One of the many things that intrigued me in the novel A Lesson Before Dying was Jefferson's change from an angry (and rightfully so) boy to a man who accepts his fate.
In the very beginning of the novel, when the defense attorney calls him a "hog" in an attempt to exonerate him, Jefferson seems to internalize this. Whenever Miss Emma and Grant visits him throughout the novel, he regularly calls himself a "hog" and the visitors "you-mans". The spelling of the word "humans" here emphasizes how different Jefferson feels from the rest, how inhuman he feels. Jefferson constantly acts like a hog in front of Miss Emma and Grant and it seems like much of it is on purpose. For example, during one visit, he looks right at Grant, as if challenging him to say something. Therefore, in the beginning, Jefferson rejects all of Grant's and Miss Emma's attempts to reach him.
However, I think Jefferson really changes after the execution date is set. In the first visit with Grant after they learn when Jefferson will be sent to the chair, Jefferson is calm and child-like. He asks Grant for a "whole gallona ice cream" to be eaten "with a pot spoon". He isn't happy but he is momentarily content when he thinks of all the food he wants. I think it is here that Jefferson gets past the angry/bitter stage and is slowly beginning to accept his fate.
In the next few meetings between Grant and Jefferson, Jefferson seems calmer and more willing to listen. And when Grant gives him the whole spiel on what a hero's all about and why Jefferson is that hero, he seems to understand on some level. Grant notes "he may not have understood, but something was touched, something deep down in him..." Here, we see the image of the mentor teaching the apprentice yet learning from his student as well.
However, it isn't until the last visit with Grant that Jefferson becomes truly a person who accepts his fate. I think of this as the point where the apprentice supersedes the mentor. In this visit, Jefferson calls Grant out on how Grant never saw him as a man. Jefferson is described as standing "big and tall, and not stooped as he had been in chains". He questions Grant about death, God, and duties to the community. I think it's interesting how Grant fails to respond to him many times. At one point, Jefferson even comforts Grant by saying that he is alright. All of this shows huge personal growth in Jefferson and a certain wisdom that wasn't there before. Jefferson's change convinces me that on the day of his execution, he will go like man, not an animal.
"The apprentice supersedes the mentor" is a great way to describe the dynamic at the end of the novel, especially in light of the final meeting between Grant and Jefferson that Grant narrates, where Jefferson is challenging him, standing over him, leaving Grant as the one with no clear answers to the questions Jefferson asks. He does "accept his fate" in a kind of existentialist way--and it's important to note how this is distinct from *endorsing* it, or seeing it as "just," or accepting the court's designation of him as a murderer. It's more a matter of refusing to allow that court's false construction to define him: the "fate" allotted to him reflects and reveals the deep injustice of the system that condemns him, and he exposes this injustice by making it unambiguously evident that he is a "man"--much *more so* than the other "men" in the room when he is executed, as Paul testifies.
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