Education once served as the golden ticket towards physical freedom but it just as well enlightens and leads an individual towards mental liberty. In Immanuel Kant’s “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” Kant claims that for enlightenment, “…nothing is required but freedom, and… [the] freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters.” The character of Grant from Earnest Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying, is repeatedly demonstrated throughout the novel to be freer than his equals as he is not restricted to the fields where other colored men work because he has received the higher education that the others didn’t have the opportunity of. Furthermore, he is enlightened through the education he received to reason the injustice of society that binds him from leaving and abandoning the place where he doesn’t feel like he’s living to somewhere where he can “have a choice of things to do” (Gaines 29). Through physical and mental freedom both acquired through education, one should use it as the initiative to gather the courage to embrace and forgive the cruelties of fate in order to view the world in brighter colors.