A Lesson Before Dying (Plot Summary)

Plot Summary

Before the Jail Visits

A Lesson Before Dying examines the relationship established between two men in a rural Louisiana parish in the 1940s. One man, Jefferson, is convicted of murder and sentenced to die in the electric chair. The other man, Grant Wiggins, is the local schoolteacher.

The book is told from the point of view of Grant. Although he does not attend Jefferson's trial, he is able to give details from it because everybody in their small community has been talking about it. He explains that Jefferson ended up in trouble because he had received a ride from some friends: they stopped at a liquor store before taking him home, and when the friends tried to rob the store a shoot out occurred, leaving both of his friends and the owner of the store, who was white, dead. Panicking, Jefferson took money from the open cash register before fleeing, and the all-white jury found him guilty of both robbery and murder.

His lawyer, in trying to convince the jury to not impose the death penalty, portrayed Jefferson as being subhuman, presenting him as being too stupid to knowingly be guilty of a crime: "What justice would there be to take this life?" he asked them. "Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this." The afternoon that he is sentenced to die, Jefferson's godmother, who raised him, comes to see Grant, to ask him to visit Jefferson in jail before his execution and to educate him. "I don't want them to kill no hog," she explains. "I want a man to go to that chair, on his own two feet."

Grant is hesitant about getting involved, unsure of what he can do to make Jefferson's life any better in the few weeks that he has left, but Jefferson's godmother, Miss Emma Glenn, is close friends with Grant's aunt, Tante Lou, whom he lives with, and she convinces him to do as Miss Emma asks. Before visits can be arranged, Grant is forced to go through the humiliating process of beseeching the sheriff's cousin for the sheriff's permission, and then being interviewed by the sheriff himself, to make sure that he will not cause any "aggravation."

With permission to proceed with regular visits to the prisoner, Grant has two experiences at the school where he works that bring some perspective to his own life. The superintendent of the schools visits, and Grant finds himself acting servile to him, the way a black man is expected to behave toward a white man, in order to assure that his little one-room school will be kept open. Also, he observes the old men who deliver his wood, and then the school children that he sends out to chop the wood: "And I thought to myself, What am I doing? Am I reaching them at all? They are acting exactly as the old men did earlier. They are fifty years younger, maybe more, but doing the same things those old men did who never attended a day of school in their lives. Is this just a vicious circle? Am I doing anything?"

Visits to Jefferson

Grant is reluctant to become involved with Jefferson from the start, and Jefferson is just as reluctant about receiving visitors. The first few visits, Grant comes with Miss Emma, and then he comes alone. Jefferson does not talk when Miss Emma, whom he calls his nannan, is around, but alone with Grant he bitterly asks about the electric chair and says that he is just a hog, while Grant insists that he is a man.

At the same time, Reverend Ambrose starts visiting Jefferson. Tante Lou, Miss Emma and the Reverend all wish that Grant would try to get Jefferson to be more concerned about his soul and getting into heaven, but Grant, though he believes in God, is not willing to promote their religious beliefs. When he talks with his girlfriend, Vivian, Grant expresses his fondest wish would be for them to leave the parish, to leave the South, as almost everyone who grew up in the area and gotten an education has done before, but he feels stuck there because Vivian's divorce is not final (actually, she points out, he left once, to live with his parents in California, but he came back on his own). At the school Christmas pageant, there is only one package under the tree, with a pair of warm socks and a wool sweater for Jefferson, indicating how much the community is thinking about his imminent execution.

After the date for the execution is set at April 8th, the second Friday after Easter, Jefferson becomes a little less bitter, and he becomes even more at ease with his situation when Grant brings him a radio, although the Reverend and the women are upset that he is listening to music when he should be thinking about God. Jefferson agrees to accept a pencil and a pad of paper to write down things that he might want to talk about during their visits. In the meantime, Grant loses some of the detached cool that he has maintained throughout the ordeal, starting a bar fight with a few mulattos who make racist remarks and say that Jefferson should die. Vivian reminds Grant of the danger that he puts her, and all of the people who depend on him, in when he acts recklessly. At their last visit together, Jefferson is still angry about his fate, but he promises to face it with as much calm as he can, for the sake of his nannan.

The Execution and After

Chapter 29 consists of excerpts from Jefferson's diary, written in his uneducated grammar. He describes his fears and his doubts, but also his relief that he has been able to comfort Miss Emma a little, and that she was able to kiss him for the first time. Chapter 30 describes the day of the execution from the points of view of different citizens in the town: those who saw the truck with the electric chair arrive, those who saw it taken into the courthouse, the deputies who were responsible for having Jefferson's head, arm and leg shaved, the people shopping two blocks away who can hear the generator that powers the electric chair, etc.

At his school out in the country, Grant has his children kneel in prayer from twelve o'clock until they receive word that the execution is over, just as Vivian earlier said she planned do with her students. The sheriff's deputy, Paul, who had been the only white man to treat him with respect during his visits to the jail, drives out to the school after it is over, bringing Jefferson's diary to him. "I don't know what you're going to say when you go back in there," Paul tells him. "But tell them he was the bravest man in that room today. I'm a witness, Grant Wiggins. Tell them so." Grant suggests that Paul might come back one day and tell them himself, and he responds, "It would be an honor." When he returns to the classroom, Grant, who has been a stern schoolmaster and a reluctant participant in Jefferson's final days, is crying.