A Lesson Before Dying (Criticism)

Criticism

David J. Kelly

David J. Kelly is a literature and creative writing instructor at College of Lake County and Oak-ton Community College in Illinois. In this essay he examines how the inaction of Grant Wiggins, the book's narrator, might make readers uncomfortable.

Readers who do not want to take the time to learn from fiction, who want a novel to have a straightforward, simple message, might find Ernest J. Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying a frustrating experience. This is definitely a moral book, with a distinct sense of right and wrong, but it is also too wise about the ways of the world to oversimplify the morals of its characters. For instance, if Jefferson were merely a witness to the liquor store shootings, then readers could easily agree that he is victimized by the legal system, but Gaines, rather than leaving him one hundred percent innocent, has him empty out the store's cash register. His lawyer certainly commits an offense against humanity by comparing Jefferson to a hog, but he does so for a good cause, to save the boy's life. Tante Lou and Miss Emma are too abrupt and narrow-minded to be thought of as saints, but they are too compassionate to be dismissed as comic types. It is not easy for a reader to interact with well-rounded characters: by their very nature, they challenge our assumptions. The more difficult they are, the more we can learn about the complexity of life.

For me, Grant Wiggins was a difficult character. I admired him at times, but more often I found myself annoyed with him. This annoyance was tiny, more like an itch than a headache, so that at first I could not be sure that I was feeling it at all. Once I accepted the fact that I was not comfortable with Grant, I had to question what it was about him, and, more importantly, about me, that was causing the problem. As much as I liked the book, why couldn't I get along with its narrator? It wasn't that he had bad circumstances, because seeing characters overcome bad circumstances is what reading is all about: we can detest a character's circumstances and still admire the character. It wasn't that he had too much misery for me to bear, because his life really wasn't that bad. The good things he did have, he didn't appreciate, but that should not have bothered me — there is no reason a reader should have to agree with the values of the narrator in order for the book to be a meaningful experience.

I kept waiting for him to choose what he wanted to be, to be what he chose to be. I was kept in an uneasy middle ground, watching him do the wrong things, bickering and storming out in the middle of conversations. I waited for him to quit blaming and hating the people who cared about him. For a while I thought that my complaint might be a charge against the author's artistry: Grant seems to be more passive than a protagonist ought to be, observing and complaining but avoiding interaction with his surroundings when he can, and writers and critics generally agree that passive protagonists are the cause of weak novels. But he has to be reserved in order for the novel to work — its whole point is to lead us to the last two words, when Grant shows emotion that he kept bottled up throughout. Then I considered whether my impatience with him was cultural: I am a white man from the North, born a few generations after the time of the book, and I checked and rechecked my values to see if I was turning against the oppressed, using that "Why don't these people quit complaining?" nonsense that we have all used to filter out other people's problems throughout history. It's a lot easier to believe in self-determination when mainstream society welcomes you. Still, even accounting for my own distance from the situation, it seemed that Grant knew himself well enough to have more control over his destiny than he exercised here.

Thinking it over, I am convinced now that there is no other way Grant can be but frustrating. The story would be more pleasant to read if he would either do something heroic or something that readers can clearly disagree with, but a novel like that would make a different point than the one Gaines makes here.

There is a parallel here that is obvious but nicely left unstated, between the cell that Jefferson is held in and the fact that Grant, free as he is, feels locked into a position he never asked for. He sees himself as being penned in, circumscribed, as having his options cut off at all sides. To begin with, being a black man in the South limits his options drastically, narrowing his life to such a degree that any encounter with white people is bound to end in an insult to his intelligence, his compassion and his humanity. And if it wasn't bad enough that the cultural mainstream works to keep out Grant and people like him, he feels his life narrowed further still by the people within his own society. He feels trapped by his aunt Lou and those of her generation (note that the book begins with Grant feeling hemmed in between the hugeness of Tante Lou and Miss Emma at an event he did not even attend); by Vivian, who he blames for holding him back, keeping him from wandering the world; and by the responsibilities that come of being a teacher, of having to care for the problems of students and their parents and having to uphold a certain position of respect in a community where education is rare and valuable.

The beauty of Gaines's achievement here is that he does not feel that he has to make Grant Wiggins suffer like a saint in order to make readers sympathetic. There is undeniably some reference to the suffering of Christ surrounding the way Jefferson is treated, but that is not presented as any sort of hidden meaning: even Jefferson, uneducated as he is, recognizes the unavoidable symbolism. Grant himself is too sophisticated to be seen as a martyr. He is too well-educated to entirely hold our sympathies: we expect him to come up with a reason for putting up with being involved in this, but he keeps saying that he is only there to please others. He alternates between blaming Vivian for tethering him to this small parish and moaning that he loves her, but he cannot answer her when she asks what he means by love. He lives in his aunt's home while trying to avoid contact with her friends and her beliefs. He seems to never be in the classroom with his students, and finds himself distracted whenever he starts to grade their papers, all the while complaining that they never seem to learn. The white deputy, Paul, tries to reach out to him at the end, to span the gulch that divides the races, and Grant stays mum. As Reverend Ambrose explains, he is trying to keep himself above the complication of hypocrisy, to avoid telling the lie that is necessary to save someone's feelings. Is it really circumstances that have penned him in? Or has he jailed himself? He's just likable enough as a narrator for me to want to see the world as he sees it, but I also have learned through years of reading to not fully trust a narrator who feels that his problems are caused by bad luck, that things just have not been going his way.

Grant himself would deny that he is claiming bad luck for the problems that make him unhappy with the world around him. He has his own view of the universe that explains, in very sensible and objective terms, why he does not belong, and why those around him need to feel that he does belong with them and therefore fool themselves into thinking that they love him. Social forces drive black men from the South, he tells Vivian, and those who stay are broken by the system. Having not left, though he would like to, Grant feels that his education, and the social position that comes with it, make him the most high-profile unbroken figure around. He feels like a conspicuous target for Irene, his aunt, Miss Emma, or any other woman who feels the absence of a strong man. To him, then, it makes sense that the world that he does not want to be part of does not want to let him go. He doesn't take their love personally, nor does he feel any responsibility for it.

To his credit, he sees the strength to be a part of society and to be strong as something that Jefferson can achieve better than he can. I think the reason I am unconvinced by his case, though, is that I don't understand why being part of society has to equate with "being broken," even if it is an oppressed society like a black community in the rural mid-century South. Obviously, this might be the cultural difference between me and Jefferson showing — I am certainly not broken by being a part of my society, but then, for me, social success is not tied to keeping my eyes down and my mouth shut, waiting, or calling people I do not respect "Sir" and "Ma'm." I can understand why Grant would consider a black man accepted by white society to be "broken."

But what about within his own society? Every society has its outcasts, who like to believe that they are not a part of the group that they actually do belong to. I have known too many people in social situations that are nothing like Grant's, but who fear becoming a part of the world around them. They think of themselves as radicals, as free spirits who don't want their own uniqueness to be ruined by rubbing up against the commonness of the people around them. Grant calls it being broken; others call "selling out"; still others have no name for it, they just aren't content with where they are and they wish that people would leave them alone. These are the passive protagonists in life. Their stories don't usually make pleasurable reading.

That uneasiness I mentioned before has to be there. It is the sign that Ernest Gaines did not make Grant too comfortably sympathetic, which a lesser writer would do without thinking, and that he also did not make Grant so obnoxious that a reader would stop before traveling 256 pages with him. I wanted Grant to choose what he wanted to be and to be what he'd chosen — imagine, if the story had been tailored to my comfort, how little I would have learned about the world he lives in. Grant Wiggins is a complex character, neither saintly nor profoundly flawed, just smart enough to paint over his personal quirks to make them look like the consequences of the world around him. I don't know if I would like to know him. but I'm a much better person for having seen his world, and having seen it through his eyes.

Source: David J. Kelly, in an essay for Novels for Students, Gale, 1999.

What Do I Read Next?

• Gaines's 1964 novel, Catherine Carmier shows how characters deal with decisions based on their beliefs. Catherine, the daughter of a rich Creole, falls in love with Jackson Bradley, a black man caught between his love for Catherine and his understanding of the world beyond the community in which they live.
• Also a story of disallowed love, Of Love and Dust continues Gaines's search for human dignity. Published by Dial in 1967, Gaines's second novel portrays the doomed relationship between a black man and his white boss's wife.
• Many critics consider Gaines's third novel, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, his best work. The narrative recounts events in Miss Jane Pittman's background that originate during the Civil War and continue through the 1960s. The 1971 novel takes the reader on a trip back through time.
• Knopf published Gaines's fifth novel, A Gathering of Old Men, in 1983. Someone kills a white Cajun boss on a Louisiana plantation. When the lynch mob arrives to hang the black man they have decided is guilty, a group of elderly black men and a young white woman surround the accused and claim individual responsibility for the murder.
• Harper Lee wrote To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960. Combining the themes of racial prejudice and a child's perception of southern smalltown life, the story is about a reticent black man who is accused of rape, the man who defends him, and a nine-year-old girl who narrates the tale.
• Written by Albert French in 1993, Billy chronicles the tragic tale of two black boys growing up in the 1930s who fight back when they are attacked and accidentally commit murder. Ten-year-old Billy is charged, tried as an adult, sentenced to death row, and electrocuted.