Ernest Gaines, Boston: Twayne, 1991. . . Only slightly less prominent than the theme of Civil Rights is class inequality. “The Sky is Gray” is told in the first person by an eight-year-old child, James, on the cusp of youth, and describes a half-day in James’s life. But if one decides to read the story as a more complex critique, not of racial relations, but of the value—and the cost—of dignity, one sees that even as an eight-year-old James understands her, Octavia is an interesting, fully-realized character. For the sky is, indeed, gray … His first bona-fide publications—“The Boy in the Double-Breasted Suit” and “The Turtles”—were published in San Francisco State College’s Transfer magazine in 1956. It suggests at first the bleak mood of the story but also hints at hope in the future. With the exception of Auntie and Mr. Bayonne, who attempt to explain his mother’s 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. In the following essay, Meyer describes how “The Sky is Gray” is a coming of age story not just about coming to terms with growing up, but also dealing with the sensual orientation of one’s body. "The Sky is Gray". Cane…, c. 1917 The Sky is Gray ( 44 ) IMDb 7.4 46min 1980 13+ 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. If one reverts to the easiest sort of race-based reading, one will invariably decide to read the story as one about victimhood. Of Love and Dust. whatever their motivation may be, their small generosity will only be accepted as kindness, not as charity. 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. 545-58. 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 God—freedom and liberty—are empty of meaning unless they signify the same thing to speakers both black and white. This did not go unnoticed in the United States, particularly among black leaders who read with interest books like Jomo Kenyatta’s Facing Mount Kenya. For Further Study Conversations with Ernest Gaines, Mississippi: Mississippi University Press, 1995. James also lets it be known that “the sky is gray” and that there isn’t much grass. . High Quality version of Stevie Ray Vaughan's The Sky Is Crying.No Video! Short Stories for Students. She was preparing him to take care of himself in case she had to go away like his father did. If one’s 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 James’s 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 I’ve suggested. She uses her new awareness to structure her world into clear-cut oppositional units. Consequently, the reader is limited to what James observes and understands. Historical Context This tooth of endless remorse/aurality may be denied—“It ain’t hurting me no more”—but will never be extracted from the central black consciousness of “The Sky Is Gray.” Of course, too, there is a shrewd and even humorous irony involved in attempting to exorcise the black hyperverbality by “prayer”—whether this be Baptist or Catholic incantation—for the Word/word, spoken or sung, lies at the root of black religiosity. But instead, Gaines allows James to tell his story in his own words. 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. His choices should involve a conscious effort to integrate the extremes. The advantages of episodic form, when relating the experiences of a young boy, are obvious, and have been used with great success in works as different as Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Rudyard Kipling’s Kim. A Gathering of Old Men. The scene in which James’s mother is told—or discovers—that her son must go to the dentist is skipped over, but the family’s poverty, and the comparatively huge cost of having the tooth pulled, is not. Though still a child, James is on the verge of youth. When aspirin fails to work, Auntie wants to tell James’s mother; James convinces her not to, so they turn instead to a neighbor, Monsieur Bayonne, for a prayer cure. I think the message it sends about how people treat each other is important. 14, April 5, 1971, pp. A wintry lullaby from The Orbweavers, made in their home studio. Indeed, one of the story’s more disturbing episodes, during which his mother tries to make James kill two captured birds, is drawn from Gaines’s own experience. His feelings of isolation are clearly illustrated in his conversation with a woman who attempts to take his side in the disagreement. A lot of other smart people have, too. 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. 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. A strong offstage presence, James’s father is most profound in his absence. Not surprisingly, the lion’s share of critiques fall into the first camp, and even the structural readings include didactic (instructive) digressions in almost every case. Historical Context James. To project an image of invulnerability for James, she alienates herself from the community and deals with her world on an individualistic level. Gaines’s 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. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. A song for yearning. 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. Lord, have mercy (italics mine). Critical Overview JAMES, WILLIAM Style James’s mother Octavia is a strong, proud, uncompromising woman largely based on Gaines’s own mother. But this state of affairs does not last—his Auntie soon discovers that his tooth is rotten. Consequently, in attempting to communicate with the community, he feels frustration, which reinforces his belief in his own isolation. 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 Gaines’s real intent in the story. Babb seems to approach this realization when she writes that Octavia’s “dissembling enables her to warm him without compromising her dignity by begging.” Babb realizes that Octavia’s act is fundamentally about dignity, not about warmth, but she doesn’t think through the implications of the point she has made, here or later. 2021 . James, in “The Sky is Gray,” is a somewhat older black youth who rightly faces a more complex dilemma concerning his ear and eye. Human existence does not lend itself to such neat categorizing. During the exchange between the men, the minister exposes the weakness of his position when he becomes frustrated and strikes the student. 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