2PAC has a song called Runnin’ ( Dying to Live). One lyric line in particular is “Why am I dying to live, if I’m just living to die?”. Which bring me to the idea of being alive versus being dead. Reminds me of A Lesson Before Dying where Grant refers to Jefferson as already being dead, even though its clear that he’s alive. What’s the point of continuing to live if he is going to die anyway and is already on his way to death.
Category Archives: ALBD
Final Check in Group D: Jeleah, Shatavia, Angel, Kye
“The Last Supper of the Spring Semester” will be an event where we fellowship, eat, discuss the book, and present our representation of A Lesson Before Dying in the form of the scrapbook we created. The event will take place on May 16th at 4:30 P.M in the English Department Lounge.
The scrapbook includes characters from the book that we have brought to life in our own way. We each chose a celebrity or a famous individual that we imagined each character to be in our own way. Each character page will contain a photo of the celebrity that we have chosen, a quote we feel represents them the best from the book, and different photos, objects, sayings from the internet magazines or a creative source. It’s all about what we feel defines our character.
For example, Grant is going to be Denzel Washington and Miss Emma is going to be Cecily Tyson and the list of characters will be revealed in our scrapbook.
As for the recipe pages, we will each be making two dishes each that come up in the book or symbolize a part of the book. The recipe page will include the recipe of course, why we chose to use this food, and a fun fact/history fact about the food in relation to Louisiana.
For example, one of us will be making gumbo and gumbo is one of the oldest dishes in Louisiana. In addition, the dish is a cultural symbol of Louisiana as jazz or the bayou.
Below is a picture of the scrapbook and some of the stuff we will be using to create it !
A Lesson Before Dying Close Reading.
The book starts off with Jefferson speaking. Jefferson stated “I was not there, yet I was there. No, I did not go to the trial, I did not hear the verdict, because I knew all the time what it would be. Still, I was there. I was there as much as anyone else was there.” (Gaines, 3). Jefferson was a young African American man who had no rights and his life was taken from him. Although he wasn’t killed during the robbery at the liquor store, the law and society stripped him from the world. Jefferson was sitting in jail awaiting for the day he would be placed in an electric chair for a crime he did not commit. It made no sense for Jefferson to try to “fight” for his justice because it would be pointless. No matter how much he would say or do, he would still be blamed for the crime. There were other people at the crime scene who were killed, except for Jefferson. Everyone assumed and made it clear that he was in the wrong, when he wasn’t even given any time to speak up for himself. Not only as a man but also being a human Jefferson had no real placement in society because of the color of his skin. He could not change who he was, he could not alter his skin color, or his race. All he had left was time left to adapt to his current predicament.
Jefferson was already limited and held back from being a normal human outside of jail. But now that he was physically confined in jail, it was slowly destroying his mentality. It gave him time to continuously think about his day coming. How many days he had left before he’d be gone forever. This time in Jefferson’s life caused the people that loved him the most to support him and be by his side. But in Jefferson’s eyes it didn’t mean much because he would soon be killed. Should Jefferson have felt some type of love and specialty since everybody came to him and everything was being brought to him? It seemed like he was receiving attention and the right love from people at the wrong time.
All his life Jefferson wanted things that he was never able to have. Now that he was in jail, the fact that everyone amongst him is asking him what he wants, only made him feel worst. Jefferson expressed “The kind of day I want?” he said. “The kind of day I want? I never got nothing I wanted in my whole life. Now I’m go’n get a whole day?” (Gaines, 170). Now that his last days are coming up and he has nothing to live for people are asking him what he wants. He gets to choose the weather, he gets to have a whole day focused on him, is he supposed to be happy about this?
Grants task was to make Jefferson into a man before he was placed in the chair. It was up to Grant to break the cycle of feeling worthless and useless as a black man in society. There was no real set way of how to turn Jefferson into a man. But I believe it was more of allowing him to leave this world feeling like somebody. Not leaving this world feeling like a hog and whatever else society compared him to. Although the circumstances were no way near good, Jefferson still had time to feel and tell himself that he was somebody, no matter how much society down played him.
Manhood is supposed to be a time in life that is appreciated and valued. It gives a man a chance to reveal his intelligence, strength, and worth to the world. One group of men that never get to fully experience being a man are African American men. Being a black man in society is a reason of always having it harder, not being able to move forward, and having that purpose of living taken away from them.
Group D Final Check In
Our focus for our group project is to closely pinpoint teaching (hence the title) and the importance of community. Not only is Jefferson being taught how to become a man but Grant is being taught how to be real with himself. As African American men both characters were limited to learning and being educated. Luckily Grant was educated but he was still a black man.
“It takes a village to raise a child” meaning the participation from everyone in a community would help and nurture a person. Our project would be to create a scrapbook. The scrapbook will consists of the characters in the book but who we imagine them to be. For example, each character in the scrapbook would be a celebrity, actor, or actress that we feel best symbolizes the character based off of how they operate in the book. In addition, the scrapbook will consists of different recipes that were mentioned in the book and also happened to be meaningful to Jefferson.
We are trying to find a classroom or area for this but we will host an event “The Last Supper of the Spring Semester”. At this event we will be serving all of the food that is mentioned in our scrapbook. We will not only be feeding the community the food but feeding them the lessons we take away from the book, the idea of “becoming a man”, the idea of captivity/imprisonment, and we also wish to gain feedback and speak about the book and modern day struggles as an African American man. Have times changed? What are the differences and similarities now? Some of the questions we hope can strike a conversation.
Group D: Final Project , Shatavia, Jeleah, Kye, Angel
What: For our group project we are going to create a scrapbook. A scrapbook is a book of blank pages for sticking clippings, drawings, or pictures in. The scrapbook is going to be designed exactly how we think Jefferson, Grant, or a character from the book would create it. We will be filling up the scrapbook with Jefferson’s important memories, moments, recipes, and his time in jail. In order to do this, we will be looking for symbols in magazines, things from the internet, clippings in newspapers and physical objects. Being in jail and confined to one place causes a person to use their imagination. Similar to Jefferson and Grant they are both trapped in situations that cause them to do a lot of imagining and thinking. Something our group will be doing in order to create the perfect scrapbook that represents “A Lesson Before Dying”.
Why: In the book “A Lesson before Dying” a lot of the book has to do with symbols and teaching. Jefferson is being taught a lesson by being sentenced to death. Grants job as a teacher is to teach and he is also asked to teach Jefferson how to become a man. Since teaching plays a huge role in this book, the scrap book will be created to teach others about our insights, thoughts, and main ideas about the book. We all thought it would be a good gesture to create a visual. This way our imagination and how we views things from the book can be brought to life.