Dignity In A Lesson Before Dying

Marianne Williamson once said, “Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one.” In A Lesson Before Dying, a novel by Ernest Gaines, a young black man named Jefferson is sentenced to death for a crime he didn’t commit. As his attorney attempts to defend him, he dehumanizes Jefferson by repeatedly referring to him as a hog. When his godmother, Miss Emma learns of this, Grant begins to visit Jefferson in prison to make him a man. The importance of dignity is shown through the fact that Jefferson becomes a man through his own contemplation of life’s meaning and the actions of Grant. Jefferson becomes a man in part

That’s all I have to offer. It is the only way that we can chip away at that myth. You—you can be bigger than anyone you have ever met.” (Gaines 158). This quotation shows that Grant believes that Jefferson will be viewed as a hero assuming he can stay strong leading up to his execution and when he goes to walk to the chair. This will make him a hero, and therefore a man, because it will show the world that people of different races are equal. This helps to show the importance of dignity in that it illustrates that Jefferson, dehumanized to the level of a hog by his attorney, can gain enough dignity to be seen as a man. This evidence illustrates that Jefferson’s act of brave defiance in the face of death was in part due to the fact that Grant introduced the concept of heroism to him. Another quote that supports the fact that the actions of Grant played a role in the transformation of Jefferson from a hog

One can that in the beginning of his time writing in the diary, he does not truly want to write. This is revealed when he writes, “mr wigin you say rite somethin but i dont kno what to rite an you say i must be thinkin bout things i aint telin nobody an i order put it on paper” (Gaines 186). At the beginning of Jefferson’s diary, we can see that he is reluctant to write and that he is not comfortable talking about topics that make him vulnerable. This illustrates to the reader that Grant has indeed made a breakthrough with Jefferson in persuading him to write in his diary, but that Jefferson has not yet become a man because he is not yet brave enough to be vulnerable in his diary. We can see that Jefferson has grown into a man as we read one of the final entries in his diary, in which he writes, “its quite quite an i can yer my teefs hitin an i can yer my hart when i was a litle boy i was a waterboy an rode the cart but now i got to be a man an set in a