A lesson before dying
... one must see how at least three things are needed, courage, responsibility and education these all come together to turn a young boy into a man. A man does have certain qualities that make him a man. It is a division of many things, and among them is courage. Courage not just in the sense of doing heroically brave things all the time or being overly aggressive, but also in facing fears and difficult daily tasks. Having courage could mean being there for friends or family. It could mean facing a fear such as heights, the dark, or snakes. In this story, however, it has a deeper meaning. In the book there was never a decent man around, so the town is taken care of by women. For most men of the town, when things get rough, they ran. A lot ran to California or just away to essentially escape whatever they feared. In fact the only male influence on Grant’s life was his teacher Matthew Antoine. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Just do the best you can. But it won’t matter”. Antoine was a miserable person with no motivation at all. He was also a rather large hypocrite seeing as how he was mulatto, and tried to be part of the black community yet at the same time a respectable “better” man of the white community. What that courage comes down to simply is responsibility, for oneself and for others. When one becomes mature one takes on responsibilities of a man or woman. These are major signs of manhood because if Jefferson would not have become a man at the end he would not of faced his death as he did. He was responsible in this case for something he did not even do. “I want you to show them the difference between what they think you are and what you can be”. The crime committed was not even his fault and still he stayed and faced it, just like a man. Jefferson did show the white community what he was and that was not a hog but a man. This is why being a man is so important to the black community to show they were just as good as the whites, maybe better but definitely equal. The other factor in manhood would be that Jefferson was very uneducated. A man has a hard time having confidence and taking care of responsibilities when he has the I.Q. of a child. Being that Jefferson grew up a boor black boy and he could never afford an education, Je...