I read this book as a sophomore in high school. I still remember it! This is about a lawyer in the South, before civil rights were 'in'. A young black man is convicted of a crime he didn't commit, and is sentenced to die by the electric chair. A lawyer, who only knows him through some relative, is asked to go and visit him in jail until he is executed, to help him die a man, to die with dignity. The man convicted seems to have little sense of self worth, and believes himself to be stupid, because that is all he has ever been treated as.
I won't give away the ending, but the title is pretty self-explanatory.
What I like so much about this book is that while the prisoner learns a lot about life and himself, so does the lawyer. In fact, I would say the lawyer grows more.
No comments:
Post a Comment