If you watch modern movies you will find that these times it is quite easier to be a hero than it was fifty years ago. The world gives us multiple opportunities to proves ourselves and give us the self-satisfaction of being able to say you are a hero. But what is a hero? Grant says, “A hero is someone who does something for other people. He does something that other men don’t and can’t do. He is different from other men. He is above other men. No matter who those other men are, the hero, no matter who he is, is above them.” (193) Obviously Grant matches his own description of a hero. He proved himself a hero by counseling Jefferson while being a teacher with “more than enough” problems of his own.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. Just do the best you can. But it won’t matter.” (Antoine, 66) Grant’s former teacher, Matthew Antoine, has been bittered up by the whites and has no hope for African Americans. He has opened his eyes to the obvious and believes African Americans are stuck below the whites and have been born to work like mules and live like dogs. Antoine says, “Forget it. Just go on and be the nigger you were born to be, but forget about life.” (65) He was a realist, and a noncomformist; the world needed someone like Grant, someone who would stand up for his or her race, fight for equality, and break Antoine’s belief of the colored men’s doom. Which is what Grant did. He stood up for his class and became a teacher to make a difference in any possible way.
The time period Grant lived in took the word “easy” out of Grant’s task to do something nobody else would do. “I’m the teacher ... and I teach what the white folks around here tell me to teach—reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. They never told me how to keep a black boy ou...
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... in which racism was involved in his everyday life. He was born to be a failure, to be beneath the white people. His own former teacher believed anything he fought for in this world, was for nothing because of the African American fate. Grant proved this thought wrong by acting out and using the little free will he had to make a difference and do his part in changing the colored people’s future. Battleling through unfair justice and all odds against him in this white-dominated world, he still held himself and continued to help Jefferson even if he himself would not cooperate and ignore his loved one’s actions. He taught Jefferson to see himself as the person he can be, and not the person he was expected to be; to be above anyone else’s thoughts and be the man he was born to be, not the nigger his fate was telling him to be.
Works Cited
A lesson before dying book.
Through every single obstacle a person went through no one gave up. Colored people did not lose hope in becoming equal to white people because they knew they were capable. What the author was trying to prove was exactly that. Although blacks were slaves and were always belittled by white they proved to be more than what the whites thought they were capable of. They stood up for themselves and they did it in several events that occurred in the book. For example, in the chapter a black teenager, James Crawford, was not slightly intimidated by a deputy registrar that attempted to sound intimidating. In the conversation the registrar made some menacing remarks to this young African American teenager saying he would put a bullet through the teenagers head. Not afraid at all, Crawford valiantly told him if it happened he would be dead, but people would come from all over the world. This young man was not afraid to stand up for himself and was not going to tolerate it in any way. Malcolm X was another inspiration to African Americans for the way he stood up for them. He had a strong connection with the people who were influenced by him. In late 1964, Malcolm X told a group of black students from Mississippi, “You’ll get freedom by letting your enemy know that you’ll do anything to get your freedom; then you’ll get it” (Zinn 461). This quote connected to how
Lewis’s viewpoint is not without it’s truths. The Harlem renaissance was overseen by a number of intellectuals such as Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, and W.E.B. Dubois. Booker T. Washington‘s, a highly influential speaker of the age, words appealed to both Caucasians and African-Americans. Washington forged an interracial bridge of communication through his unique tactics in the quest for equality. He believed in more subtle ways of gaining equality through hard work, cunning, and humility. He stated, “The wisest among my race understands that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing.”(Salley, 15) With this statement, Washington himself denies that this new awakening in equality and arts could be forced,...
After he went and obtained a college degree, Grant Wiggins goes back to live with his grandmother. Being that he is a very educated person, Grant was elected by his grandmother to try and get Jefferson to realize that he was a man and not an animal like the white people had led him to believe. Throughout the entire novel, Grant is battling this idea in his head because he doesn’t feel that even he knows what it is to be a man. He doesn’t believe that he is the right person to talk to Jefferson. But by the end of the novel, he figures out what it is to be a man.
In the novel A Lesson Before Dying, Grant and Jefferson are black men in the era of a racist society; but they have struggles with a greater dilemma, obligation and commitment. They have obligations to their families and to the town they are part of. They lived in a town were everybody knew everybody else and took care of each other. "Living and teaching on a plantation, you got to know the occupants of every house, and you knew who was home and who was not.... I could look at the smoke rising from each chimney or I could look at the rusted tin roof of each house, and I could tell the lives that went on in each one of them." [pp. 37-38] Just by Grant’s words you can tell that that is a community that is very devoted to each other.
Booker T. Washington was an African American leader who established an African-American college in 1181. Then in 1895 delivered the Atlanta Compromise Speech to an audience of mainly Southerners, but some Northerners were present. In his speech he made a few points. He said, “No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.” Washington believed that the African American race needed to learn first that manual labor was just as important as the work of intellects. He thought that until they learned this they were not worthy of becoming intellects themselves. The color line is thus important in teaching them this lesson. He also said, “It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges.” His opinion was that one day blacks would deserve to have equal rights with the whites, but right now in 1895 the blacks needed to be...
In his work, “A Talk to Teachers,” James Baldwin poured out his point of view on how he believed American children should be taught. Throughout the essay, Baldwin focused on a specific race of school children: Negros. Perhaps this was because he himself was an African American, or even for the mere idea that Negros were the most vulnerable for never amounting to anything — according to what the American society thought during the twentieth century, specifically the 1960s when this piece was published. With the focus determined, the reader is able to begin analyzing Baldwin’s main appeal through the essay. At first glance one could argue that the essay has no credibility with Baldwin’s lack of not being a school teacher himself; however, when further evaluated one could state that whether or not he was a school teacher has nothing to do with the fact that he establishes his credibility, he appeals to morals, emotions with authority, and values, which thus outweighs the possible negativities associated with his argument.
Throughout the article, author Jeffrey Aaron Snyder breaks down the ideology of Carter G. Woodson’s speech “Miseducation of the Negro”. Going into definitive detail, of how the Miseducation of African Americans is mainly controlled by outside sources. Snyder explaining how Woodson described forms of “Outside Control” through harsh laws placed on African American society “a vicious regime of Jim Crow segregation. To read Miseducation as a progressive text is to recover a richer, more expansive history of progressive education, one that addresses the color line in addition to the ‘social frontier’” (277 pg. 5). Further explaining how much of an influence these “outside sources” had on the “miseducation of a negro”, where as to black organizations
The word "hero" is so often used to describe people who overcome great difficulties and rise to the challenge that is set before them without even considering the overwhelming odds they are up against. In our culture, heroes are glorified in literature and in the media in various shapes and forms. However, I believe that many of the greatest heroes in our society never receive the credit that they deserve, much less fame or publicity. I believe that a hero is simply someone who stands up for what he/she believes in. A person does not have to rush into a burning building and save someone's life to be a hero. Someone who is a true friend can be a hero. A hero is someone who makes a difference in the lives of others simply by his/her presence. In Tim O'Brien's novel, The Things They Carried, the true heroes stand out in my mind as those who were true friends and fought for what they believed in. These men and women faced the atrocities of war on a daily basis, as explained by critic David R. Jarraway's essay, "'Excremental Assault' in Tim O'Brien: Trauma and Recovery in Vietnam War Literature" and by Vietnam Veteran Jim Carter. Yet these characters became heroes not by going to drastic measures to do something that would draw attention to themselves, but by being true to their own beliefs and by making a difference to the people around them.
The struggles of Grant and Jefferson share a common theme, man’s search for meaning. Grant has the advantage of a college education, and while that may have provided some enlightenment, he remains in the same crossroads as Jefferson. Grant sees that regardless of what he does, the black students he teaches continue in the same jobs, the same poverty and same slave-like positions as their ancestors. Grant has no hope of making a difference and sees his life as meaningless. Though Jefferson’s conflict is more primal, it is the same as Grant’s struggle. Jefferson is searching for the most basic identity, whether he is man or animal. It is this conflict of meaning and identity that bring Grant and Jefferson together.
.... In his life the restriction by the whites didn’t stop or discourage him from following his dream, which made him unique and outstanding. He was capable of thinking for himself, even though the whites had tried to “guide” him like the other blacks.
Washington 's programme naturally takes an economic cast” (Du Bois). Du Bois believed that Washington’s theory was a gospel of Work and Money that ultimately overshadowed the higher aims of life” Later he makes another statement so powerful that should have made all African Americans want to stand up and fight for a better social status and rights for both the South and North. He goes on stating “The growing spirit of kindliness and reconciliation between the North and South after the frightful differences of a generation ago ought to be a source of deep congratulation to all, and especially to those whose mistreatment caused the war; but if that reconciliation is to be marked by the industrial slavery and civic death of those same black men, with permanent legislation into a position of inferiority, then those black men, if they are really men, are called upon by every consideration of patriotism and loyalty to oppose such a course by all civilized methods, even though such opposition involves disagreement with Mr. Booker T. Washington.” (Du
In doing this, his hope was to make the reader either validate what was already known or to honestly see the problem as injustice and unfairness. The repetition enforced reality. With the intent to prove treatment of African Americans was solely based on skin color, was validated through Griffin’s own search for employment. Despite his credentials was told there were no jobs for “your kind.” The belief that the “white man” would keep them uneducated and in lowly jobs was a means of control was supported by those he met from the shoe shine man to the father of six children who provided food and
As I reflect on the story of Mattie Jackson, I think about my own research agenda as it pertains to persistence and access to education for African American males from marginalized communities; particularly those who may not be as motivated and determined as someone like Mattie Jackson. Although Mattie Jackson had to overcome several obstacles in her attempt to gain her freedom and become education back in the 1800s, African American males today have different obstacles to overcome; different in name perhaps, but yet so similar because collectively they are deterrents to education. In the presen...
You also don’t have to kill anyone, conquer foreign land, or risk your life to be a hero. Anyone who influences anyone else by saving or helping save his or her lives is a hero. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. changed the lives of millions of people by bringing justice to minorities. Mahatma Gandhi, one of the greatest heroes, led a nonviolent revolution to free his country.
He talked about how African-Americans were free of slavery, but not free of segregation and discriminated demanding racial equality between black and white, emphasizing peace, respect, and fairness for every human being, for African-Americans to fight for their right not to feel exiled.