to read the minds of all the characters, or limited, describing only certain characters' thoughts and feelings. Ultimately, the type of narrator determines the point of view from which the story is told.

A Lesson Before Dying is told from the first-person point of view of Grant Wiggins, schoolteacher for the black children in the quarter. His hesitancy to become involved in the events of the novel establishes one of the major conflicts in the story--his reluctance to visit Jefferson versus his aunt's determination for Grant to help Jefferson die with dignity.

Discussion Activities

Grant tells his aunt and Miss Emma, "Jefferson is dead. It is only a matter of weeks, maybe a couple of months--but he's already dead.... And I can't raise the dead. All I can do is try to keep the others from ending up like this--but he's gone from us." Why does Grant lash out like this? How does his reluctance to help affect the way he views the situation? How do his views on his own life and teaching as a profession affect the way he tells the story?

Ask students to discuss the following questions: Why do you think Gaines chose Grant as a first-person narrator rather than Tante Lou, Miss Emma, or Jefferson? How would the novel have been different if it were told from the perspective of one of these characters?

Writing Exercise

Have your students choose one of the two writing exercises below. Invite them to share their writing by reading it aloud to the class.

?Write a description of the trial from the first-person point of view of one of the other characters.

?Write a description of the trial from an objective third-person point view as it might be reported in the local newspaper.

Homework

Read Chapters 10?13. Make a list of the primary characters and what motivates each of them.

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Lesson Four

FOCUS:

Characters

The central character in a work of literature is called the protagonist. The protagonist usually initiates the main action of the story and often overcomes a flaw, such as weakness or ignorance, to achieve a new understanding by the work's end. A protagonist who acts with great honor or courage may be called a hero. An antihero is a protagonist lacking these qualities. Instead of being dignified, brave, idealistic, or purposeful, the antihero may be cowardly, self-interested, or weak. The protagonist's journey is enriched by encounters with characters who hold differing beliefs. One such character type, a foil, has traits that contrast with the protagonist's and highlight important features of the main character's personality. The most important foil, the antagonist, opposes the protagonist, barring or complicating his or her success.

Discussion Activities

Grant Wiggins is the protagonist of the novel, but his life becomes inextricably tied to Jefferson's. Ask your students to examine how Jefferson acts during the visit with Grant in Chapter 11 and how he later acts when Miss Emma visits, as depicted in Chapter 16. Grant tells his aunt, "He treated me the same way he treated her. He wants me to feel guilty, just as he wants her to feel guilty. Well, I'm not feeling guilty, Tante Lou. I didn't put him there. I do everything I know how to do to keep people like him from going there." Why is Grant offended by Jefferson's behavior? Does Jefferson want Miss Emma or Grant to feel guilty, or is he simply unable to cope with his fate?

Writing Exercise

Ask your students to write three paragraphs on a character other than Jefferson or a situation that serves as an antagonist to Grant. What is the conflict? How does Grant respond? Is his response appropriate? Have students support their ideas using examples from the text.

Homework

Read Chapters 14?17. Ask your students to pay close attention to the way Grant describes the scenery during his walk with Vivian.

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Lesson Five

FOCUS:

Figurative Language

Writers use figurative language such as imagery, similes, and metaphors to help the reader visualize and experience events and emotions in a story. Imagery--a word or phrase that refers to sensory experience (sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste)--helps create a physical experience for the reader and adds immediacy to literary language. Imagery can also project emotion, enabling the author to imply a mood without disrupting the narrative to inform the reader of a character's emotional state.

Some figurative language asks us to stretch our imaginations, finding the likeness in seemingly unrelated things. Simile is a comparison of two things that initially seem quite different but are shown to have significant resemblance. Similes employ connective words, usually "like," "as," "than," or a verb such as "resembles." A metaphor is a statement that one thing is something else that, in a literal sense, it is not. By asserting that a thing is something else, a metaphor creates a close association that underscores an important similarity between these two things.

Gaines vividly describes the Louisiana countryside throughout A Lesson Before Dying. Imagery assists the reader in understanding the time and place where the novel is set.

Discussion Activities

One of the most beautiful descriptions of the plantation occurs in Chapter 14 when Grant takes Vivian on a walk down the quarter. Ask students to close their eyes while you read aloud to the class. What emotions are evoked by the images of "a low ashen sky," "a swarm of blackbirds," and the plantation cemetery? How does the mood change once Grant and Vivian turn on the road that leads to the field of sugarcane?

Writing Exercise

The defense attorney compares Jefferson to a hog by saying, "Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this." Have students write a few paragraphs on why that image backfired as a defense argument. What was the attorney's purpose in using that characterization? Why did the remark affect Miss Emma, Tante Lou, and Jefferson so deeply? Even though Jefferson suggests it, why won't Miss Emma bring him corn to eat?

Homework

Read Chapters 18?21. Have students pay close attention to Grant's actions during the Christmas program. As the schoolteacher, he is in charge of this event. Why is this an uncomfortable situation for Grant? How does he respond?

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Lesson Six

FOCUS:

Symbols

Symbols are persons, places, or things in a narrative that have significance beyond a literal understanding. The craft of storytelling depends on symbols to present ideas and point toward new meanings. Most frequently, a specific object will be used to refer to (or symbolize) a more abstract concept. The repeated appearance of an object suggests a non-literal, or figurative, meaning attached to the object. Symbols are often found in the book's title, at the beginning and end of the story, within a profound action, or in the name or personality of a character. The life of a novel is perpetuated by generations of readers interpreting and reinterpreting the main symbols. By identifying and understanding symbols, readers can reveal new interpretations of the novel.

An author does not always include symbols intentionally. Sometimes, they develop organically as part of the writing process. In a 1998 interview with Humanities magazine, Gaines said, "Students come up now and ask me, `Did you know you put those symbols in there?' You never think of symbols." Gaines does not intentionally insert symbols into his writing; they evolve as part of the creative process.

Discussion Activities

There is a great deal of religious symbolism in A Lesson Before Dying. Like Gaines, many Southern writers such as Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, Katharine Anne Porter, and Zora Neale Hurston use religious symbolism to reflect the moral ideals of a story's characters or to highlight the conflict between characters whose religious views differ. Ask your students to consider the way religion permeates the society in which Grant lives and the way it influences the actions of Vivian, Grant, Miss Emma, Tante Lou, and Reverend Ambrose.

Grant's classroom is in a church. How is this appropriate for his role in the black community? Does this contribute to Grant's conflict with the Reverend? Does Tante Lou expect more out of Grant as a teacher than helping children learn to read and write? If so, what?

Writing Exercise

Ask students to choose a character from the novel whose name might serve a symbolic function. Explain how the name as a symbol relates to the character. Does the person reflect or contradict the values of his or her namesake? Why might Gaines have chosen to depict the character in this way?

Homework

Distribute Handout Three: Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis. Ask students to read the handout and Chapters 22?24. Ask them to pay close attention to the scene in Chapter 24 when Grant describes a hero.

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