His father, were told, is dead, and his mother is in a charity ward with a serious illness. As we discussed Ernest J. Gaines's "The Sky is Gray" during the NEH Summer Institute a couple of weeks ago, one of the participants, Dianna Shank, pointed out the ambivalent use of the pronoun "they" throughout the text.At first, this did not necessarily strike me as anything warranting further exploration since the narrative comes to us from the point of view of an eight-year-old boy. THE SKY IS GRAY by Ernest J. Gaines, 1968. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. Though the events in this story take place well before what is commonly called the Civil Rights era, one cannot read The Sky is Gray without a keen awareness that the writer is writing at the historical moment during which the Civil Rights movement exploded onto the national stage and that, surprisingly, given this context, the story somehow manages to describe but not to overplay the protagonists suffering in terms of prejudice and inequality. The storys protagonist, or main character, James is a young boy of about eight who lives with his mother, aunt, and their immediate family in the outskirts of Bayonne, Louisiana. In short, what is. Rather than explaining his position to her in such a way that she will be able to understand it, he raises his argument to a metaphysical level and alienates her: You really dont believe in God? the lady says. Unfortunately, I was born too late to believe in your God. Like Monsieur Bayonne, the Preacher is little more than a foilhe exists only to become angered by the student on behalf of the other people in the dentists office, to strike him on their behalf, and to pity him. 212, No. For example, in Ernest Gaines Valerie Babb writes: Unable to buy food because of their poverty, and forbidden to enter the warm shelters in the area of the dentists office because of their color, they become rambling outcasts in a society in which the whim of any white is empowered to affect their destiny. The limitations imposed on the narrative by an eight-year-old narrator are more obvious when he tries, unsuccessfully, to understand his mothers frequent mood changes or her mysterious decisions to fight or flee at each of the stations of mood the narrative visits. It suggests at first the bleak mood of the story but also hints at hope in the future. Babb seems to approach this realization when she writes that Octavias dissembling enables her to warm him without compromising her dignity by begging. Babb realizes that Octavias act is fundamentally about dignity, not about warmth, but she doesnt think through the implications of the point she has made, here or later. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004. Even the clothing that they wear is very dull-colored! . Ernest Gaines has written a non-fictional story that has three major characters apart from him as the narrator. The sky is gray. From henceforth, Jamess own long day will be comprised of this struggle between black blood and white blood within a cerebral sky of graya terrifying and chilling confrontation with ones own senses and sensibilities. Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. But it was "The Sky Is Gray" that first drew me in and that still evokes a certain atmosphere in my mind. Historical Context Conversations with Ernest Gaines, Mississippi: Mississippi University Press, 1995. Jamess vulnerability to this aspect of human nature is illustrated in the episode with an old couple who offer them food during their visit to town. He states that Gaines was shockingly underrated at the beginning of his career. In both A Long Day in November and The Sky Is Gray, Gaines involves the reader in the dilemma faced by individuals who find traditional folk values inadequate to meet their needs. Like James and Jamess mother, the source for Jamess aunt is drawn from Gainess own experience, modeled after his own great aunt, Augustine Jefferson. But Im not supposed to do that. "The Sky is Gray"contains many of the themes and images Gaines returns to again and again in his work: themes of personal responsibility, grace under pressure, and moral behavior; images of strong mothers, mysteriously absent fathers, and families in which love is expressed more often in harsh words or silence than in overt praise or affection. . Washington Irving, The Sky is Gray by Ernest J. Gaines, 1968, The Slavery Issue: Western Politics and the Compromise of 1850, https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/sky-gray. Ivan Turgenevs The District Doctor. Gaines himself cites Ivan Turgenev as one of his more important literary sources, saying that he learned form from Turgenev. If one reverts to the easiest sort of race-based reading, one will invariably decide to read the story as one about victimhood. Though still a child, James is on the verge of youth. The sky is gray Its like this everyday The town is full of predators Dont turn into the prey I Flip a million out of nothing Make them feel a certain way Hoping that this swisher Puts me in a purple haze I got my eyes on the money The only reason I'm gonna keep goin' And I am back in the zone and its funny Chronic bag the cologne Another half . 10 terms. The Sky is Gray. I think the message it sends about how people treat each other is important. My students, of multi-ethnicities, enjoyed following along in . Words, he says, mean nothing. Only slightly less prominent than the theme of Civil Rights is class inequality. James lives with his other siblings, his aun. Sold by: Tidal Wave Group . His feelings of isolation are clearly illustrated in his conversation with a woman who attempts to take his side in the disagreement. With the exception of Auntie and Mr. Bayonne, who attempt to explain his mothers cold, dispassionate treatment of him on one occasion, James is alienated in his effort to come to grips with both the social and personal forces governing his life. 23 Feb. 2023 . It is a testimony to Gaines's skill as a writer and storyteller that many people believe Jane Pittman was a real person. A&P Quiz. Me, I dont listen to my heart. Themes Jamess mother opens the door to exit, but turns and asks for twenty-five cents worth of salt meat. This innovative investigation oers new perspectives on the history of racial conict in the Although he claims to have a solution for the black community, he refuses to consider its level of comprehension. Ill take coke, or Ill use any kind of profanity, I dont give a damn. On the other side are the preacher and the other woman the young man speaks to after the preacher departs. He is an eight-year-old African American, living in the south during the 1940's before the civil rights movement came into effect. Supporting these ideas is Gainess keen awareness of the all-pervasive and profoundly formative influence of race on virtually every aspect of life in the rural South of this era. In Gainess words, describing the type of person he depicts in the student to Carl Wooton in an interview reprinted in Porch Talk: you will have this rebellion against authority. 414-25. Yeah, the sky . In the introduction to Ernest Gaines, Valerie Babbs biography of Gaines through the lens of his work, Babb writes, taken as a whole, Gainess canon represents a blending of Louisiana, African-American, and universal human experience. However, his indirect discovery that the community is no longer capable of defining his individual responsibility to his family is potentially important both for him and for Sonny. They are unwilling, or unable, to follow his line of reasoning, for to accept that the signification of green or black has no intrinsic relationship to a Platonic ideal of green or black, but signifies by consensus only, comes perilously close to accepting that the other words about which the young man seems to care even more than Godfreedom and libertyare empty of meaning unless they signify the same thing to speakers both black and white. Eventually they are stopped by an old white lady named Helena who has watched them each time they passed by. It is through these kinds of moderating forces in James environment that Gaines sees his salvation. The Sky Is Gray by Ernest J. Gaines is a poignant and thought-provoking short story about a young African American boy named James, who lives in rural Louisiana with his mother and grandmother during the mid-20th century. "The Sky is Gray.". And a reading focussed exclusively on the storys racial dynamic misses this completely. Of course, the reader doesnt follow James all the way from childhood into adulthood, but the central premise of bildungsroman is that the reader watches the protagonist go from innocence to experiencein this case, from being a child whose primary interest is in staying warm and well-fed to a youth who has the first glimmerings of pride in himself and awareness of an important and external reality: that others will judge him not by what he is, but by how he appears to be. . Her personal situation can be seen as a metaphor for the plight of blacks. She was preparing him to take care of himself in case she had to go away like his father did. She has cut herself completely off from the community which conceivably could have provided her with support while her husband does his tour of duty in the army. The problem in the story arises not so much from her efforts to make James a man as from her approach to and definition of manhood. To project an image of invulnerability for James, she alienates herself from the community and deals with her world on an individualistic level. He looks at two contrasting ideas, the African/aural rootsthe idea that African Americans express themselves through their music and aural interpretationsand their American/visual reorientationthe idea that America is a country of visual stimulations, that as Emerson said the eye is final.. The story occurs on a cold winter day in Louisiana, whose gray sky suggests the lack of hope for many African Americans. Told in a series of thirteen more or less chronological episodes, Jamess narrative is punctuated by frequent flashbacks to past events, each of which provide the reader with a more complete picture of the moral forces pulling at and shaping James. I wouldn't turn down bright colors either. But the question remains whether or not in this blending of black and white into The Sky Is Gray there still may be too great a personal pain and sense of loss or self-betrayal for black youth or artist ever to transcend Gunnar Myrdals penetrating observation: The colored peoples are excluded from assimilation.. However, for the moment, James is literally and figuratively caught in the middle of a storm in which both social and personal forces threaten his well-being. Their meal finished, James and his mother thank the woman for her hospitality. The Sky Is Gray. In American Short Stories. While James and his mother would certainly have had an easier day if they had had enough money to own a carto drive to the dentists office, to perhaps stop and do some shopping and have lunch on the way, perhaps even to see Dr. Robillard instead of Dr. Bassettthe simple fact remains that to do so, they would have had to be not only financially comfortable, but also white. The Sky is Gray contains many of the themes and images Gaines returns to again and again in his work: themes of personal responsibility, grace under pressure, and moral behavior; images of strong mothers, mysteriously absent fathers, and families in which love is expressed more often in harsh words or silence than in overt praise or affection. But she is important for another reason besides her human decency: it is paradoxically her kind gesture that represents the greatest potential threat to Jamess manhood, at least in his mothers eyes. Summary. The minister accepts God unquestioningly, while the student rejects God because belief in Him alleviates the need to question: Show me one reason to believe in the existence of a God, the boy says. The force implicit in the story is Octavias individualism, which threatens to deprive James of membership in the human community. jakeszalat Plus "If The Sky is Gray" by Ernest Gaines. At the end of the story, the narrator has not reached the dentists chair, and the problem of the toothache, which motivates the present action, has not yet been solved(Bell) The setup of this story is based on the premise of James having horrible tooth pain which needs attention. It is also possible to rent "The Sky Is Gray" on Vudu, Amazon Video online and to download it on Amazon Video, Vudu. A black boy comes of age in Louisiana during the 1940's and learns of racism and poverty firsthand. In the short story The Sky is Gray, Ernest J. Gaines shows the struggles, inflicted by poverty, in an eight-year-old boys life. Monsieur Bayonne at the storys beginning is the superstitious complement to the preacher in the middle section. With James' toothache at the central point of the plot, the story takes us through the obstacles this black family faces in terms of safety . The first thing that James learns is to rein in his potential visualityto accept verbal blinders for his eyes: Mama tells me to keep my eyes in front where they belong (italics mine). Bryant, Jerry H. Politics and the Black Novel, in The Nation, Vol. In physical terms, there is motion from one pole to its opposite: from warm, to cold, to warm again; from beyond the outskirts of Bayonne to the city and back again; from the doctors office to the street, and to the office again, and so on. Due to the several barriers James and his mother, Octavia, encounter trying to get to the dentist, the theme of . However, the trip to the dentist is weighty too because of the prejudice that exists outside his little community. I was born too late to believe in your God. What the student desires is a new age for American blacksone which can blend faith with sight, the ear with the eye, ones internal blackness with the surrounding whiteness into The Sky Is Gray. James is acute enough to sense a kindred dilemma and thinks to himself: When I grow up I want to be just like him.. This is puzzling, because a childs perspective is considerably narrower than an adults. https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/sky-gray, "The Sky is Gray The sky is gray., The interaction between the community and the individual, along with its role in the shaping of human personality, is a primary concern of Ernest J. Gaines in much of his fiction. Gaines's story "The Sky is Gray" similarly explores the differences between charity and justice within the segregated South. Fifty cents left guess I get a little piece of salt meat with that. Though it is clear that money is scarce, it is just as clear that this family knows how to survive with dignitythat is, without charity. Critics have been kind to Gaines, but his reputation has not risen with such meteoric speed as have the reputations of some of the other contemporary black writers of his generation. acquire the the sky is gray ernest gaines pdf belong to that we provide here and check out . Further Reading I was very much impressed, not only with form, but with how [the Russians] used their peasantry, how they used their serfs.. By forcing James to sublimate his emotions and accept them as signs of human weakness, she fails to provide him with a means of dealing with the emotional responses of others in a way consistent with her philosophy. Sources The student, or the boy, is somewhat out of place in this story, but was certainly not out of place at the time the story was written. I havent anything. Can I live here tomorrow? Robillard, the good dentist who takes care of the teeth of Bayonnes whites. 6th ed. The sky is gray, the clouds are low and the dark waves are hiding their power under a more neutral appearance. The blacks then leave the store under the kindly but acute genius in America, with tyrannous eye: James recounts how shes still there watching us (italics mine). "The Sky is Gray" by African American writer Ernest J. Gaines is a short story within the collection Bloodline: Five Stories, first published in Negro Digest in August 1963 and in the collection in 1968. Although Octavia does not operate from the same level of awareness that the student does, it is strongly implied that her attitude stems from perceptions and conscious choices made as a result of her husbands army duty. But if one takes a step back from the more obvious reading another, more subtle, reading begins to emerge. On the other hand, the student maintains a defensible position, but his egotistical stance exposes his feelings of alienation from his community. The conflict in these two stories further illustrates the importance of the changes taking place within Southern black culture to the development of the social consciousness of children. 4, June, 1976, pp. Look up the phrase rite of passage. Does Jamess situation fit the definition? Jamess mother Octavia is a strong, proud, uncompromising woman largely based on Gainess own mother. On one hand, Alnest is little more than an offstage voice, the voice of an old man cautioning Helena, his wife, against the cold. The bus arrives and, while his mother pays, James moves to the back of the bus, where the blacks are made to sit. . In short, the unfortunate consequence of exclusively race-based readings is that they narrow the readers scope of inquiry, inviting the reader to ask fewer questions and questions of a more particular nature than one would ask of an author like James Joyce, Salman Rushdie, or J. M. Coetzeeeach of whose writings are intimately concerned with different conceptions of race and their ramifications. Word Count: 1084. James, who begins the story as a boy more conscious of his feelings and inner life than of the world in which he lives, moves far along the path toward understanding the moral complexity. The absence of the fatherin the armyhas somewhat prematurely forced James into the role of the man of the house; and we first find this young black initiate looking down the road, of American hypervisuality. Her final statement to James in the story is probably the most illustrative of her world view: You not a bum, she says. Whatever the narrative gains by being told through Jamess eyes would need to add a great deal to offset these drawbacks. Ernest J. Gaines was born on River Lake Plantation in Oscar, a hamlet of Pointe Coupee Parish in rural Louisiana. i love Gaines' use of symbols senses in this story it is one of hope I think. A poor African American boy and his mother experience both discrimination and kindness during a trip to town to see the dentist. The Sky Is Gray Thank you for downloading The Sky Is Gray . Categories: American Literature, Literary Criticism, Literature, Short Story, Tags: Analysis of Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray, appreciation of Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray, criticism of Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray, Ernest J. Gaines, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray analysis, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray appreciation, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray essays, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray guide, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray notes, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray plot, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray story, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray summary, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray themes, essays of Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray, guide of Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray, notes of Ernest J. 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The Sky Is Gray stream The Sky Is Gray online for free | Watch online movies through best free 1080p HD videos on desktop, laptop, notebook, tablet, iPhone, iPad, Mac Pro and more. The reader is made aware that the act of having the tooth pulled is a large ordeal to the family. His narrative begins as he and his mother wait for a bus to take them to a dentists office where James is to have his tooth pulled and ends that same day, sometime shortly before (the reader presumes) that tooth is finally pulled. Gaines, Ernest. And since his stories are set in the past, his African-American characters appear subservient and are not placed in the revolutionary poses favored by some of Gainess contemporaries such as James Baldwin, Ishmael Reed, John O. Killins, John Wideman, or David Bradley., In sum, while Gaines may not have had the wide recognition of other African-American writers early in his career, there is a broad critical consensus that he is an important writer, a good writer, and a writer who has perhaps been undervalued and may continue to gain increasing recognition in the years to come, in part because he was somewhat overshadowed by his contemporaries during his early years, in part because of the increasing importance of studies of masculinity in the literary canon. The narrator, James, has developed a toothache resulting in him needing to go to the dentist. An elderly white woman and store-owner declares, I saw yall each time you went by. The blacks, now realizing they are not going to conquer the keen-eyed compassion of this woman and her husband, bow and accept food and a perhaps-too-generous supply of salt meat under the transparent pretense of Jamess doing some chores for the shopkeepers. James soon finds himself walking through the cold of Bayonne. The feeling of community which permeates A Long Day in Novemberthat sense that whatever happens to Amy and Eddie is everybodys concernis conspicuously absent from the second story in Bloodline, The Sky Is Gray. James, the eight-year-old narrator of this story, struggles to understand his mother and her conceptions of manhood and dignity without aid from the community. Kept completely offstage except for his terrifying effect on Little John Lee, who screams bloody murder on receipt of his dental ministrations, Dr. Basset exists in the narrative not for what he is, but for what he isntDr. Human existence does not lend itself to such neat categorizing. You a man. While this is the nature of Octavias world, it does not completely define the contours of the world with which James must come to terms. This is neither a subjective nor an unimportant question. Dollar and a half to have it pulled. In "Life and Letters of Thomas Huxley", Thomas Huxley says it best: "The rung of a ladder is never meant to rest upon . Me, I don't listen to my heart. It also involves the problem of integrating the individual and the community in a mutually rewarding relationship in the face of dehumanizing individualistic forces. Though it is indeed difficult, particularly for Americans, to step far enough back from the late 20th century American present to see the world Gaines describes with the same dispassionate clarity as one might see the Ireland, India, or South Africa that Joyce, Rushdie, and Coetzee respectively describe, nothing is lostand much is gainedif one makes the effort. Themes The title of the piece hints to the general dreariness which lingers throughout the story. Doing. -1 Likes, 13 Comments - Stephanie Wise (@girlversusdough) on Instagram: "It's literally pouring rain today on top of the 3+ feet of snow we had piled up and the sky is gray" The first strong character trait James possesses is that he . The Sky Is Gray W. W. Norton & Company "Race and Repast: Foodscapes in Twentieth-Century Southern Literature examines how race relations are expressed through struggles over the meaning of food and access to food in Southern literature. The reader only sees a small part of this process, a few hours one . On one side is a heretical young black student who has not only renounced his religious beliefs but argues that words like Freedom, Liberty, God, White, Colored are meaningless. In the following essay, Kippen explores the implications of a moral reading of Gainess The Sky is Gray., Though Gainess works invite a wide number of readings, almost all current criticism can be divided into one of two broad categories: race-centered criticism, concerned primarily with the storys instructive value about such things as prejudice and injustice, and structural criticism, which describes the parts of the story and their relation to the whole in formal, rather than thematic, terms. Therefore, its best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publications requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. On the other hand, James in The Sky Is Gray will never know the values of communal bonds if Octavia has her way. Less clear, because less attention has been paid to this question, is how much is left when race is left out or made irrelevant to the readers. But instead, Gaines allows James to tell his story in his own words. He could have told it through the eyes of Jamess mother Octavia, or Val; he could have told it in epistolary form (as a letter) from Jamess mother to his father; or from an omniscient perspective, one that allowed him to describe the sensory and sentient world from all of these vantage points in turn. It is both more reasonable and more in keeping with Gainess own views on the importance of dignity to read Octavia as intentionally withholding warmth from James to teach him that the value of their personal dignity is greater than the value of the most basic comfortsbeing warm and well-fed. 14, April 5, 1971, pp. While the prejudice James and his mother encounter is real and unarguable, the response of Jamess mother presages the essence of Martin Luther Kings message that salvation begins in the person of the oppressed, not the oppressor. Synopsis. How? The woman wonders why the Lord allows people to suffer, saying that she doesnt understand it, but the preacher concludes that its something no human can understand. The argument between the men focuses on the existence of God. 4, June, 1991, pp. It's been an unusually cold and cloudy winter and, while I'm grateful for the accompanying moisture, I'm also ready for some green in the world. The reader only sees a small part of this process, a few hours one morning, a few more that afternoon, but these hours are important: they form some of the bedrock upon which the foundation of Jamess manhoodhis sense of personal dignity and worth, as well as courage and silence in difficultywill be built. Other awards he has received include the Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Study Award, a Rockefeller Foundation Grant-in-Aid, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, and honorary doctorates from Denison University, Brown University, Bard College, Whittier College, and Louisiana State University. Two of the stories in Bloodline, A Long Day in November and The Sky Is Gray, are particularly illustrative of the conflict between community perspective and individual needs. The action in The Sky is Gray is broken up into thirteen short sections which describe a half day or so in the life of James, an eight-year-old black boy in the rural South of the late 1930s. So it's probably not coincidental that I began planning another northern California trip a few weeks ago. James tries to keep silent about his tooth not out of fear, but because he knows how expensive it will be to have a dentist pull it. Consequently, his feelings of isolation cause him to alienate himself from the emotional support and comfort of the members of his community, whom he, in turn, deprives of the benefits of his education. Gaines's prose is stark, spare, unrelenting in its precision and honesty. Because his fiction focuses on the peculiar plight of black Americans in the South, Gaines must consider an additional level of significancethe strong communal bonds characteristic of Southern black folk culture. 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