The Lesson Before Dying- Setting and Theme Essays -

The Lesson Before Dying- Setting and Theme How important is setting to the central theme of the story? Explain using at least three different examples from the novel to support your thesis. Setting is very important in creating a central theme to a story. If a writer were to write a story about Egypt and set it in New York, it would not go along with what the writer is trying to communicate with the reader. It is also a critical element in nonfiction as the setting provides the framework for what is being discussed. In A Lesson Before Dying the setting was well built upon by Earnest J Gaines. There are three different settings that justified the story Gaines was getting across to the reader that are easily recognizable. The first and most prominent setting is the segregation of the villages. Since this story takes place in a time where segregation was a very big issue, the villages that Gaines paints in the readers mind is where the whites lived and where the blacks lived. The white people lived in big houses with nice lawns and a well looked after landscape. They had workers serving and cleaning up for them; where the black community worked for the whites or themselves and lived in small, dusty and shabby houses. The area in which the blacks lived was very dirty and rough compared to the white neighbourhoods. Along with the segregation of the towns, there were also separate schools and churches for whites and blacks. The schools in the black community are wooden and dusty, not well looked after and do not have many kids in them. The writing of how these characters spoke were also a big part of the segregation. Blacks talk differently, sounding less educated than the whites and the whites talked wit h full words and limited to no slang words that are prominent throughout the blacks vocabulary. This shows the difference on how the two different races are brought up and educated, all dependant on their skin colour. Another part of this setting that doesn't deal with the villages or anything of the main community is the jail that Jefferson was locked in. He was separated from the cell where the white men were held, even causing segregation in a place where everyone locked up did something bad, but the black man was separated because he was seen as more of a possible threat to the white men, even though the men committed worse crimes. Many times throughout this book you see examples of ways that the community was separated to, what seemed to be, protect or sensitize the whites from the blacks. The second setting that Gaines portrays is the era in which this novel is based on. The novel is set in Bayonne, Louisiana, in the south, Pre-Civil Rights. During this time there was little to no justice for black people because they were known as lower class, dirty and poor. They were not treated well by the whites and were looked at as nothing more than slaves. Gaines brought this setting upon the reader by writing about how, for example, Edna Guidry, Sam's wife and Henri Pichot's sister asked Grant many questions when he came asking to visit Jefferson, but answered them herself, as though she did not want to hear what Grant had to say, or as though he was not seen as deserving enough to speak. Many times throughout this book Gaines illustrates a community that is split because of the effect of the pre-civil rights entitlement of the whites. This is overhears the two men saying that Jefferson should have been executed long ago, Grant tells them to be quite. Upon having Grant tellin g the white men to be quite, this is portrayed as bad thing that should not have happened because the white men believe they should not be told what to do by a coloured man This causes a fight and Grant being knocked unconscious. In this part of the pre-civil rights setting, it shows that black men didn't have the right to stand up for themselves or others to white men, or anyone that was white for that matter. They had no