Wood: Beyond Fueling the Cycle

As I am rereading A Lesson Before Dying, I'm noticing so many things that I missed or failed to recognize when I read it freshman year. One part of the book that really resonated with me that I didn't think much about two years ago were the deeper meanings of the first load of wood. As well as the physical symbolism of bringing wood representing fueling and feeding the 'cycle', there are other associations that I found really interesting.

The school getting its first load of wood marks that the cycle is beginning once again. Seeing the older kids chopping the wood prompts Grant to question what he has been doing as a teacher, "What am I doing? Am I reaching at all? They are ... doing the same thing those old men did who never attended school a day in their lives. Is it just a vicious circle?" (62). He then goes on to describe his memories of being a kid chopping up wood with his friends in school who are now "gone" as in "gone to the fields, to the small towns, to the cities - where they [die]" (62). Grant is in a really negative place in this chapter, because he isn't really seeing any progress happening in his community. There is also the challenge of making Jefferson a man before his execution that Grant faces. He has no idea how to go about doing it (proof from his first visits to the jail) and doesn't even want to. In a way, the stale-mate situation with Jefferson just reinforces the idea of the circle restarting again, and Grant's feeling more powerless than ever to do anything.

Then Grant remembers his teacher Matthew Antoine who is like the bitter "I hate you" version of the hero's mentor. Rather than growing up to be like his other friends, Grant takes on the teach role and seems to be on the path to becoming the next Matthew Antoine. There is this very symbolic scene on page 64 where Grant is visiting Antoine after he gets out of college. "'I'm cold,' [Antoine] said one day while we sat there looking into the fire. [Grant] got up to put on another piece of wood. 'That's no good,' he said, 'I'll still be cold. I'll always be cold.'" I immediately thought back to that idea of the arrival of wood marking that the cycle is restarting again and still going on. During Antoine's life, he was never able to break that cycle, so no matter how many loads of wood get delivered to the school or years pass, the kids will still grow up to be the adults who had died before them. This scene of Grant trying to add wood to make Antoine warm but then Antoine saying he'll always be cold is analogous to Antoine's belief that the cycle will always remain unbroken, and Grant's efforts won't make a difference. During Grant's last visit to Antoine, his teacher offers the advice of "'It doesn't matter anymore,...Just do the best you can. But it won't matter'" (66). I see this passage as foreshadowing that although Antoine wasn't successful in breaking the cycle Grant will be, because this book is in a Hero's Journey class curriculum, so there must be a heroic ending.

From the current events going on and these memories, Grant's outlook on life is pretty bleak. I feel like Grant thinks that Antoine is right about nothing mattering, because he hasn't seen any changes from the systematic inequality of whites and blacks to the kids "acting exactly as the old men did earlier" (62) when the wood was delivered.