Same Difference In Ernest Gaines 'A Lesson Before Dying'

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Same Difference Throughout literature, characters often play similar roles and emulate similar attitudes. In a novel, A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines, and a poem by Claude McKay, titled If We Must Die, multiple instances of this are discovered. During Gaines’s novel, a young boy is wrongly accused of murder, and the author describes the journey of a teacher who has been deemed to teach Jefferson to be a man before he dies an unjust death. During McKay’s poem, he portrays how an unjust death, such as Jefferson’s, might play out. The varying tones of McKay’s poem match those of key characters in A Lesson Before Dying. Individual characters from the novel show likeness in that of their attitude or role to distinct lines of the poem. Through their different perspectives, and tones of voice, Jefferson, Reverend Ambrose and Grant demonstrate the thematic parallels to If We Must Die from A Lesson Before Dying. Both Claude McKay and …show more content…
Before an significant meal in the novel, Grant pulls Jefferson aside and tells him to act not for himself but for the oppressed communities, such as those of dark skin. He says “You have a chance of being bigger than anyone who has ever lived on that plantation.” Grant is telling Jefferson how if he does one brave act it will encourage others to do the same and soon all those little acts will add up to one big act benefitting his community. In support, McKay claims that multiple little incidents will indeed add up to one fatal incident. He writes “And for the thousand blows deal one deathblow.” McKay seems to be implying that one fatal blow is not just that, but a multitude of small acts and incidents adding up to it. Correspondingly, Grant, who Gaines has described to believe the same as McKay, explains this to Jefferson and encourages him to take part in
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