Responsibilities In A Lesson Before Dying

Responsibilities define a human. From cleaning a house to raising a child, responsibilities give people a purpose, and therefore having these responsibilities affect one’s behavior, personality, relationships, and happiness. In the fiction, “A Lesson Before Dying,” Jefferson and Grant are both afflicted by heavy responsibilities, and the actions they take to approach these responsibilities drastically affect their character. Jefferson is faced with the duty to die as a man for his godmother, and eventually accepts it, and both him and his godmother end their story happily. On the other hand, Grant is given the task of making Jefferson come to terms with his fate, and throughout the entirety of the story, he tries to avoid the task and forget everything related to it, which leads to broken relationships and an unhappy ending for Grant. Both Jefferson and Grant are tasked with heavy responsibilities, yet by either accepting or avoiding these tasks, they find themselves in two completely different situations at the

In despair, he gave in to the sentence and the insult, and acted like a hog in his jail cell, while waiting for the execution date. However, after regular visits by his godmother, the pastor, and Grant, Jefferson realized he needed to bear the weight of his death with dignity not for his sake, but for the sake of the people who cared about him and for the sake of people who were in similar situations. This realization leads to Jefferson accepting his death, and walking to the chair as a man, not as an animal. Due to Jefferson’s actions and his nobility, he not only made and strengthened with his community, but proved a point to the majority who labeled him and others like him as animals rather than people and died at