Stereotypes In A Lesson Before Dying

Jail is a place no one ever wants to go. People go to jail for many reasons: robbery, murder, hate crimes, and there are people who are sitting in jail for a crime they did not commit. People have their different views on the justice system and how it works. People’s religious beliefs and personal beliefs in stereotypes play a major part in their convictions. In A Lesson before Dying Earnest Gaines reveals how different values and racism in a small community are seen through the characters Jefferson, Grant, and Tante Lou and their experiences and reactions.
Jefferson is a young black man who is at the wrong place at the wrong time. The shootings that takes place at the liquor store have nothing to do with Jefferson. However, since he is at the scene of the crime he was considered to be a suspect. He goes to the liquor store to get something to drink. At the liquor store Jefferson encounters an altercation between the two men, Brother and Bear, and the storekeeper Alcee Groupe. The narrator states “’Bear had been

“The most obvious example of such discursive confinement is that of the educational system itself. The schoolhouse is a detention camp of sorts in which Grant is allowed to teach only the ideology that will keep himself and his black community powerless.” (Auger 76). Grant feels as though his life is going nowhere fast. Being a teacher and doing the same things continuously starts to drain Grant. “Grant’s daily interactions with his students result in feelings of displacement and disillusionment. Grant compares his students to some of the older uneducated townsfolk and finds that his hours in the classroom make a little difference.” (Lockhart 83). Even though Grant is unhappy with where he is at in his life he still realizes that he still is making a change in his students they are becoming more intelligent than some of the older people in their