When the Teacher is Willing ...

...the student will appear -- Picture courtesy Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
In continuing my "Boomer Lit" series, I just completed A Lesson Before Dying, by Earnest Gaines. Cards on the table -- this isn't precisely a "boomer" book. At Borders, it was on the same table with other boomer books as recommended summer reading. In fact, it came out more recently in 1993 and was promoted by Oprah's Book Club in 1997. I grabbed it along w/ several other books on the table; its themes concerning racial strife and human dignity certainly put it in a category close to boomer lit.

Set in fictional town Bayonne, Louisiana in the late 1940's, Lesson is about a poor young black man, Jefferson, unjustly convicted to die in the electric chair. Jefferson is witness to a liquor store robbery and ends up being held (wrongly) as the killer. Jefferson's defense lawyer, a bombastic white racist, refers to Jefferson as a "dumb hog" and the main line of defense is that Jefferson is too slow and stupid to have orchestrated such a thing. Jefferson's surrogate parent, his godmother Emma is mortified that her godson has been so maligned. She beseeches her best friend, Emma for help. She asks Emma if her gifted young school-teacher nephew, Grant Wiggins, will meet with Jefferson on death row to teach him something, give him some erudition in his last months of life.

Grant is dubious about the benefit of such an exercise. He is agnostic and doesn't see much point in his teachings or the ministerial visits of Emma's friend, the Reverend Ambrose. Jefferson himself is very depressed and reluctant at the outset, referring to himself as a "hog" and turning his back to visitors. In dealing with racist wardens and local politicians, Grant sees firsthand the elements that doomed Jefferson. He sees in the age-lined faces of his Aunt Lou, Emma and the Reverend Ambrose a wisdom and spirituality that comes from decades of living and not from a college diploma. In the last chapters of the book, Grant is transformed into an advocate for vicitims' rights, and more deeply spiritual (though still not necessarily a Christian). Jefferson becomes a highly composed, dignified man who has no fears about his afterlife -- he is by far the most composed person in the death chamber, in the final chapter of the book.

Lesson is a book about transformations of the soul, transformations that come about when you embrace a situation closely rather than staying a cool, convenient distance from something unsettling. What all of us might carry away from this Lesson is that God walks in the unlikeliest of places, and gives credence, life and meaning to the "lowest" among us. That's quite a lesson to learn for any of us -- and we don't have to be on death row to glean something from the words in the book.

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