Document Information
- Chapter: Chapter 1
- Scene: Opening scene of the novel
- Draft: Early typescript
- File location: Box 10, folder 42
Discussion Questions
- The narrator says, “I was not there, yet I was there.” What does this contradiction reveal about how the narrator experiences the trial?
- How does the description of the godmother’s behavior in the courtroom help us understand the emotional weight of the trial and its impact on the community?
This is the story of two men; each must teach the other something about life: the length of that life maybe an hour—or many years….
Chapter one
I was not there, still yet I was there. No, I did not go to the trial, I did not hear the sentencing verdict, because I knew all the time what it would be. Still, I was there. I was there as much as anyone else was there. Either I sat behind my aunt and his godmother or I sat beside them. Both are large women, but his godmother is larger. She is of average height, five four, five five, but weighs over nearly two hundred pounds. Once she and my aunt had found their places—two rows behind the table where he sat with his court-appointed attorney—his godmother became as immobile as a great stone or as one of our oak or cypress stumps. She never got up once to get water or go to the bathroom down in the basement. She just sat there staring at the boy’s clean-cropped head where he sat at the front table with his lawyer. Even after he had gone to await the jurors’ verdict, her eyes remained in that one direction. She heard nothing said in the courtroom. Nor the prosecutor, nor the defense attorney, nor my aunt. (Oh, yes, she did hear one word--one word-- for sure hog.) It was my aunt whose eyes followed the prosecutor as he moved from one side of the courtroom to the other, pounding his fist into the palm of his hand, pounding
“A Lesson Before Dying”—is the story of two men, a teacher and a former student, who must teach each something about life= whether the length of their life is, hours or years