Ernest James Gaines, an American author, published this novel in 1993 and went on to win the National Book Critics Circle Award for this work of fiction. It is set around 1948 in the rural fictional town of Bayonne, seat of St Raphael Parish, in rural Louisiana, at a time when slavery had been declared illegal but racism and prejudice were firmly in place.
Jefferson, a 21-year-old uneducated black field worker joins two of his drunken friends and goes to a liquor store to buy wine. The white store owner tries to kick them out when he finds out that the men have no money to pay, thus resulting in gunfire, causing the death of the store owner and his two friends. Jefferson is wrongfully accused and convicted of the robbery and murder of a white man and is sentenced to death by electrocution.
Jefferson’s court-appointed defence attorney describes him as “less than a man, less than a boy” and argues that Jefferson lacks the intelligence to plan a robbery and, even if he had been involved in the killing, sentencing him to death would be like putting a “hog” (domesticated pig or filthy person) in the electric chair; “but let us say he was (guilty). Let us for a moment say he was (guilty). What justice would there be to take his life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this.” It was in essence an appeal to the belief that blacks were somehow sub-human.
Jefferson was raised by his godmother, Miss Emma, who had the conviction that he was worth more than a hog and should die like a man. This conviction, for him to die with dignity, owes its root to the powerlessness of black men in the late 1940s and is reflected in the frustration of the black man in the US’s south before the Civil Rights Movement started in the 1950s. “We black men have failed to protect our women since the time of slavery. We stay here in the South and are broken, or we run away and leave them alone to look after the children and themselves. So each time a male child is born, they hope he will be the one to change this vicious circle, which he never does. Because even though he wants to change and maybe even tries to change it, it is too heavy a burden because of all the others who have run away and left their burdens behind. So he, too, must run away if he is to hold on to his sanity and have a life of his own.”
Miss Emma turns to Grant Wiggins, a black teacher at the local plantation school and asks him to teach Jefferson to be a man. Grant has some status in the black community owing to his college education despite being black. However, he is considered to be uppity because he does not talk like the other black people in the community. Although convinced that there is nothing he can do, Grant reluctantly agrees to visit Jefferson in jail because of his Aunt Tante Lou’s pressure who is Miss Emma’s friend, thus helping convince Jefferson that he is a man, while his execution is awaited. At one point he says, “What do I say to him? Do I know what a man is? Do I know how a man is supposed to die? I am still trying to find out how a man should live. Am I supposed to tell someone how to die who has never lived?”
On a personal level, Grant Wiggins is in love with a married woman and believes that the only way to escape racism is to leave the town of Louisiana where he grew up. Grant, trapped in a career he does not enjoy, eaten up by resentment and angered by the injustice he sees all around him dreams of taking his girlfriend Vivian and leaving Louisiana forever. But, as the story develops, Grant and Jefferson forge a bond that enables both men to regain their dignity, reconnect with their community and learn the importance of standing. This is the story of two young black men who are very different but both face the same issues of racial oppression while struggling to attain manhood in a prejudiced society. If young Jefferson, the accused, is confined by the law to a death cell, Grant is no less a prisoner of social convention.
As Grant struggles to impart a sense of pride to Jefferson before he faces his death, he learns that heroism is not always expressed through action, for sometimes a simple act of resisting the inevitable is enough. Grant’s mission in the book is to show Jefferson hope, dignity, self-respect, and to prove to whites and blacks alike that it is possible to rise above your circumstances.
Towards the end of the book, as he waits outside the schoolhouse for word of Jefferson’s execution, he wonders, “There must not be a God” because God would not allow injustices like Jefferson’s execution. Grant’s only faith seems to be in Jefferson and it will eventually die with his death. When the time of the execution arrives, Grant makes his class at school kneel until he receives word from the courthouse that the execution is complete. There is certainly no uplifting ending but, if looked at carefully, there exists the possibility of things changing. The novel depicts the subtleties and hypocrisies of race relations, the limits and consolations of faith and the emotional process of putting a man to death.
The reviewer is a social activist. He can be reached at [email protected]