A Lesson before Dying 471Wiggins experiences his estrangement more and
more painfully. He tends to think rather than act
and, paradoxically, his incessant musings about a
better life elsewhere possibly attest to his strong
attachment to the native region, much stronger
than he would wish to admit. The more actively he
engages in the “lessons” with Jefferson, the more vis-
ibly he follows the community’s imperatives, but this
does not alleviate his alienation. The point is that his
acceptance of a responsibility imposed on him by
the community is accompanied by a further separa-
tion from the community through a close acquain-
tance with another man on strictly personal terms.
An important aspect of Grant’s alienation is
his break with the church. He abandoned religious
practice much earlier than the novel’s time of action,
and his aunt has held a grudge against him because
of that ever since. His detachment from religion is
so severe that he gets irritated at the sound of songs
and prayers reverberating in the church. His reli-
gious indifference is not only an expression of his
personal choice, but also a manifestation of his dis-
tinction from others. He refuses to identify with the
people who delude themselves that God will save
them and that better times will come after death. A
crucial episode in A Lesson is Wiggins’s confronta-
tion with Reverend Ambrose. Grant suspects that
the preacher, whom Tante Lou and Miss Emma
trust unconditionally, wants to use him instrumen-
tally. Indeed, Ambrose wants to persuade him that
Jefferson should express his religious feelings before
the execution so as to give his godmother a final
consolation and to convince the community that
his sacrifice will not be made in vain. Grant, who
cares about Jefferson’s personal transformation and
ignores the collective wishes or expectations, chal-
lenges Ambrose on the grounds that he does not
respect the convict’s individual feelings and talks
only about empty gestures.
Whereas the theme of alienation evidently
revolves around the dilemmas faced by Grant Wig-
gins, it is further developed in the presentation of
Matthew Antoine, the local schoolteacher from
the time of Grant’s youth. In the portrayal of this
character, Gaines directly points to race as a factor
behind individual alienation. Basically, Antoine is a
Creole and as such he does not belong to the black
community, even though he devoted most of his life
to African Americans. Antoine feels that he wasted
his life, and now that he is an old man it is much
too late to improve his situation. When he looks at
Grant, he recognizes himself from his younger years,
recognizes his own dreams and illusions. However,
despite the odds, Grant still has a chance for a
radical change in his life, which makes Antoine even
more bitter and hateful.
The theme of alienation plays a central role in
Gaines’s novel as it facilitates the exploration of
the problems arising at the intersections of indi-
vidual and collective experience. Individual alien-
ation results from, as much as it leads to, a variety of
tensions between a person and a group. The analysis
of such tensions provides a key to the understanding
of social phenomena and historical circumstances.
Marek Paryzcommunity in A Lesson before Dying
In A Lesson before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines por-
trays two communities, black and white, and while
he looks closely at the life of the former, he also
explores the relations between both racial groups
and pays special attention to important contrasts
between them. The presentation of any community
usually has a double focus: the place and the people.
In Gaines’s novel, the people in the black commu-
nity live in a special quarter of the plantation that
has been allocated to them. Such an organization
of the plantation area suggests that the situation
of African Americans in the rural South has not
changed visibly since the time of slavery, when black
people occupied run-down buildings located at a
distance from the plantation house. Although the
black Americans described in the novel are obvi-
ously free, the place where they live imposes drastic
limitations on them and reduces their possibilities
to the minimum. They live with the awareness that
they belong to an inferior social category.
The central building in the quarter used by the
black community is the church, which on weekdays
houses a school. The school exists thanks to the
dubious generosity of whites and possesses little
means. There is only one qualified teacher, and the
children of different ages have classes at the same
time; therefore Wiggins, the teacher, relies on the