Ernest J. Gaines and A Lesson Before Dying

The connection between an author and a novel that he or she writes may often be more closely related than the reader realizes. The author’s life and surroundings are often how he or she decides upon the subject and setting of the novel. The author will often write about what he or she knows best and can portray a setting that may be unfamiliar to the reader. The author of the novel A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines, is a good example of this. His life strongly impacts the novel through the places and time period when the novel takes place, his Southern Black heritage, and the people that were influential to Gaines.
Ernest J. Gaines was born in 1933 near Oscar, Louisiana ( Dictionary of Literary Biography). The time period in which Gaines grew up as well as where he grew up are both contributing factors to the setting of his novel A Lesson Before Dying. Although the setting itself, as well as the places in the novel, is imaginary, Bayonne, Louisiana is based on Gaines’s home...