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Reflection: A Lesson Before Dying

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Nine months ago I finished reading A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines. I initially gave it a four-star rating because I felt it was lacking in showing Jefferson’s side of the story.   If you have never read A Lesson Before Dying , the story is about a young man who was found guilty of murdering a liquor store owner during a robbery and was executed.   Jefferson is a young man who is described as being “slow” and who follows two young men into the liquor store. Jefferson claims that one of the two men was the one that killed the liquor store owner. When the police officers arrived, they found all three men dead and Jefferson taking money from the cash register.   Jefferson went to trial for the robbery and murder of the liquor store owner.   His lawyer tried to establish his innocent by comparing him to a “hog.”   This comparison of “hog” brings me to Claude McKay’s poem about the race riots of 1919, If We Must Die : If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and p