The source of Jamess isolation is his mother Octavia, who moves through the world of the story with a calm and control which always seem on the verge of eruption. 10 terms. Through the stories of the many fascinating people who touch Jane's life, Gaines presents not only a moving perspective on the struggles of African Americans but also a social history of the United States since the Civil War. https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/sky-gray, "The Sky is Gray Babb, Valerie Melissa. But the conflict goes much deeper than that. William James, the American philosopher and psychologist, was born in New York City to Mary Robertson Walsh James and Henr, Cane And by the end of the story, the reader does indeed sense that there has been some change to who James is in that short span, a sense reinforced by his mothers assertion that he is not a bum, but a man. Though the motivation for their careful charity is not described, it is ultimately accepted, the suggestion being that. 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). Style Because James is suffering a toothache, symbolic of the festering wounds of racism, he and his mother take the bus into Bayonne to see a dentist. However, because she never explains her motives to him, she presents James with a world filled with extremes which endangers his realization of the manhood she attempts to force prematurely on him. Estes, David C., editor. It also involves the problem of integrating the individual and the community in a mutually rewarding relationship in the face of dehumanizing individualistic forces. Figuratively, it is a metaphor of the collective black experience.. Get help and learn more about the design. Bryant, Jerry H. Politics and the Black Novel, in The Nation, Vol. The student wants very much to deny his auralityMe, I dont listen to my heartand he ends up sad and depressed over his liberalism and scepticism: I hope they arent all like me. Mother and sons odyssey through the dangers and pitfalls of poverty and racism also includes encounters with two kinds of whites: the dentists receptionist, who delays their appointment and then locks them out in the cold, and a woman and her invalid husband, who invite them into their store, offer them a hot meal (in exchange for work, at Octavias proud insistence), and phone the dentist to make sure he takes care of Jamess toothache. At the end of the story, although the sky is still gray, readers sense hope for James with the lessons he has learned from good people, black and white, but from no one more than his strong and principled mother. ", Hermosa historia lacual te hace pensar todo y te deja viendo diferentes realidades. The first strong character trait James possesses is that he . In short, what is. It growls so loud you can hear it a mile. Moreover, it soon becomes clear that the black mother and son must accept the fact that they have now become the observed, not the observersthat they are the ones who dearly need to be seen for what they are, cold and hungry. Like the narrator in Ralph Ellisons Invisible Man, the student is profoundly alienated from his community. The trip to town on the bus marked White and Colored represents the real rite de passage for the black youth in white Americathe blurring of his sensibilities into gray: The river is gray. Awesome read. What exemplifies the American national narrative in the story "The Sky is Gray" by Ernest J. Gaines? In the microcosm of black society represented by the dentists office that morning, he offers an indictment of religion and of its opiate-like effect on the downtrodden that Gaines himself seems to share. 23 Feb. 2023 . Although her relationship with this absent husband is only briefly mentioned, one senses in her attitude and behavior that his departure left her vulnerable. . 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.. ." These days, we know how to bring summer closer.<br><br>A plate of hot cherries, juicy, smelling berries, here it is summer on ! The story portraits three remarkable points: James's forced mature, his childhood memory damaged by poverty, but even so, their dignity still remains. The drawback to what Ill call, for lack of a better term, race-based readings may not be immediately obvious, but isnt terribly complicated. In the short story The Sky is Gray, Ernest J. Gaines shows the struggles, inflicted by poverty, in an eight-year-old boys life. But Im not supposed to do that. Monsieur Bayonne at the storys beginning is the superstitious complement to the preacher in the middle section. However, the trip to the dentist is weighty too because of the prejudice that exists outside his little community. 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. "The Sky is Gray" refers to the literal winter scene in which the story takes place. Understanding The Sky is Gray requires that one not only understand something about the Louisiana of the 1930s and 1940s but also understand what was happening with regard to race in the United States during the 1960s, because the events of what later came to be called the Civil Rights era made a substantial and lasting impression on Gaines, one that can be seen not too far beneath the surface of The Sky is Gray in the person of the student and in the storys preoccupation with racial inequality. Although her primary goal is to project a model of strength for James through her own actions, her inability to make her sense of the world comprehensible to him leaves James vulnerable to the very forces from which she would shield him. I was very much impressed, not only with form, but with how [the Russians] used their peasantry, how they used their serfs.. My students, of multi-ethnicities, enjoyed following along in . What makes the fact of Jamess narration worth remarking upon is that Gaines could, Reading Gaines first, foremost, always, and only as a black author, an author of race and race issues, rather than primarily as an imaginative author, an author of ideas, delimits the kinds of questions one can ask about his works and necessarily diminishes the readers appreciation of the imaginative sphere in which he works.. Bloodline, his collection of short stories published in 1968, is a work that includes some of his best known short fiction, "The Sky Is Gray," "Just Like a Tree," and "A Long Day in November" (also published as a children's book in 1971). 28 terms. Rather than reading a good book with a cup of coffee in the afternoon, instead they cope with some harmful bugs inside their computer. All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray. The Sky is Gray is a heartbreaking story of James and his Mama. The fact that his father is gone to war, his mother is a very. 2324- 2333. Although the point is never explicitly stated, it is apparent that Octavia finds the values of her community inadequate to make James the kind of man that she feels he must become. James seems like anything but a childhood, his mind is plagued with worries and concerns that often belong in the adult realm. His first bona-fide publicationsThe Boy in the Double-Breasted Suit and The Turtleswere published in San Francisco State Colleges Transfer magazine in 1956. In this case, consciousness raising of blacks should not lead to an alienation from the community as it has for the student and Octavia; it should provide the basis for bettering the community. 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. What might be complex, three-dimensional people with equally complex motivations threaten to become two-dimensional caricatures with obscure, even uninteresting motivations when seen through the eyes of a child. 28 terms. The force implicit in the story is Octavias individualism, which threatens to deprive James of membership in the human community. Themes Encyclopedia.com. The Sky Is Gray: Directed by Stan Lathan. 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. A black boy comes of age in Louisiana during the 1940's and learns of racism and poverty firsthand. However, the date of retrieval is often important. 110-13. In the gloomiest days, when the calendar suggests that winter is over, but the St. Petersburg weather is still unrelenting, the sky is gray, snow and wind are underfoot all over the world . RT @BuddhistCeo: Morning meditation The first day of Spring I look from the zendo window Hoping the world has changed Alas no There is frost on the ground And the sky is gray As I sit zazen I dream of summer flowers The bell rings I smile I bow #thebuddistceo #buddhism #poetry #meditation . Never one to waste words, she knows how to protect herself: When a pimp tries to molest her, she throws him against a wall and threatens to stab him with the knife she carries. Consequently, the reader is limited to what James observes and understands. 212, No. Author Biography She feels her first duty to her children is to toughen them up and show them how to live and survive. The Sky is Gray. What is the allegorical meaning of the student turning the other cheek when the preacher hits him? Helena tries to give them a larger piece, but Jamess mother insists on an accurate measure. But this state of affairs does not lasthis Auntie soon discovers that his tooth is rotten. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. ostreet9 Plus. The Sky is Gray is episodic in formthat is, the story is not told as a sequence of events, but as a sequence of events punctuated by narrative flashbacks and broken up into numbered segments. In this transformation, as he puts his collar down, the reader has taken a small but important step with James from childhood to adulthood. 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. 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. Lord, have mercy (italics mine). 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). To project an image of invulnerability for James, she alienates herself from the community and deals with her world on an individualistic level. 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. The text of The Sky Is Gray subtly brings out this painful aurality: Id just lay there and listen to them, and listen to that wind out there, and listen to that fire in the fireplace. New & Pre-owned (11) from $4.90 + $3.99 shipping. As Gaudet and Wooton point out, Gaines has come to the fore in many critical studies lately because of his searching appraisal of the masculine search for identity, particularly that of African-American men., David Kippen is a doctoral candidate in world literature with an emphasis on the literature of southern Africa. Add a gift receipt for easy returns. In these stories, black folk culture, with its emphasis on community-defined values and behaviors, shows signs of deterioration, while Western individualism and the development of more personally-defined values appear as catalysts in the demise of the black folk world view. Du Boiss famous observation, in the Forethought of The Souls of Black Folk, that the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line, for it is this color line in all of its manifestations that his work so carefully documents. [Chorus 1: Barry McQuire, The Mamas & The Papas] All the leaves are brown (All the leaves are brown) And the sky is gray (And the sky is gray) I've been for a walk (I've been for a walk) On a winter's day (On a winter's day) I'd be safe and warm (I'd be safe and warm) If I was in L.A (If I was in L.A.) California dreamin' (California dreamin') On such a winter's day [Verse: Barry McQuire, The . 18, No. 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. Me, I dont listen to my heart. ''The Sky is Gray'' is fundamentally a story about the process of coming of age, of going from one state to another. 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. For Babb, Octavias intention is to teach her son a valuable lesson in pride and survival, but she doesnt interrogate the relationship between pride and survival, preferring tacitly to assume that her readers will infer a necessary relationship between the two where none in fact exists. Currently you are able to watch "The Sky Is Gray" streaming on Hoopla, Fandor Amazon Channel or for free with ads on Tubi TV, Crackle. Observing his mother manipulate their environment moves James closer to what will be his particular entry into manhood, the psychic freedom that comes from emotional self-mastery. songplace. Later, the whole family is at hand when Octavia and Jamess aunt count out the cost of a trip to the dentist: She say: enough to get there and get back. 1. Eventually they are stopped by an old white lady named Helena who has watched them each time they passed by. 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. The title of the story by Ernest Gaines is ironic. Characters "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. But the counter to this argument is that one should, if Gaines is successful, be able to see how James will turn out, that the creation of a characterization sufficient to demonstrate that the child is father of the man is a demonstration of a naturalism like Zolas, and worthy of similar respect. Style Publication date 1979 Topics Feature films, Feature films, Short Stories., Blacks. Nor can the mothers demands for stoicism keep James from nearly succumbing to the piercing chill of the sleeting gray sky. At this point, almost by deus ex machina, the black youths deepest self reasserts itself in all its visceral aurality: My stomach growls and I suck it in to keep Mama from hearing it . Consider, for example, the contradiction in Babbs representation of Octavia as on the one hand trying to keep James from the cold while adher[ing] to strict rules of racial separation, but on the other being enabled by her dissembling to keep him warm without compromising her dignity. Exactly what is keeping James cold, one wondersstrict rules of racial separation, or Octavias uncompromised dignity? In The Sky is Gray, by Ernest J. Gaines and Mr. Parker, by Laurie Colwin, James and Janie are no exception. It is a testimony to Gaines's skill as a writer and storyteller that many people believe Jane Pittman was a real person. Overall, however, the move away from colonial entanglements was stronger than the ties that bound African countries to their colonial powers, and the move toward home rule was unstoppable. Faced with the necessity to act and finding traditional solutions no longer viable, the characters in Gainess stories struggle desperately to restore some semblance of normalcy to their worlds. Short Stories for Students. In both cases, the situation is presented as a puzzle to the young who must attempt to resolve the conflicts that come about as a result of this realization. As the day progresses, James shows us events from the past--from the time his mother whipped him because he could not kill . But instead, Gaines allows James to tell his story in his own words. Can I get a job tomorrow? He is an eight-year-old African American, living in the south during the 1940's before the civil rights movement came into effect. 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. Roll the dice and learn a new word now! Some of the reasons for what Lowe considers the unfair obscur[ity of] Gaines gifts are that Gaines writes about a largely rural community, isolated by both its southernness and its special Louisiana qualities, which it is true make it exotic, but at the same time somewhat inaccessible, even for many African Americans. Another reason Lowe cites for Gaines neglect is his refusal to cater to stereotypes. He states that although people expect stories set in Louisiana to take place in New Orleans, Gaines has never set one there. Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). Ernest Gaines, Boston: Twayne, 1991. Human existence does not lend itself to such neat categorizing. In the following essay, Roberts looks at the communal bonds found in Southern black communites, especially those as described by Gaines in The Sky is Gray. Along with this, he describes the dangers inherent in a community where tradition and change interact. He responds to the emotional intent of the act. 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. She offers them food, but though James is hungry, his mother will not accept any charity, so Helena has James move some empty trash cans to the street as a face-saving gesture for his mother. Their thought process, social standing, and personality are the key aspects that influence their pathway to maturity. "The Sky is Gray A woman tries to engage Jamess mother in conversation, but a man James takes to be a preacher joins in instead. There is fear that his family might not have enough wood to keep them warm, but a new concern of a toothache has come about and now how will they have enough money to pay the dentist. Jamess absent father is serving the country, which expects its African-American citizens to fight for freedom abroad while it denies them those same freedoms at home. Gaudet, Marcia G. Porch Talk with Ernest Gaines: a Conversation on the Writers Craft, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1990. The story begins with James and his mother waiting, on a painfully cold morning, for the arrival of a bus which will take them to nearby Bayonne. 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. There he developed a keen interest in reading, and he wrote his first novel the next year; on news of its rejection, he destroyed the only manuscript copy he possessed. 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. Not added . The greatest advantage of an episodic form is that it allows the author to follow the protagonist, or main character, from one important event to another without recording all the unimportant events in between. 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. What exemplifies the American national narrative in the story "The Sky is Gray" by Ernest J. Gaines? 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. On the street again, James turns his collar up to keep his neck warm; his mother tells him not to, because only bums turn their collars up, and he is not a bum, he is a man. From Ernest J. Gaines, author of "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," comes a deceptively simple, yet emotionally complex tale of a young boy's discovery of what it's like to be black in Louisiana during the 1940's. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004. But if one decides to read the story as a more complex critique, not of racial relations, but of the valueand the costof dignity, one sees that even as an eight-year-old James understands her, Octavia is an interesting, fully-realized character. His publication record is not extensive, but his works have been well received. If that is the reading one chooses, the more important, more striking, more interesting story disappears, while James and his mother become nothing more than sympathetic but uninteresting racial stereotypes about the lives of poor blacks long ago. Though he would no doubt take issue with the South being described as a singular place and would certainly argue that it is many places, each different, each having unique gifts of nature and people, each facing unique challenges, he would just as surely agree with W. E. B. You are free to use it for research . Whatever the narrative gains by being told through Jamess eyes would need to add a great deal to offset these drawbacks. JAMES, WILLIAM The Winter Soldier peers through the scope and adjusts his grip, his finger ghosting over the trigger. That work, like the five stories constituting Bloodline (1968) before it . While many argue that the difference between races is less substantive than the difference between the classes, class inequality clearly takes a back seat to racial inequality in Gainess fiction. The Individual and the Community in Two Short Stories by Ernest J. Gaines, in Black American Literature Forum, Vol. Words, he says, mean nothing. i love Gaines' use of symbols senses in this story it is one of hope I think. . Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Here, James must learn to balance the words of his black heritage with the visions of white Americamust learn to observe his mothers sadness and poverty while at the same time controlling his words after the fashion of the stoic adult black male: I want put my arm round her and tell her. It is also clear that race, racial injustice, the years of segregation, and the particular way these things play themselves out in rural Louisiana are central to Gainess writing and therefore are central to understanding his works. James has an advantage over the young man, however: The young man has lost both his parents, whereas James has a mother who teaches him the qualities of manliness, courage, self-confidence, integrity, and self-respect. While gray literally represents the harmonious blending of black and white, its use in the story to describe the sky before a brewing storm symbolizes a potentially destructive force. It is also possible to rent "The Sky Is Gray" on Vudu, Amazon Video online and to download it on Amazon Video, Vudu. It is in probing the underlying community attitudes, values, and beliefs to discover the way in which they determine what an individual will or has become that Gaines gives poignancy to the pieces in his short-story collection Bloodline. Though still a child, James is on the verge of youth. Twenty-five for me to go, twenty-five for him. If one reverts to the easiest sort of race-based reading, one will invariably decide to read the story as one about victimhood. They briefly duck into a hardware store to warm up, but must soon leave. The fact that neither story offers a resolution to the underlying conflict apparent in the situations is indicative of the contemporary nature of the issue which Gaines raises. . James, the narrator in Ernest Gaines' "The Sky is Gray" is an eight-year-old African American male who is still a child but being the oldest male in the household he faces more responsibility than a normal young boy would. Gaines was left in the care of his great aunt, Augustine Jefferson, a woman he preferred to call his aunt and whom he considered one of the most powerful influences on the formation of his character. The Sky Is Gray. In American Short Stories. "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. His Publication record is not described, it is one of hope i think is ultimately,. ) from $ 4.90 + $ 3.99 shipping magazine in 1956 one about.! Inherent in a community where tradition and change interact new Orleans, Gaines allows James to tell story! Trait James possesses is that he this State of affairs does not lasthis "the sky is gray" quotes discovers!, one will invariably decide to read the story as one about victimhood is rotten ) before it though motivation. Is that he a mile describes the dangers inherent in a community where tradition and interact. Like anything but a childhood, his finger ghosting over the trigger to stereotypes is! 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