Ernest Gaines Interview (page: 6 / 7) A Lesson Before Dying	Print Interview

How did you first get the idea for the book A Lesson Before Dying?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Ernest J. Gaines: Living in San Francisco, I was living across the Bay from Marin County, and of course, Marin County is where the state executed the criminals in the State of California, at San Quentin. And whenever there was an execution, I would not write that day. I couldn't work that day. I couldn't do anything, or the day before, trying to imagine what this person was going through, and I would take off my watch and leave my watch. I'd go to the ocean and stay at the ocean the day of the execution. It was always 10 o'clock in the morning, and I would always just get away from everything, get away from people and go to the ocean. I could walk to the ocean, which was about four-and-a-half miles from my house, and I'd just stay there. I was always haunted by people being executed, for years and years. How do you feel about it? And I realized that in order to try to get rid of this, exorcise this, I had to try to write about it.

Whenever I heard about an execution, I'd read about it, but it's hard to take. One of my favorite books about young people being executed was (Leonid) Andreyev's The Seven Who Were Hanged, just a fantastic story. Andreyev was a Russian writer in the latter part of the 19th century. Because there were seven of them, I learned a lot about their habits, knowing that they were going to die on a certain morning, and I thought that maybe I could write a story somewhat like that.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. A common theme in my writing, one of the things in my writing has been about someone teaching someone younger something about life. Miss Jane does the same thing, and in Of Love and Dust I did the same thing, and a short story called "Three Men," we got the same thing. Someone is teaching somebody. Catherine Carmier. It was not always a teacher, but an older person, a much more wise person teaching a younger person about life, and I've always wondered in schools what were -- what did we teach anyone? What did we teach people in school? Surely, when I went to school, I was taught reading and writing and arithmetic. The teacher -- I only had one teacher in this classroom -- and he could not have taught me anything about pride and about my race or history of Africa or whatever. He couldn't teach me anything. He didn't have time to teach anything other than the basic things: reading, writing, arithmetic. So I tried to combine the idea of teaching someone something and a young man who is innocent of a crime. I'd try to bring those two things together. And what does this young man owe the world -- to the world -- when he's going to be executed for a crime he did not commit? What does he owe to the world? What does he owe to himself, when they think that he's a piece of nothing? That's all he's been taught since a small child, growing up on a plantation, such as the one I created for that. He's never been given love, except by his godmother.

[ Key to Success ] Vision

But he learned nothing from going to school. He did not learn a thing in school, and this teacher who is teaching on this plantation at this time really hates his position there, hates the conditions which he's teaching in. He's a very bright person. He would like to do other things, run away, get away from there. Because at that time -- this would be in the '40s -- it was limited to the things that a black could go into in a little place like that. He could be a storekeeper, or have a little night club, or he could be an undertaker or an embalmer or something like that, but he could not go into politics. He could not be an attorney. He could not vote. He could not be sitting on juries. He could not do anything. And he would like to get away, run, but he's kept there by his aunt. His aunt makes such demands that he must stay around to help, to try to help the children in the school, and he does it. He does it very poorly until he has to go to this young man, Jefferson, on death row, and it was there that he tries to reach him, tries to teach him that, "You've gotten a rotten deal in this world. At the same time, you've got to be somebody. You've got to realize that you are somebody." And he's telling him this. At the same time, he still would like to run away. But as Jefferson began to come around -- and it takes a long time, it doesn't happen overnight -- when he begins to come around and think that maybe he is somebody, this began to gradually work on the teacher himself, and it makes the teacher more humane toward others around him, toward his students, toward the older people around him, and toward his lady friend.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. It's a common theme I have that runs through so much of my work is that theme of commitment, of responsibility, that we are responsible for ourselves, regardless of whether we have four or five months to live, as Jefferson has before he's to be executed, or someone like Grant who would have maybe 50 years more to live. What do you do with that time? What are you going to do for yourself, your family, your community? What do you do with your life during that time? So I was dealing with those kind of things.

[ Key to Success ] Integrity

Of course, I have other characters running around the place, good ones and bad ones, to make the story realistic.

Speaking of those things, what does the American Dream mean to you?

Ernest J. Gaines: Oh, it's probably just another cliché if I try to answer this in any way.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I think that, to me, without love for my fellow man and respect for nature, that to me life is an obscenity. So that can be my feeling of the American Dream. Unless we care for one another and care for the world we live in, then it's -- what is the purpose of our life here? So I don't know what the American Dream is supposed to be, but that all men should get along with all men, but, you know, that's been said about a thousand times or a billion times.

[ Key to Success ] The American Dream

You were picking potatoes at eight and you've lived to see such recognition, so many honors and awards.

Ernest J. Gaines: Yes, many. It's me. I receive that, but what about my brother who did not receive that? What about all the others?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I could probably name 50 guys my age -- who would be my age now had they lived -- who were destroyed in their 20s and their 30s and their 40s because of the world they lived in. Violence, death by gunshots or a knife or heart attacks or whatever, strokes because of the kind of stress they had to live under. They did not have my chance. So I'm only a chronicler. Who am I to write about some things, certain things? Yeah, I went from picking the potatoes and picking the cotton to winning all these awards and getting paid for my stories and my books I made, and the films and all that sort of thing, but I think about the others as well, the ones who never had a chance, and what I received just cannot possibly make up for what they've lost. It cannot possibly make up for it. And I realize that not all of us are going to have what I have, but how can we -- how can the world -- make it easier, so that these young men don't wish for death at 20 and 30 years old, take any chance at 20 or 30 years old, or even their teens, because they don't care, because they don't see any future in their lives? If we can get a world like that, fix a world like that, make a world like that, then I think that would be the ideal American Dream, but I don't know if that's going to happen in our time.

[ Key to Success ] The American Dream

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