A Fatalistic Predisposition Before Settling In a 1973 interview conducted by Forrest Ingraham and Barbara Steinberg, Ernest J. Gaines states that, although he is not devoutly religious, it is his belief that "For you to survive, you have to have something bigger than you are, whether it's religion or communism or capitalism or something else, but it has to be something above who you are" (Gaines and Lowe 52) .If applied to the narrator of his next work, A Lesson Before Dying, it would seem that this principle is reflected in the one thing that Grant Wiggins initially holds above himself. I am referring, of course, to Grant's anticipation of the day he will leave Bayonne to start a new life elsewhere, ideally in Vivian's company. For it is generally agreed that the myriad of intractable dilemmas faced by descendants of victims of the institution of chattel slavery likely constituted a significant push factor in the second wave of the Great Migration, well underway at the time of the events described in A Lesson Before Dying (Thornbrough 34-35), it would be problematic to say that Grant's assessment of his prospects in Bayonne does not reflect the social realities he faces as a black man in Jim Crow South. However, while it would be difficult to argue that Grant's fatalistic outlook towards Bayonne is not a reflection of the lack of opportunities it offers him, it is also difficult to argue that his fatalistic attitude is universal among the characters who populate the work. This in turn seems to suggest that the undercurrent of fatalism that characterizes the tone of the play is largely a product of the interaction between the social realities that Grant faces and the way in which Grant positions himself through… paper . .....towards the renunciation of fatalism. There is, of course, a fundamental irony here too, namely that, although Jefferson essentially becomes a martyr, he is not spared a senseless death, which seems to imply that, although Grant renounces fatalism, he may be hasty in doing so . On the other hand, however, it seems that to accept his life in Bayonne, Grant must, as Gaines puts it, find "something above what (he is)" (Gaines and Lowe 53) in Bayonne, rather than clinging to the fantasy that one day he will go away. Works Cited Gaines, Ernest J., and John Lowe. Conversations with Ernest Gaines. Jackson: University of Mississippi, 1995. Web. 10 Dec 2013. Gaines, Ernest J. A Lesson Before Dying. New York: AA Knopf, 1993. Print.Thornbrough, Emma Lou. and Lana Ruegamer. Black Indiana in the Twentieth Century. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2000. Web. December 11 2013.