Cambridge Wizard Student Guide a Lesson Before Dying

By Richard McRoberts

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'.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521545145
• ISBN13: 9780521545143
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 64 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.9" x 8.9"
• Age Range: 16 to 18 years
• Grade Range: Grade 11 to Postsecondary