Essays on A Lesson Before Dying

There are a number of lessons that one must learn as one goes through life. But the lesson of attempting to survive through the racial discrimination in the south is one lesson that is most valuable to those who lived in that era. Many blacks can now relate to the racial challenge that Jefferson face in Louisiana in 1948. Like many other blacks during the 1940’s, Jefferson faces death for a murder. Of course the laws during the period did not require much proof to convict a black man as much of the stories of the past reveal ...

Transformation is a theme that has come out strongly in the three novels ‘a lesson before dying’, ‘A Doll's House’ and ‘A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier’. Through the stories, the characters are encountered by uncomfortable situations where they have to fight their way out. The hardships that they went through proved to be significant not only to them but also served the purpose of delivering the others around them. Despite what they had to go, at the end they appreciated the fact that it was in fact through their crisis that the others who were looking unto them ...

How important is setting to the central theme of the story? Explain using at least three different examples from the novel to support your thesis. ‘A Lesson Before Dying’ demonstrates that life for the black man in a small and nondescript Deep South town is fraught with danger and lacks opportunity. The setting in the story is very important as it assists us to feel the situation as if we are part of the settings and the actual surroundings. Blacks are kept ‘in their place’ in this town according to Gaine’s evocative descriptions especially the manner in which ...

The period of history that spans between the arrivals of Patrick Henry and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., contains some of the most significant instances of paradox within a political system. The United States was formed, in large part, because of the rallying cry “Give me liberty, or give me death!” When the American Revolution ended, of course, a portion of the founding Constitution of the nation declared that blacks who were slaves counted as three-fifths of a person, in terms of taxation and representation. In some of the states, blacks were free; in others, they could be bought and sold as ...