A Gathering Of Old Men Summary

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Author Review: Earnest Gaines, A gathering of old men According to Earnest J. Gaines “There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.”(Gaines). This quote is a significant representation of the major themes in most of Gaines well known and popular short stories and novels. A little background information on Gaines is he was a part of the post slavery generation and had the opportunity to witness the transition from devastating effects of slavery to blacks being emancipated from all they have ever known and pushed to make it on their own as sharecroppers and free blacks. He was the oldest of 12 siblings and was raised by his great aunt, who was a strong woman and he was able to emulate many of his novel characters from such as …show more content…

Gaines, his novel full of descriptive language and intriguing story line gives the reader an opportunity to grasp the main theme and evoke the feelings and emotions that the reader can relate to. Although Gaines was raised being introduced to the civil rights movement spreaded to the south he writes more about the maintenance of white supremacy and the characters having the opportunity to face the oppression of slavery they have been going through for their whole entire lives(Tucker, 2011). In each paragraph Gaines shifts narrators that represent different man collectively telling their claims of racism as being individual acceptances instead of a systematic design of the states. Figurative language Gaines uses in his writings is symbolism as he portrays the characters with similar characteristics to the states principles and what he has seen in his lifetime. Gaines likes to describe his writing of being more like African-American history that has not been told sharing the registries of the African American perspective. With the little reading and research that I have done I am very fond of Gaines writings and his chosen genres, many African American children forget

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