Reading Response #7 - A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines

July 10, 2011

Pages 135 - 151

Chapters 18 - 19

Have you ever known someone so well you know what they're thinking just by looking at them? Well that's what happens a lot between Grant and Jefferson. Grant speaks a lot about how Jefferson knows he knows, what he knows, that he know. Make any sense? No it doesn't, because Grant and Jefferson don't really know each other. They weren't friends before and they aren't friends now. But maybe the reason they have a sort of telepathy going on is because they are, in a way, the same person. They are so similar, their brains are wired the same way, they know what the other is thinking because it is the same thing, they themselves are.

So if they're the same why are they so different? What makes Jefferson and Grant differ is the options they've made in life. Jefferson chose the path set for him, dropping out of school and working in fields. Grant got away and went off to school. He got out of the town, even if just for a little while. It makes me wonder what would they be like if they took the same path as the other. Would Grant be the one on death row and Jefferson the teacher? Or would their personalities bring them into a different life entirely? I think the lives they chose for themselves are the only reason for their difference.

Grant finds a touch of Jefferson in him later at his school's Christmas performance too. Grant gets upset because everything seems too similar. Nothing is different and so he wonders if everything is changing, how is it that everything is the same. He feels alone. Like Jefferson. Like no one understands him. The problem is someone does understand him, they just refuse to carry on a conversation with him. And maybe the reason they are both so resistant of each other is because they know they are alike, and they might just learn something about themselves if they just tried. Something they are happier simply being ignorant of.

Also the story of Jesus' birth seems to brings an underlying meaning. Things like "God works in mysterious ways," and "the lowest is the highest in His eyes," make me find some symbolic meaning. God works in mysterious ways, meaning that Jefferson's death has a purpose behind it. Which is problem related to why it is important for Jefferson believing he is not a hog. And the lowest is the highest meaning convict, poor people, but I also see it as African Americans. They are seen as the lowest in society, which means God much see them as the highest. Jefferson, being a black convict, must be very high in God's eyes. Maybe this is trying to say that his life is more important that what everyone sees.