What kind of teacher is Grant? Why is he like this?

Grant Wiggins, the narrator of A Lesson Before Dying, is a disaffected African-American schoolteacher living in the quarter. Raised by his Tante Lou for unknown reasons (his parents are alive and live in California), Grant is more educated than most of the people, black or white, in the region, and is accorded high social status because of this. However, he feels oppressed in the South because of his race, and longs to move to the North and take up a different profession. Grant cares about his students but always has a sense of fatalism and futility that is not positive for his students.