Analysis Of Gaines's 'A Lesson Before Dying'

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Recommended: Satire in Swift's "Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal is considered one of the greatest examples of satire. Enlightenment was a time period between 1685-1815, which allowed people to make a modern change. Gaines novel A Lesson Before Dying was an example of a modern change. Jefferson and his lawyer were black males given the courage to fight back against a court of enemies. The Enlightener Locke believed the philosophy of individual rights and limited government. Swift beliefs were expressed through neoclassical ideas; as to which Gaines novel is expressed with Enlightenment theories, necessarily John Locke support for "liberal" politics. Swift and Gaines are both managing an issue of destitution. Swift wanted the audience to see through satire and says that logic will not resolve the issue in Ireland. Swift claims emotion and empathy are needed to decide on his proposal. Swift 's humorous written work was really the best approach to venture his craving to show the issue confronting Ireland. Once in a while, pamphlets were comedic or served to enthrall. Swift says, "It is a despairing article to those, who stroll through this incredible town, or go in the nation, when they see the boulevards, the streets, and the cabbin entryways swarmed with bums of the female sex, trailed by three, four, or six youngsters, all in clothes" (A Modest Proposal), tending …show more content…

Gaines novel enlightens people that no matter if you didn’t do the crime you do the time even if around. Swift wrote his ideas in neoclassic styles out to the public. Gaines novel and Swifts proposal consisted of a vs. between two classes/race. A Lesson Before Dying included blacks vs. whites and Swifts included poor vs. rich. Each man has tried to make a difference in their time period by simply trying to be proven innocent with a war between whites (rich) and blacks(poor) or trying to end

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    In Ernest J. Gaines novel A Lesson Before Dying, a young African-American man named Jefferson is caught in the middle of a liquor shootout, and, as the only survivor, is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. During Jefferson’s trial, the defense attorney had called him an uneducated hog as an effort to have him released, but the jury ignored this and sentenced him to death by electrocution anyways. Appalled by this, Jefferson’s godmother, Miss Emma, asks the sheriff if visitations by her and the local school teacher, Grant Wiggins, would be possible to help Jefferson become a man before he dies. The sheriff agrees, and Miss Emma and Mr. Wiggins begin visiting Jefferson in his jail cell. Throughout the book, Jefferson has two seemingly opposite choices in front of him; become a man, and make his godmother and other relatives proud by dying with dignity, or, remain in the state of a hog with the mentality that nothing matters because he will die regardless of his actions. The choices Jefferson is faced with, and the choice he makes, highlights the book’s idea of having dignity ...

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    "They sentence you to death because you were at the wrong place at the wrong time, with no proof that you had anything at all to do with the crime other than being there when it happened. Yet six months later they come and unlock your cage and tell you, We, us, white folks all, have decided it’s time for you to die, because this is the convenient date and time" (158). Ernest J. Gaines shows the internal conflicts going through the mind of Mr. Wiggins in his novel A Lesson Before Dying (1933). Mr. Wiggins is struggling through life and can’t find his way until he is called upon against his own will to help an innocent man, Jefferson. The help is not that of freeing him at all. Jefferson will get the death penalty no matter what. It is that of making him a man. When Jefferson’s defender tried to get him off the death penalty he called Jefferson a stupid hog, not even a boy. Mr. Wiggins wants to leave the town and everyone in it except for Vivian, his girlfriend, behind, but he can’t or won’t. Everything is hanging in the balance of what happens to Jefferson. Mr. Wiggins is characterized through a series of changes with the help of one man, Jefferson, throughout A Lesson Before Dying mainly shown in spoken quotes.

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