РефератыИностранный языкA A Lesson Before Dying Mr Wiggins Essay

A Lesson Before Dying Mr Wiggins Essay

A Lesson Before Dying: Mr. Wiggins Essay, Research Paper


A Lesson Before Dying: Mr. Wiggins


In A Lesson Before Dying, Mr. Grant Wiggins’ life crises were the center


of the story. Although he was supposed to make Jefferson into a man, he himself


became more of one as a result. Not to say that Jefferson was not in any way


transformed from the “hog” he was into an actual man, but I believe this story


was really written about Mr. Wiggins.


Mr. Wiggins improved as a person greatly in this book, and that helped


his relationships with other people for the most part. At the start of the


book, he more or less hated Jefferson, but after a while he became his friend


and probably the only person Jefferson felt he could trust. The turning point


in their relationship was the one visit in which Jefferson told Mr. Wiggins that


he wanted a gallon of ice cream, and that he never had enough ice cream in his


whole life. At that point Jefferson confided something in Mr. Wiggins,


something that I didn’t see Jefferson doing often at all in this book.


“I saw a slight smile come to his face, and it was not a bitter smile.


Not bitter at all”; this is the first instance in which Jefferson breaks his


somber barrier and shows emotions. At that point he became a man, not a hog. As


far as the story tells, he never showed any sort of emotion before the shooting


or after up until that point. A hog can’t show emotions, but a man can. There


is the epiphany of the story, where Mr. Wiggins realizes that the purpose of


life is to help make the world a better place, and at that time he no longer


minds visiting Jefferson and begins becoming his friend.


Mr. Wiggins’ relationship with his Aunt declined in this story, although


it was never very strong. His Aunt treated him like he should be a hog and


always obey, yet she wanted him to make a hog into a man. His Aunt was not a


very nice person, she would only show kindness towards people who shared many


of her views, and therefore was probably a very hard person to get along with.


The way Mr. Wiggins regarded his relationships most likely would have


been different were he white. Mr. Wiggins feels, and rightly so, that several


white men try to mock or make a fool of him throughout the story. This was a


time of racial discrimination with much bigotry, so if the story took place in


the present, it would be much different. In fact, there probably would have not


even been a book because in the modern day, and honest and just jury would have


found him innocent due to the lack of evidence.


It wasn’t really clear what sort of situation Mr. Wiggins was in


rega

rding money, but he could not have been too well off because he needed to


borrow money to purchase a radio for Jefferson, and he commented about the


Rainbow Cafe: “When I was broke, I could always get a meal and pay later, and


the same went for the bar.” I suppose he had enough money to get by, but not


much extra. As the book progresses he probably had less money to work with due


to the money he was spending to buy the radio, comic books, and other items


for Jefferson.


Mr. Wiggins seemed to be well respected by the community, and he felt


superior to other African Americans because he was far more educated than they


were. That makes Mr. Wiggins guilty of not practicing what he preaches,


although Jefferson probably made it clearer to him that the less intelligent


are still humans with feelings. At the start of the book, Mr. Wiggins did not


understand this. He went to visit Jefferson because Miss Emma and his Aunt more


or less forced him to do it. He really had no motivation except that he would


be shunned by his Aunt if he did not comply.


The whole process of Mr. Wiggins’ development and the plot of this story


both spawn from the crimes of two characters with no other relevance to the


story. After the police found Jefferson at the liquor store with the dead


bodies all around, he was of course taken to trial and the times being what


they were, he was convicted with very little doubt that he would be found


innocent. Miss Emma, his godmother was afraid that he would die a hog and have


lived a meaningless life. She wanted him “Not to crawl to the white man, but


to get up and walk to him at the end.”


At first Mr. Wiggins was not very concerned about Jefferson, he just


wanted to pass the time he had to spend with him, but then after a while he


began to think of what it would feel like to be a dead man, and what he could do


to make the time Jefferson had left to be the best they could for him. This was


the greatest achievement Mr. Wiggins accomplished in the entire book. He


managed to be able to have pity upon Jefferson without empathy. After the point


in which he discussed the ice cream and the radio with Jefferson, and Jefferson


admitted for the first time that he was more than a hog, Mr. Wiggins truly


cared.


Mr. Wiggins developed greatly during the course of this story, along


with other characters featured in the story. Vivian met new people and


increased the quality of her relationship with Mr. Wiggins, Miss Emma finally


got to see someone stand for her, Tante Lou learned that she had a decent


nephew after all, and Jefferson got off of his four legs and stood.

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