A Lesson Before Dying Chapter 10 Summary

  • Grant takes Miss Emma back to see Jefferson two more times and it goes pretty much the same way.
  • On the day of their fourth visit Miss Emma plays sick. Tante Lou says that Grant has to go by himself. This infuriates him.
  • He believes that his aunt and Miss Emma have planned the whole thing in order to have Grant go to Jefferson alone.
  • He threatens to throw the food she's sending in the river, and yells at his aunt that she sent him to school to keep him from being humiliated.
  • Grant says that it was all for nothing, that now he's had to humiliate himself at Henri Pichot's and at the courthouse. He says that Professor Antoine was right, that he was being broken down into "the n***** he was born to be" and that it's his aunt's fault.
  • Miss Emma apologizes for making Grant humiliate himself in front of the white people, but says that she has no one else to turn to.