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Ernest J. Gaines's award-winning novel is set in a small Louisiana Cajun community in the late 1940s. Jefferson, a young black man, is an unwitting party to a liquor store shoot out in which three men are killed; the only survivor, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins has returned home from college to the plantation school to teach children whose lives promise to be not much better than Jefferson's. As …

…and social responsibility, for example. They should also be encouraged to examine their own lives and society with a critical eye tempered by the carefully balanced amalgam of compassion, acceptance, and commitment to change that informs A Lesson Before Dying. They should keep journals in which they record their responses to the novel, their responses to specific questions in this guide, and their observations on their own lives, those of their families, and their communities.