"The Sky is Gray The Sky is Gray by Ernest J. Gaines is a short story set during World War 11 and is focused on a poor African American Family's struggles. James is sympathetic without being an object of sympathy; the reader feels his cold, his confusion, his hunger directly, authentically, without the intrusion of another character or narrators impressions or observations. She feels her first duty to her children is to toughen them up and show them how to live and survive. The story portraits three remarkable points: James's forced mature, his childhood memory damaged by poverty, but even so, their dignity still remains. The unrelenting cold and hunger he experiences throughout the story stay with me so many years later. Cane, c. 1917 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. His publication record is not extensive, but his works have been well received. This time the trial is so severe that the verbal command is ineffectual: Mama tells me keep my eyes in front where they belong, but I cant helpfrom seeing (italics mine). 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 overarching theme in this story is change and transformation. If one reverts to the easiest sort of race-based reading, one will invariably decide to read the story as one about victimhood. 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. Roll the dice and learn a new word now! This is neither a subjective nor an unimportant question. Introduction Babb, Valerie Melissa. . . The Sky Is Gray portraits both the ugly and beautiful experiences that James and his mother get on their way to the dentist. Historical Context On the other hand, James in The Sky Is Gray will never know the values of communal bonds if Octavia has her way. James does not betray the kind and heartfelt offer of the couple although his mother would want him to. 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. Bajo el cielo gris y nubes bajas, las olas oscuras ocultan su potencia bajo una aparente tranquilidad. "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. Their meal finished, James and his mother thank the woman for her hospitality. 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. Only slightly less prominent than the theme of Civil Rights is class inequality. 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. 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. 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. He states that Gaines was shockingly underrated at the beginning of his career. 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. 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. Sold by: Tidal Wave Group (2138 ratings) It also involves the problem of integrating the individual and the community in a mutually rewarding relationship in the face of dehumanizing individualistic forces. Lord, have mercy (italics mine). 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.. It is my belief that Gaines' "The Sky is Gray" depicts the possible roots of a public leader, in the way the nature of the young narrator James is portrayed it illuminates the character traits in civil leader. 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. And a reading focussed exclusively on the storys racial dynamic misses this completely. 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. 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 seems like anything but a childhood, his mind is plagued with worries and concerns that often belong in the adult realm. (55) 7.4 46min 1980 13+. Examples of this are shown in the episode of the dentist offices with the poor treatment received to the patients, also in the kindness given to James and his mother by the old couple. That though there are grave issues of race and class and poverty that Gaines used an "innocent"black child and an old white woman to bring hope and lovea very touching, emotional and humbling story. The great fear here is not the capriciousness of white townfolk, but of being beholden, as a result of their poverty, to anyone. Word Count: 1084. With his degree in hand, Gaines won the Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship for Graduate Work which allowed him to begin work in Stanfords Creative Writing program, the first of many fellowships he has received. Characters His 1993 novel, A Lesson Before Dying, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. James' mother is "wearing that black . kayeeaugust17. A micro book of poems inspired by love, dreams, little flights of fantasy and the misty climes of the Pacific Northwest. Put another way, if Gainess stories were set in the India of 1946, two years before partition, if the primary groups described were Muslim and Hindu, rather than black and white, would the stories still merit reading? Her alternative, however, creates an atmosphere which, for James, is potentially equal in the dangers it poses. Can I get a job tomorrow? 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. 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 community, presumably, offers no such model. The gray of the sky which hangs threateningly over the action of the story symbolizes the dangers inherent in the extremes which James must reconcile. Dependency on the philanthropy and good will of others leads to vulnerability when that support is no longer forthcoming. As the day progresses, James shows us events from the past--from the time his mother whipped him because he could not kill . Indeed, the tooth with the aching root here is Jamess own Afro-American tongue and earthe dilemma of finding that his deepest roots are at odds with hypervisual America. The argument between the men focuses on the existence of God. 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. Consequently, the reader is limited to what James observes and understands. This critical writing on "The Sky Is Gray" by Ernest Gaines was written and submitted by your fellow student. Gainess story is meant as more than an entertainment; it is meant as a critique of the racial injustice he experienced as a boy made vivid again by a visit to Louisiana in 1968. Analysis: "The Sky Is Gray". 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. Critical Reflections on the Fiction of Ernest J. Gaines, Athens: Georgia University Press, 1994. 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. Ernest J. Gaines is best known for his third novel, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), which recounts her latter-day observations of living in a racially torn Louisiana through the century between the War between the States and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The effect of the storys episodic discontinuity is to emphasize the particular moment James is living, whether he is reliving a memory or moving through present events, while de-emphasizing the storys overarching structure. While they wait for the dentist to reopen his office, Octavia must devise ways in which she can keep James from the cold and at the same time carefully adhere to strict rules of racial separation. This did not go unnoticed in the United States, particularly among black leaders who read with interest books like Jomo Kenyattas Facing Mount Kenya. 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. As the narrative opens, James and his mother, Octavia, are waiting by the roadside for the bus that will carry them to . 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. The Sky is Gray by Ernest J Gaines; Learning in Focus, inc. I think the message it sends about how people treat each other is important. Based on Gaines own experience, the character of Monsieur Bayonne is a mildly unsympathetic but still dangerous figurethough he acts without malice, his actions keep James from a dentist for several days. Octavia shows the characteristics of a good parent by being stern, loving, and independent. 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. 28 terms. William James, the American philosopher and psychologist, was born in New York City to Mary Robertson Walsh James and Henr, Cane (February 23, 2023). 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. ." To see gray merely as the integration of black and white on a literal level, and as a metaphor for racial integration on a symbolic level is, I think, to misunderstand Gainess real intent in the story. The title of the piece hints to the general dreariness which lingers throughout the story. The Sky is Gray is a heartbreaking story of James and his Mama. But the American consciousness was jolted away from these events by Kennedys assassination on November 22, 1963, and by events abroad, principal among these being the escalation of what would become the Viet Nam war. You have these kids, you know: Ill stick a goddamned needle in my arm, Ill sniff coke, to hell with anybody telling me what to do. "The Sky is Gray" should be a required literary experience for both adults and students who share Louisiana's educational complexity. Gates, Henry L, and Nellie Y. McKay. The first strong character trait James possesses is that he . Mama tries to teach James that he is the man of the family now. 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. Through his action, he admits that the emotional or heart position leads to a cul de sac; it cannot be defended rationally. 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. In short, what is. 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. In 1964, for example, Zanzibar and Tanganyika came together to form Tanzania, expelling a sultinate, while Zambia was formed out of Northern Rhodesias ashes by Kenneth Kaunda the same year that Kenya became a republic under Jomo Kenyatta. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004. The scene in which Jamess mother is toldor discoversthat her son must go to the dentist is skipped over, but the familys poverty, and the comparatively huge cost of having the tooth pulled, is not. The symbolic significance of the gray sky is the key to an understanding of the complexity of the issue raised in the story. It is also possible to rent "The Sky Is Gray" on Vudu, Amazon Video online and to download it on Amazon Video, Vudu. Thats the thing. In the communal microcosm of the doctors office he represents the defiance, the nonviolent non-cooperation of the Civil Rights movement that would sweep through the South thirty years later. In 1948, at the age of fifteen, Gaines moved to Vallejo, California, to join his mother and stepfather, because there were no high schools for blacks near his home. 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.. 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. missing from the current crop of responses to Gaines is a moral reading, one that doesnt look for causes and effects in a two-dimensional equation of character and color, but rather, in the quality of the characters thoughts and actions, regarding the characters not as caricatures of different types, but as fully formed people with their ownto borrow a phrase from Joyceindividuating rhythms. If Gaines is indeed an imaginative writer of canonical status, his works will reward such readings. Yet James, for all his acuteness of perception, can never follow Emerson into the parody of the Biblical command, Pray without ceasing: the New-England sage demands, Observe without ceasing (italics mine). Plot Summary The Sky Is Gray is a great portrayal of racial differences. I know I dont.). It made me tear up mutiple times and shook me out of the comfort of privileges. Sources 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. My heart tells me, the boy says. Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. the-sky-is-gray-ernest-gaines-pdf 1/1 map index pdf The Sky Is Gray Ernest Gaines Pdf Recognizing the pretension ways to get this books the sky is gray ernest gaines pdf is additionally useful. 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. Also in 1964, a white minority in Southern Rhodesia elected as Premiere, Ian Smith, under whose leadership Rhodesia managed to postpone representative government for another two decades. But this much is clear. The bus arrives and, while his mother pays, James moves to the back of the bus, where the blacks are made to sit. Here, the key episode occurs between the liberal black student and the conservative black preachera paradoxical conflict between Word and word, between faith and sight. However, the trip to the dentist is weighty too because of the prejudice that exists outside his little community. but should you say the sky is gray well, it still looks blue to me i know the road is light and i've known this all along but should you say the sky is gray then i won't say that you're wrong [chorus] because today, i love everybody everybody i see today, i think that all folks are great and everybody here loves me ooh, today, i'd give . Such readings all share a serious, albeit unintentional, flaw; they suggest that one must understand all actions and most events as direct or indirect consequences of race, rather than individual choice. The sky is Gray. The Sky is Gray is fundamentally a story about the process of coming of age, of going from one state to another. 18, No. Add a gift receipt for easy returns. 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. New York: Longman, 1997, 511530. Gaudet, Marcia G. Porch Talk with Ernest Gaines: a Conversation on the Writers Craft, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1990. 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? A&P Quiz. 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. 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 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. And the sky is gray, the sky is gray Ah, hah But that don't mean little brother that you Have to feel the same way Look the sky is cryin' see the Tear rollin' down on the ground Down on the ground Ah, hah but that don't mean little brother That your life can't turn around Cover up your body but the cold Steady rubbin' on your skin Rubbin' on . 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. If ones analysis of this scene stops here in attempting to understand this odd end point for the story, the reading which suggests itself is quite straightforward, something like, external appearance is essential because Jamess person will always be identified and understood first by his external blackness, then, perhaps, if he is lucky, by his innate character by the world in which he lives, a world in which the white gaze is the most significant threat a black man faces. This reading is reinforced by other stations in the text, and indeed, most critics have read James and Octavia as Ive suggested. Criticism Where The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman gives us a grand, sweeping epic of a black woman and her slave community, "The Sky Is Gray" zeroes in on a moment in time, one crucial afternoon in a black child's development. Plot Summary Dollar and a half to have it pulled. 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. Not wanting to be a crybaby and knowing well that his mother cannot afford a trip to the dentist, James recalls his efforts to disguise his pain from the rest of his family. Random Word. 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 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. 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. But the conflict goes much deeper than that. Just as the clouds clear after a storm, James finds out on his trip to Bayonne that the stormy clouds that are his life are parting to let some sunshine through. 10 terms. 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