Examples Of Injustice In A Lesson Before Dying

Max Belkin
2/26/2023

Injustice and inequality are persistent and major issues in America. A Lesson Before Dying shows what it is like for people experiencing these problems. A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines is a book that takes place in Louisiana in the late 1940s. In the book, a young man named Jefferson is wrongly accused of murder and gets sentenced to death. In the process, he feels dehumanized, so his godmother, Miss Emma, tasks the narrator, Grant Wiggins, with making Jefferson feel human again and allowing him to die with dignity. Injustice and inequality affect Grant and Jefferson at various times throughout the book in different ways. The first injustice that is shown in the book is Jefferson getting convicted of murder. It is revealed early in the book that Jefferson was picked up by two men named Brother and Bear, who drove him to a bar. When

In order to do that, the first thing he does is go to Henri Pichot’s house so that he can get permission to visit Jefferson. When Jefferson arrives at Henri Pichot’s house, he is forced to enter through the back door in the kitchen. It is humiliating for him and makes him remember when he was a kid and had to always use the back door. In the text, it says, "Me and Em-ma can make out all right without you coming through that back door ever again." I had not come through that back door once since leaving for the university, ten years before. I had been teaching on the place going on six years, and I had not been in Pichot’s yard, let alone gone up the back stairs or through that back door" (Gaines, 19). This shows how Jefferon, Miss Emma, and Tante Lou feel about the back door. It shows Henri Pichot’s racism because he believes that blacks are not good enough to go through the front door. He would never make a white person go through the back door. This is not the only instance of racism toward