PROGRAM for 2005
CAMPUS READ
April 3-9, 2005
CAMPUS EVENTS
COMMUNITY EVENTS
LANE LIBRARY:
Read Ernest Gaines
ERNEST J. GAINES
Bibliography (PAL)
Biography
Biography and
Interview (NEH)
Ernest J. Gaines
"A Louisiana
Life"
(Faith Dawson, 1997)
A
MELUS Interview (1999)
"A Southern Road to
Freedom" (Washington Post, 1993)
Student Interview
with Ernest Gaines (1998)
A Lesson Before
Dying
and other works by
(and about) Ernest J. Gaines
Excerpt from A Lesson
Before Dying
"If We Must
Die," by Claude McKay
Lesson
Page (Annenberg/CPB)
Read Ernest Gaines
(Lane Library, AASU)
Resources (Spokane
Falls CC Library)
Study Guide
(Mrs. Leslie Bradley, Century HS)
DVD version of the 1999 HBO film
COMMUNITY READS
Citywide
Book Clubs
Library of Congress
Georgia Center for the Book
AASU Campus Read 2004
Flannery O'Connor
Purchase A Lesson Before Dying
A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest J. Gaines, may be purchased from such local
booksellers as Shavers Book Store (326 Bull Street), Books-a-Million
(8102 Abercorn Street), Barnes
& Noble (Oglethorpe Mall), and Media
Play (11701 Abercorn Street). The novel is also available from online book
sellers, including Amazon,
Barnes
& Noble, and Powells.
.
|
|
"My advice to my
students, or any writer, is to read, read, read, and write, write, write. But you
have to read, and that's why I think I learn much more about writing by reading."
Ernest J. Gaines
Please join us for AASU's second annual City-wide Read, April 4-8, 2005, when we
will be reading and discussing the award-winning novel A Lesson Before Dying
(1993), by Louisiana native Ernest J. Gaines. Faculty and students in various
disciplines will be meeting to explore this story about a black man sentenced to death for
a crime he did not commit and a teacher who is persuaded to counsel him as he awaits
execution. In addition, a variety of events related to the novel will be held
throughout the Savannah
community.
"A Lesson Before Dying is about the ways in which people insist on
declaring the value of their lives in a time and place in which those lives count for
nothing. It is about the ways in which the imprisoned may find freedom even in the moment
of their death. As such, Gaines's novel transcends its minutely evoked circumstances
to address the basic predicament of what it is to be a human being, a creature striving
for dignity in a universe that often denies it." (Vintage Books Reading Group)
Armstrong Atlantic State University City-wide Read
April 4-8, 2005
Ernest J. Gaines's A
Lesson Before Dying
Monday, April 4. Across the Curriculum Discussion,
Noon, University Hall 158.
Faculty from various disciplines will lead a discussion about approaching Gaines's
novel from alternative viewpoints.
Tuesday, April 5. A
Lesson Before Dying, Film Showing & Discussion,
7pm, University Hall 156.
Enjoy light refreshments and engaging conversation as we view the 1999 film version
of A Lesson Before Dying, starring Don Cheadle, Mekhi Phifer, and Cicely Tyson.
Wednesday, April 6. Student-led
Community Book Club Discussion.
Noon, University Hall 156.
Join in the book club craze by sharing in this conversation with students and
community members reading the book.
Wednesday evening, April 6. A stage reading of the theatrical version of A
Lesson Before Dying, by Romulus Linney (1998. 2001).
Thursday, April 7, Guest Speaker: Ernest J. Gaines,
7 p.m., Fine Arts Auditorium.
Admission is by ticket only. Tickets are free and may be obtained via:
--e-mail (aasursvp@mail.armstrong.edu): please send name, complete mailing address, and
the number of tickets needed;or
--snail mail: please send a self-addressed stamped envelope with the number of tickets
needed to:
Gaines Himself
AASU Office of External Affairs
11935 Abercorn Street
Savannah, Georgia 31419
See also COMMUNITY EVENTS for Savannah Reads
Gaines.
from the Vintage Books Reading Group Center
Discussion Questions
- All the characters in A Lesson Before Dying
are motivated by a single word: "hog." Jefferson's attorney has compared him to
a hog; Miss Emma wants Grant to prove that her godson is not a hog; and Jefferson at first
eats the food she has sent him on his knees, because "that's how a old hog eat."
How are words used both to humiliate and to redeem the characters in this novel?
- Grant's task is to affirm that Jefferson is not a hog,
but a man. The mission is doubly difficult because Grant isn't sure he knows what a man
is. What definition of manhood, or humanity, does A Lesson Before Dying provide?
Why is manhood a subversive notion within the book's milieu?
- At various points in the book Gaines draws analogies
between Jefferson and Jesus. One of the first questions Jefferson asks his tutor concerns
the significance of Christmas: "That's when He was born, or that's when he
died?" Jefferson is executed eight days after Easter. In what other ways is this
parallel developed? In particular, discuss the scriptural connotations of the word
"lesson."
- For all the book's religious symbolism, the central
character is a man without faith. Grant's refusal to attend church has deeply hurt his
aunt and antagonized Reverend Ambrose, whose religion Grant at first dismisses as a sham.
Yet at the book's climax he admits that Ambrose "is braver than I," and he has
his pupils pray in the hours before Jefferson's death. What kind of faith does Grant
acquire in the course of this book? Why does the Reverend emerge as the stronger of the
two men?
- One of the novel's paradoxes is that Ambrose's
faith--which Grant rejects because it is also the white man's--enables him to stand up
against the white man's "justice." How do we resolve this paradox? How has faith
served African-Americans as a source of personal empowerment and an axis of communal
resistance?
- Grant believes that black men in Louisiana have only
three choices: to die violently, to be "brought down to the level of beasts," or
"to run and run." How does the way in which Gaines articulates these grim
choices--and suggests an alternative to them--make A Lesson Before Dying
applicable not only to Louisiana in 1948 but to the United States in the 1990s?
- Women play a significant role in the book. Examine the
scenes between Grant and Tante Lou, Grant and Vivian, and Jefferson and Miss Emma, and
discuss the impetus that Gaines's women provide his male characters. In what ways do these
interactions reflect the roles of black women within their families and in
African-American society?
- A Lesson Before Dying is concerned with
obligation and commitment. Discuss this theme as it emerges in the exchanges between Emma
Glenn and the Pichots, Grant and Vivian, and Grant and the Reverend Ambrose. What are the
debts these people owe each other? In what ways do they variously try to honor, evade, or
exploit them?
- Like Faulkner and Joyce, Gaines has been acclaimed for
his evocation of place. In A Lesson Before Dying his accomplishment is all the
more impressive because of the book's brevity. What details in this book evoke its
setting, and what is the relation between its setting and its themes?
- From the manslaughter that begins this novel to the
judicial murder at its close, death is a constant presence in A Lesson Before Dying.
We are repeatedly reminded of all the untimely, violent deaths that have preceded
Jefferson's and, in all likelihood, will follow it. Why then is Jefferson's death so
disturbing to this book's black characters, and even to some of its white ones? What does
Jefferson's death accomplish that his life could not?
|
