The Black American’s Self-Accomplishment in Ernest J. Gaines’s A Lesson

Abstract

The race issue has existed in America with the advent of the slavery institution, and strikingly since the abolition of slavery. As long as Blacks were in bondage, the racial consideration was not apparent. But since Blacks have gained freedom and citizenship in America, the color-line issue has appeared with a social classification, and segregation. On the basis their racial superiority, the whites have for long deprived the blacks from social, economic and political opportunities, which made it difficult to the emancipated Blacks to integrate a society they have highly contributed to construct. In this context, many of those emancipated black have had refuge in a kind of conceitedness, which led them to rather accept their condition of social and economic inferiority. Fortunately, some exceptional Blacks have emerged to make their way through the global American society. Such exceptional successful Blacks in American is what Ernest J. Gaines, portrays in his novel A Lesson Before Dying, through the courageous attitude of Wiggins a young black man who has eventually overcome the prejudice imposed on him by the Whites. The present research paper seeks to explore the positive attitudes Blacks could adopt in America to get fully integrated. More specifically, it seeks to expose in the one hand the possibility of any prosperous for the sons and daughters of those former slaves, and in the other hand the ways and means to that end. The study is based on an argumentative approach, with Ernest J. Gaines’ novel as main source, associated with analysis and documents in African-American history and literature as second sources. The global result reached is that integration and successful achievements by the Blacks in America are possible if they adopt positive attitudes among themselves and vis-à-vis the Whites, and so long as they “cast their buckets wherever they are