After reading the first chapter of A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines, I immediately made a connection to To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I decided to reread the trial from To Kill a Mockingbird and compare it to the trial in A Lesson Before Dying. The obvious connection is that black men are convicted of crimes that they evidently did not commit. However, since the men live in racist communities, they are essentially guilty until proven innocent. As a result, their lawyers are forced to come up with distinctive and creative ways to prove their clients innocence. In A Lesson Before Dying, the defense attorney tries to convince the members of the jury that Jefferson is too foolish and unintelligent to have orchestrated the robbery. Conversely, Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird calls into question Mayella, the plaintiff, and her fathers credibility. One thing that I also noticed is that the lawyers use reputation to emphasize their points. For example, Jeffersons attorney says, Gentleman of the jury, look at this-this-this boy. He does this to show t
hat he does not know what to call Jeffersonis he man or is he just a boy who is incapable of committing the crime he is accused of (Gaines 7). Atticus states that witnesses testifying against Tom Robinson are confident that you gentleman would go along with their assumption- that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negroes are not to be trusted around women& to stress that it would be wrong to assume that Tom is guilty solely because he is black (Lee 273). Another thing I noticed was the similarity of each lawyers closing arguments. Atticus tries to appeal the jurors integrity by saying that there is no equality in the United States except for the courtroom. The attorney in A Lesson Before Dying, using pathos to appeal to the jurors emotions by stating that Jefferson means everything to godmother and without him, her life would be meaningless. What surprised me was a difference in the tone of each passage. The tone in To Kill a Mockingbird is formal and educated, but the tone in A Lesson Before Dying is arrogant and nasty.