Earnest J. Gaines A Lesson Before Dying Essay -- Gaines Lesson Before

Earnest J. Gaines A Lesson Before DyingA Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest J. Gaines is set in a plantation community in farming(prenominal) Louisiana. The two main characters in the novel, Grant and Jefferson, are engaged in a struggle to achieve self-respect in society, which allots them none. The story takes do at the end of the 1940s, a time when Louisiana and many other(a) southern states were practicing separationism. The second college edition of the American inheritance Dictionary defines segregation as, The policy and practice of imposing the social separation of races, as in schools, housing, and industry (1111). Mr. Gaines employs a variety of settings to illustrate how this cruel practice invades all(prenominal) aspect of Grant and Jeffersons lives from religion and legal process to love. In the courtroom, the defense lawyer insinuates that Jefferson is less than a man because of his physical characteristics and likely lack of scholarship. He asks the jury, do you see a man session here(predicate)? Look at the shape of this skull, this face as two-dimensional as the palm of my handdo you see a modicum of intelligence? (7). He further degrades Jefferson by referring to him as a thing, What you see here is a thing that acts on command, and finally as an animal, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this. (7-8). Evidently, discrimination and stereotyping found on the tier of skin pigmentation exhibited existed as a hierarchy with the lightest skin pigmentation on bakshis and the darkest on the bottom, with the each individual cluster discriminating against the one on a lower floor them. Grants former schoolmaster, Mathew Antoine, may have been a antheral role model for him. However, professor Antoine was bitter, he loathed himself ... ...grained the principles of slavery and its progeny (segregation) were in Louisiana society. It is unfathomable that people (i.e., the Creole) exposed to unjust discrimination based s imply on their pigmentation, would in turn discriminate against others for similarly fantastic and irrational reasons. From the courtroom to the jailhouse, Grant and Jefferson faced discrimination. However, when they finally realized that the stereotypes being forced upon them were only physical confinements, not mental or unearthly confinements, they were able to identify their own self-worth and achieve self-respect. Only when the mind is save has the body a chance to be free. (251).Works CitedAmerican Heritage Dictionary. Second College Edition. Boston, MA Houghton MifflinCompany.1982.Gaines, Ernest J. A Lesson Before Dying. New York, NY Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.1993.