Author(s): Richard McRoberts

Education

Ernest Gaines is considered one of America's foremost contemporary 'black' writers. A Lesson before Dying is his award-winning drama about a man sentenced to die for a crime he didn't commit. The narrator, a school teacher given the impossible task of rehabilitating the condemned man, of giving him a chance at dignity before he dies. At first the task seems impossible, but compassion, understanding and the political necessity of making a statement against the 'white man's myth' (of racial superiority) actually manages to help the man rise from being a wretched victim to a 'hero' for his people. The novel ends explosively, with the execution, but also with a sense of the courage it took to face death. The text is very much a polemic for 'black pride'.