Interpretation Of A Lesson Before Dying From The Perspective Of Spatial Narrative

Ernest James Gaines(1933-2019)is one of the most talented and distinguished African American writers in contemporary American literature.His masterpiece,A Lesson Before Dying(1993),has been a hit with readers upon its publication and has won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the nomination for the Pulitzer Prize,attracting the attention of American literary critics.In the process of creating the novel,Gaines takes different spaces as the entry point,fully and vividly showing the real-life picture of black people in the American South.So far,domestic and foreign scholars have studied the novel from the perspectives of black masculinity,identity construction,Darwinian evolution theory,and New Historicism,but few scholars have analyzed it from the perspective of spatial criticism.Therefore,this thesis explores the existential dilemmas and psychological growth of black people in white dominated spaces from three specific spaces based on Henri Lefebvre’s spatial theory.The main body of the thesis consists of three subsections,each focusing on a specific space.The first section analyzes the physical spaces in the novel,namely the apartheid Bayonne town,Mr.Henri Pichot’s mansion and the cabins in the black community,in order to reveal the misfortune of the blacks in the novel living in a southern town where segregation is prevalent;at the same time,the stark contrast between the black and white houses shows the very different living environments of blacks and whites.The second section analyzes the three typical social spaces in the novel,namely the courtroom,the school and the prison,to expose the oppressive domination of the white people over the social spaces,which leads to the loss of the black people’s voice in the social spaces and even the ideological crisis of self-hatred and self-doubt.The third section focuses on the psychological space and analyzes the psychological growth of Jefferson,a young black man.Jefferson’s growth and awakening show the struggle of black youth to break free from white supremacy and reshape their identity under the white dominated spatial representations.Gaines’A Lesson Before Dying depicts the tragic situation of the black community in the rural south of the United States,reflecting his profound thoughts on the path of liberation of the black,which has important implications for the survival and development of black people.The interpretation of the novel under the guidance of Lefebvre’s spatial theory helps readers better understand the literary and practical significance of the novel,and highlights the pivotal role of space in enriching the novel’s content and expanding its themes.