A Lesson Before Dying

Setting

Time period

The context of the novel can be depicted in Chapter 12 when the writer mentions Jackie Robinson. The quote, "All three stood talking baseball. Jackie Robinson had just finished his second year with the Brooklyn Dodgers," indicates that the story takes place in early October 1948, a time that dates the darkest histories of race relations for African Americans.[4]

School/church

The writer draws the novel's focus on the challenges of religious education. Grant, an agnostic, spends most of his time in the church on the Henry Pichot Plantation. The school that he teaches in is the same place in which the town gathers on Sunday morning for praise and worship. Grant is continually challenged with the fact that he feels he is an outsider in his place of work; he does not attend church with the rest of his settlement. Despite Grant's personal atheism, much of the black culture and community focus on religion. Throughout the entire novel, this school is seen as a place of discrimination.[5]

Bayonne

Bayonne is an actual city in France, but also the fictional Louisiana town where the generation is set before the Civil Rights movement in the South, depicted in the novel.[6]


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