This page was created by Ethan John Eddy.  The last update was by David Squires.

Keys to the Archive: A Lesson Before Dying

Dehumanization

By Ethan Eddy

Dehumanization in History 

 
During the long history of exploitation and dehumanization of Black people, their oppressors continuously branded them as a species beneath European people. Frederick Douglass explained in his 1845 Narrative how dehumanization worked when assessing the value of enslaved Africans. "There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank in the scale of being" (27). Not only did chattel slavery treat people as property, it also treated them like animals. Literary critic Zakiyyah Iman Jackson explains in her essay, "Losing Manhood," that Douglass's phrase "scale of being" refers to the notion of a Great Chain of Being. The Chain of Being originated in medieval Christian theology to explain the order of the universe as hierarchical, with God at the top of a ladder that descends through angels, humans, animals, plants, and eventually minerals in the soil. In one sense, the Chain of Being suggested placing people and animals on the same wrung perverted God's cosmic order. However, as Jackson points out, once in place, the hierarchical scale suggests "humans were measured by their purported capacity to be more or less 'animal'" (99). Treating enslaved people as animals (or animal adjacent) fit a white supremacist agenda by positing racial difference as species difference. The same racist logic justified the color line in the twentieth century, well after slavery was abolished. A Lesson Before Dying dramatizes how dehumanization manifested in the era of Jim Crow laws in ways that would have been familiar to Douglass.

An Era of Redemption and Change

Key scenes in A Lesson Before Dying directly allude to processes of dehumanization that Black people faced in Louisiana during the 1940s. Readers see it everywhere from encounters between Black and white characters to institutions like the prison. Most dramatically, the novel shows how dehumanization strained and tested Jefferson's dignity. He lost his sense of self-worth during his trial and conforms to his lawyer's characterization of him as a hog—a farm animal that has no other purpose than being fed for slaughter. Over the course of the novel, Jefferson makes progress on his journey to manhood with the help of Grant. Through Grant, Jefferson enters into a redemptive narrative arc for his humanity, dignity, and his community as a whole. Meanwhile, Grant too suffers dehumanizing humiliations due to his place in a racist society. He has to find his own redemption arc through Jefferson. Processes of dehumanization complicate how Jefferson and Grant find redemption, but in the end redemption appears as a sort of antidote to dehumanization.

Jefferson's Defense and the Unjust System Run by His Oppressors

Jefferson’s legal defense—ill-prepared and humiliating—is the most dramatic example of dehumanization in A Lesson. Instead of arguing for Jefferson’s innocence with facts and testimony, his court-appointed defense attorney decided to prove Jefferson’s innocence through degradation. In closing remarks, his attorney asks, “...would you call this--this--this a man? No, not I. I would call it a boy and a fool. A fool is not aware of right and wrong. A fool does what others tell him to do” (7). He states that Jefferson has no ability to act willfully or morally as a real man and brands him as something more akin to an animal, such as a hog, and further argues that Jefferson is too much of a fool to concoct such a plan.

The defense attorney continues  by reducing Jefferson to his capacity for labor: “What you see here is a thing that acts on command. A thing to hold the handle of a plow, a thing to load your bales of cotton, a thing to dig your ditches, to chop your wood, to pull your corn. That is what you see here, but you do not see anything capable of planning a robbery or a murder” (7-8). Jefferson’s existence is viewed instrumentality as only valuable to work in fields, much as an enslaved laborer. The attorney concludes by likening Jefferson to a farm animal: “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” (Gaines 8). Jefferson has been reduced to nothing more than livestock, much as Douglass described in 1845. On top of terrible legal counsel, the jury appointed to preside over Jefferson’s case consists entirely of white men, whose judgment against Jefferson is predictable.

This opening courtroom scene might fairly be characterized as a legal lynching. During the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries lynching in the South commonly circumvented the legal system. Black men in particular were targets of mob violence that prevented them from receiving a fair trial, sometimes for petty crimes or no crime at all. Someone in Jefferson's position might well have been lynched, although by 1948 the practice was losing favor as death sentences grew more and more common. Legal lynching names the process of unfairly trying a suspect, especially a Black man, in a court of law. Sociologists E.M. Beck and Stewart Tolnay theorized three main reasons for the large number of lynchings between 1882 and 1930: perceived political threat of a large Black population in the South, economic competition among laborers, and the maintenance of a caste boundary that privileged whites (Beck & Tolnay 526). Legal lynching fulfilled all three aims. In an effort to maintain control over their Black neighbors, white southerners invoked fear and danger for anyone who dared transgress the social hierarchies of the Jim Crow South. Grant tersely summarized the court's perspective in the opening chapter: "A white man had been killed during a robbery, and though two of the robbers had been killed on the spot, one had been captured, and he, too, would have to die" (4).

Inspections, Animalization, and Valuation

An early scene in the novel suggests how the dehumanization Jefferson experiences at the hands of the criminal justice system occurs in more mundane ways to all Black children in his community. The superintendent, Dr. Joseph, inspects Grant’s students during his annual visit. In addition to probing them with questions, he attends to their physical features. He inspects their hands, teeth, and other parts of their bodies for cleanliness. While he conducts his inspection, Grant reflects on his reading as a university student. "I had read about slave masters who had done the same when buying new slaves, and I had read of cattlemen doing it when purchasing horses and cattle" (56). This scene reminds readers how little changed since abolition—investment in Black bodies still took the form of cultivating laborers.

Much as the attorney likened Jefferson to a hog, the superintendent reduced school children to something like livestock getting ready for the market. This dehumanizing treatment of these children and the animalization that takes place from this inspection are efforts to instill a sense of white superiority and remind the Black population of their role as sharecroppers and field hands. If they are not willing or able to work for white folks, the school system has little use for them. Grant recognizes this form of institutional racism. Despite Dr. Joseph complimenting him on "an excellent crop of students," Grant experiences self-loathing for participating in an illiberal educational system (56). Indeed, the superintendent's emphasis on a "crop" of students links the students figuratively to agricultural work.

The Road to Redemption

In an effort to rehabilitate Jefferson’s status as human, Tante Lou and Miss Emma ask for Grant’s help. Over the course of the novel Grant continues to try and reach Jefferson and help him reclaim his dignity and humanity. While that work progresses slowly, Grant makes progress with Jefferson when visiting him after the date of his execution is set.

Jefferson talks to Grant more openly than in previous visits and seems more interested in accepting Grant as a mentor. He tells Grant he wants “a whole gallona ice cream” as his last supper (170). Grant offers to bring him the ice cream, then later promises Jefferson a radio so he can listen to music at night. Jefferson says he wants to wait for the ice cream, then smiles, prompting Grant to reflect, “He smiled now because he had something pleasant to look forward to, though it would be on his last day. And he would save it until the very last moment” (170-71). After his conviction, Jefferson acted like a hog without any human desires or connections. Expressing his desire for ice cream shows how Jefferson begins to realize he is not an animal but a human with needs, wants, and even goals.

Due to Jefferson’s redeemed humanity, Grant undergoes his own redemption. Up to this point, Grant has viewed himself as superior to his community. He feels alone, like an outsider, after he returns from California. As literary critic David E. Vancil notes in regard to the theme of redemption: "The first words of the novel are these: 'I was not there, yet I was there.' It would perhaps belabor the point to spell out how both Grant, who has returned from California to teach, and his charge Jefferson, a repressed and unthinking member of a post-slave society, achieve a level of self-awareness which allows them to achieve redemption into life" (490). As the execution date approaches, readers can see how redemption for each character is mutually constituted through their relationship. By aiding Jefferson to recognize his own manhood, Grant finds a way to reclaim a relationship to his community.

An Alternate Ending

The narrative arc of redemption is made even clearer by an alternate ending to A Lesson. Gaines drafted a few different conclusions as he worked out how to handle Deputy Paul's visit to the quarters. In this alternate ending, rather than letting the story end with Grant turning to face his students, refusing to hide his tears for Jefferson, Paul gets the last scene. Paul enters the classroom where Grant introduces him to the students. Paul begins to express how moved he was by the genuine courage Jefferson displayed on his walk to the electric chair.

The alternate ending concludes the novel with Paul, a white cop, addressing a room full of Black schoolchildren: “He looked down at the table a moment and took a deep breath. He nodded his head and smiled as he looked out at the children, waiting. 'I want to tell you about a man…' he said.” This version of the ending shows how far Jefferson’s redemption story reached—even beyond his own community. In this version it seems Jefferson’s display of humanity moved Paul to the extent that he can become a bridge between communities divided by the color line. Perhaps Gaines felt that ending was unrealistically optimistic. Or perhaps the alternate ending turned Paul into a white redeemer. Whatever the case, the earlier draft shows Gaines imagining how redemption might restore a humanity eradicated by dehumanization.

Jefferson's Humanity Redeemed, Grant's Community Restored

At the beginning of the novel, Jefferson seems to think that no one cares about him or his situation. He behaves, spitefully, as if he is nothing to the world. After realizing that people in his community such as his nannan, Tante Lou, Reverend Ambrose, Grant, and the schoolchildren are rallying in support for him, he slowly regains his sense of self-worth and purpose. These people come together to help Jefferson realize his true worth, to value himself, and to guide him forward through his redemption.

He redeems his humanity in his own eyes while also making his community proud. By standing as a man on his execution day, Jefferson makes clear that he dies as a person not an animal. Similarly, Grant undergoes his own redemption. He finds his own purpose for staying in Bayonne, teaching in the quarters, by accepting his value as a mentor to younger generations. He could not save Jefferson—no one in the community could—but he could give his student strength to meet his fate.

Both Grant and Jefferson reclaim their places in their community and in the world. One reclaims his identity as a man, the other reclaims his role in the community so that he can find purpose in life. In doing so, each character finds a corrective to the insidious processes of dehumanization that had defined his life up to that point. By finding purpose despite oppressive social conditions, they prove that they are, in fact, humans.

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