A Gathering of Old Men by Earnest J. Gaines is a great novel about race relations in the south. The novel begins with a child narrator who relates the report that there has been a shooting on a Louisiana plantation, and a white, Cajun farmer Beau Boutan, is dead. He has been killed in the yard of an old black worker, Mathu. Because of the traditional conflict between Cajuns and blacks in South Louisiana, the tension in the situation and the fear of the black people is immediately felt in the novel. I would definitely recommend this book to someone else.
Gaines uses the fifteen narrators to deal with the changing relationship between the Cajuns and the blacks in Louisiana. As each narrator picks up the story, we see the tension between the past and the present, the conflict between the whites and the blacks. This allows Gaines to set up the unfolding of the depths of character and the courage of the men.
Mapes, the white sheriff who traditionally dealt with the black people......
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Approximate Word Count: 421
Approximate Pages: 2 (260 words per double-spaced page) |