A Lesson Before Dying

The story takes place in a rural town in Louisiana in the late 1940's where a young black man named Jefferson is about to go to the electric chair for murder. He has been accused of killing a storeowner and two men. What actually happens is that one day while Jefferson is on his way to a bar he decides to follow two men who were on their way to a liquor store. When they …

…is actually there sometimes that people really don't see. Focusing mainly on what it is like to be a man in society is the idea he uses as he writes. Mainly he points out that many African American males have been denied of their manliness and to express who he really is. And by expressing his views through his books it seems as though Gaines is showing who really posses the meaning of true manhood.