If you watch modern films, you will find that in our time it is much easier to be a hero than it was fifty years ago. The world offers us multiple opportunities to prove ourselves and gives us the self-satisfaction of being able to say that we are a hero. But what is a hero? Grant says, “A hero is someone who does something for others. He does something that other men do not and cannot do. He is different from other men. He is above other men. No matter who these other men are, the hero, no matter who he is, is above them. (193) Clearly, Grant fits his own description of a hero. He proved himself to be a hero by advising Jefferson while being a teacher with "more than enough" problems. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Just do your best. But that won't matter. (Antoine, 66) Grant's former teacher, Matthew Antoine, was embittered by whites and had no hope for African Americans. He opened his eyes to the evidence and believes that African Americans are stuck below whites and were born to work like mules and live like dogs. Antoine says: “Forget it. Go on and be the nigger you were born to be, but forget about life. (65) He was a realist and a non-conformist; the world needed someone like Grant, someone who would defend his race, fight for equality, and break Antony's belief that men of color were doomed. That's what Grant did. He stood up for his class and became a teacher to make a difference in any way he could. The era in which Grant lived took the word "easy" out of Grant's task of doing something no one else would do. “I am the teacher…and I teach what the white people here tell me to teach: reading, writing and “rithmetic”. They never told me how to keep a black boy apart...... middle of paper ... in which racism was involved in his daily life. He was born to be a failure, to be beneath the whites. His own former teacher believed that everything he fought for in this world was for naught because of the plight of African Americans. Grant proved this thinking wrong by taking action and using what little free will he had to make a difference and help change the future for people of color. Fighting unjust justice and all odds against him in this white dominated world, he always stood his ground and continued to help Jefferson even though he was unwilling to cooperate and ignore his beloved's actions. He taught Jefferson to see himself as the person he can be, not the person he was meant to be; to be above the thoughts of others and to be the man he was born to be, not the nigger his destiny told him to be. Works Cited A Lesson Before Dying book.