A Lesson Before Dying – Sumary Essay, Research Paper

In ?A Lesson Before Dying? by Earnest Gaines, Mr. Grant Wiggins’ life crises were the center of the story. Although he was supposed to make Jefferson into a man, he himself became more of one as a result. Not to say that Jefferson was not in any way transformed from the “hog” he was into an actual man, but I believe this story was really written about Mr. Wiggins.

Mr. Wiggins improved as a person greatly in this book, and that helped his relationships with other people for the most part. At the start of the book, he more or less hated Jefferson, but after a while he became his friend and probably the only person Jefferson felt he could trust. The turning point in their relationship was the one visit in which Jefferson told Mr. Wiggins that he wanted a gallon of ice cream, and that he never had enough ice cream in his whole life. At that point Jefferson confided something in Mr. Wiggins, something that I didn’t see Jefferson doing often at all in this novel. “I saw a slight smile come to his face, and it was not a bitter smile. Not bitter at all”; this is the first instance in which Jefferson breaks his somber barrier and shows emotions. At that point he became a man, not a hog. As far as the story tells, he never showed any sort of emotion before the shooting or after up until that point. A hog can’t show emotions, but a man can. There is the epiphany of the story, where Mr. Wiggins realizes that the purpose of life is to help make the world a better place, and at that time he no longer minds visiting Jefferson and begins becoming his friend.

Mr. Wiggins’ relationship with his Aunt declined in this story, although it was never very strong. His Aunt treated him like he should be a hog and always obey; yet she wanted him to make a hog into a man. His Aunt was not a very nice person, she would only show kindness towards people who shared many of her views, and therefore was probably a very hard person to get along with.

The way Mr. Wiggins regarded his relationships most likely would have been different were he white. Mr. Wiggins feels, and rightly so, that several white men try to mock or make a fool of him throughout the story. This was a time of racial discrimination with much bigotry, so if the story took place in the present, it would be much different. In fact, there probably would have not even been a book because in the modern day, and honest and just jury would have found him innocent due to the lack of evidence.

It wasn’t really clear what sort of situation Mr. Wiggins was in regarding money, but he could not have been too well off because he needed to borrow money to purchase a radio for Jefferson, and he commented about the Rainbow Cafe: “When I was broke, I could always get a meal and pay later, and the same went for the bar.” I suppose he had enough money to get by, but not much extra. As the book progresses he probably had less money to work with due to the money he was spending to buy the radio, comic books, and other items for Jefferson.

Mr. Wiggins seemed to be well respected by the community, and he felt superior to other African Americans because he was far more educated than they were, that makes Mr. Wiggins guilty of not practicing what he preaches, although Jefferson probably made it clearer to him that the less intelligent are still humans with feelings. At the start of the book, Mr. Wiggins did not understand this. He went to visit Jefferson because Miss Emma and his Aunt more or less forced him to do it. He really had no motivation except that his Aunt would shun him if he did not comply.

The whole process of Mr. Wiggins’ development and the plot of this story both spawn from the crimes of two characters with no other relevance to the story. After the police found Jefferson at the liquor store with the dead bodies all around, he was of course taken to trial and the times being what they were, he was convicted with very little doubt that he would be found innocent. Miss Emma, his godmother was afraid that he would die a hog and have lived a meaningless life. She wanted him “Not to crawl to the white man, but to get up and walk to him at the end.”

At first Mr. Wiggins was not very concerned about Jefferson, he just wanted to pass the time he had to spend with him, but then after a while he began to think of what it would feel like to be a dead man, and what he could do to make the time Jefferson had left to be the best they could for him. This was the greatest achievement Mr. Wiggins accomplished in the entire book. He managed to be able to have pity upon Jefferson without empathy. After the point in which he discussed the ice cream and the radio with Jefferson, and Jefferson admitted for the first time that he was more than a hog, Mr. Wiggins truly cared.

Mr. Wiggins developed greatly during the course of this story, along with other characters featured in the story. Vivian met new people and increased the quality of her relationship with Mr. Wiggins, Miss Emma finally got to see someone stand for her, Tante Lou learned that she had a decent nephew after all, and Jefferson got off of his four legs and stood.

This book has much to teach us about the isolation, stigma, loneliness and theological questioning that a death sentence entails. Although in the novel it is a sentence handed down by a judge, parallels can be drawn with terminal illness. Wiggins, a teacher of values, offers empathy, friendship, a window to the world (via a radio) and a means of coping (he gives Jefferson a notebook to record his thoughts). These are all gifts we should offer anyone facing death. Perhaps, with the acceptance of these gifts, those near death can truly “die with dignity.”