A Lesson Before Dying Analysis

Do we control the direction of our lives, or do forces outside of our control determine our destiny? Ernest J. Gaines shows this with Grant, Jefferson. A good example of this would be Grant Wiggins. He shows that even though you may be an educated person, you can’t really choose on what you want to do. If you only have little options to begin with and if that is what society would want to give to you. Another would be Jefferson because he is locked up and can’t really do much. He doesn’t have much control because of his skin and because he got the death sentence without a fair trial.
The first person in the story is Jefferson. He is a great example because he is one of the main character so you hear more about him. At the beginning he is convicted for murder and robbery but the only crime he had committed was robbery. He was at the wrong place and in

He teaches because it is the most a darker skin person would be able to do during that time. A lot of people dislike him because of it. They have no use for that kind of person because once you have a brain you always would want more. You have more knowledge then what you could possibly do with. In A Lesson Before Dying, Grant says that he does not like teaching but is doing it because he says that he is no teacher, that he hates teaching. He feels like he is doing nothing in his life yet his aunt tells him to teach. This show we have no control because no matter how loud he yells she won’t listen to him. His aunt, Tante Lou, would just turn a blind eye. In chapter two he says how he feels about teaching, “I had told her many, many times how much I hated this place and all I want to do was go away. I had told her I was no teacher, I hated teaching, and I was just running in place here. But she had not heard me before and I knew that no matter how loud I screamed, she would not hear me now.”(page 14 and 15, line