When a hog dies no one cares because it is not a man. In A lesson before dying by Ernest J. Gaines a young man named Jefferson is convicted of murdering a white man in the 1940s. His defense attorney even called him a “quote”. He gets sentenced to execution by electrocution. The book is not told in Jefferson's point of view, it is told in Grant’s. Grant is a black teacher who is encouraged to teach Jefferson that he is a man and not a hog. This book keeps the reader engaged while helping transporting them back to the 1940s so they can understand how it was to like be oppressed as a black man.
The closing statement of the defense is “quote”. The starting mood of was bleak and the tone is very pessimistic. The reader understood what was going on, they known someone was going to die from the very beginning. The author painted a picture of what was happening in the courtroom and how a man like Gant felt about what was happening. Gaines makes Jefferson a metaphor for Jesus. When Grant says things like “quote” he is showing how Jefferson’s sacrifice will empower many black men and woman. It also helps by explain how a innocent man is being put to death, how he is not respected at all and is treated as
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From when the verdict was read, Jefferson’s nanna having to beg the sheriff to let Grant teach Jefferson, and Grant having to act ignorant and unintelligent so that he does not seem too strong and intimidating. A lesson before dying the dialogue is simplified to show the education of the time period and the comments made shows the bias against black people. In the 1940s the former slaves were uneducated, Gaines shows this by the dialogue he has in his book. When Grant is talking to a white man, like the sheriff, he has to consciously dumb down what he is saying so he is not seen as disrespectful or as a threat. When Jefferson is talking in his journal everything that is said was misspelled with grammar and punctuation