A Lesson Before Dying

“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...” So begins Grant Wiggins, the narrator of Ernest J. Gaines,’ A Lesson Before Dying. Within the novel, university educated, Grant, returns to the tiny plantation town of his youth, where the only job available to him is teaching in the small plantation church school. Grant, trapped in a career he doesn't enjoy, eaten up by resentment at his station in life, and angry by the injustice he sees all around him, allows one to confront the demands of his passions and responsibilities in the novel.
Grant confronts a responsibility brought to him by his aunt, with extreme rejection. Although he rejects this responsibility, Tante Lou forces him to undertake this issue. Tante Lou perceives that Grant ought to save their community, through the fact that he is educated. Grant however, considers this matter as unjust and obligatory rather than being a r...