The fact that Jefferson, a young black male who was the only survivor of an interracial shootout, is going to die in the electric chair is unavoidable. What matters is how he dies — whether he will depart believing himself a man or beast. The all white male jury had already made up their minds before the trial had started, and his public defender lawyer no sooner would put a hog into the chair than him, an argument which will have done more damage than whatever the prosecution would have already said. Jefferson then, from that moment on, deem himself a beast thus devoid of all humanity.
A Lesson Before Dying is the fight for this psychological real estate in Jefferson’s mind. He’s not really the smartest boy. It is up to Grant Wiggins, the plantation teacher, to teach Jefferson before he is electrocuted that he is a man, and not an animal. The “lesson” here is ambiguous, because the teaching is not on a conventional sense, the student and teacher both reluctant to act their parts, and who actually partakes in the lesson is an even larger question mark, but we’ll get to that later.
The battle for the man within
The racial lines of the South were as divisive then as it is now. The voices from black America is few and far between, especially in contemporary literature. Much of those voices come from the North, particularly Harlem, and rarer still the voice coming from the South. A Lesson Before Dying however, does not necessarily put race in its centre — rather, it is the common question of humanity which the Bard had asked in Victorian theatres. What is man?
Grant Wiggins is an ambivalent narrator with no conviction of convincing Jefferson of his humanity. He is evasive of this responsibility when asked by his aunt and Jefferson’s godmother. Initially, he couldn’t see the point. To understand why ultimately that Grant Wiggins was convinced of the task at hand is to understand his perspective of the black South — that nothing really ever changes. In a poignant Christmas scene, Grant vividly described all the attendees of the Christmas program. Whilst we ponder why he had included this much detail, we find at the end of the passage that this had been the arrangement for years on end, that nothing ever changes here.
It is an absurdist position — he had found no purpose in his college degree to teach the young-uns, who will grow like their fathers and have zero chance for class mobility. So what’s the whole point of giving these children an education? Sharing the space with the church, the arena between education and religion parallels the battleground between Grant’s atheistic beliefs against Reverend Mose Ambrose’s Christian staunchness, a battle which will also be played for Jefferson’s soul, though the man and the Christian man may not be mutually exclusive. In another scene with the white superintendent, Grant asked for more funding and was met with a flatout refusal. He could not even teach the children hygiene as the community is unable to afford basic necessities such as toothbrushes.
In Jefferson then Grant would eventually see the necessity of bucking the trend. This is a fuck you to the powers that be, the establishment who unconvinced that Grant was able to teach Jefferson to be a man, lets him try. Jefferson, convinced himself no better than a hog would ask for food for hogs, such as corn, and would turn down his godmother’s food though they are his favourite food before being imprisoned. It’s a tough ask, but a necessary one. Jefferson at this state, was no better than Jewish prisoners in the Nazi camp, sleep deprived, stripped of humanity and expecting death as the only escape.
A Lesson Before Dying is poignant, full of rich, sympathetic characters trying to make do in a system setting them up to fail. This also goes to the white characters trying to break the mould, such as the deputy Paul who offered kindness to Jefferson. The lesson here is not for Jefferson, but also for Grant to find purpose in his calling. When we hear Jefferson’s voice, written on his notebook before his death, Jefferson is triumphant. The lesson, ultimately, is for us more so than the characters; to remind ourselves to be kind and forgiving, and value a man his worth regardless of our prejudices.
