O Say, Can YOU See that in ones bloodline one may indeed rediscover the wise blood of his or her deepest cultural and aesthetic self? Gaines's prose is stark, spare, unrelenting in its precision and honesty. 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. Ernest Gaines story, The Sky Is Grey, is a heartfelt story about James, a black youth living in Louisiana during the Second World War. I think the message it sends about how people treat each other is important. The Sky Is Gray Thank you for downloading The Sky Is Gray . 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. Dependency on the philanthropy and good will of others leads to vulnerability when that support is no longer forthcoming. Historical Context So it's probably not coincidental that I began planning another northern California trip a few weeks ago. Yeah, the sky . two young boys, the resolution of the conflict resides with their parents. Her dissembling enables her to warm him without compromising her dignity by begging the proprietor to allow her son use of the stove. The experiences of his early years, particularly the experience of paternal abandonment, provided the bedrock on which his fiction would later be built. 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. Sources 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. In Ernest J. Gaines "The Sky Is Gray", Octavia finds out the hard way. 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 . The Sky Is Gray Watch Online Streaming 123Movie. Encyclopedia.com. . (February 23, 2023). Add to Cart . James, the narrator, is a young boy in a poor African American family in Louisiana during World . The dramatic conflict endemic to the stories in Bloodline arises out of the efforts of various characters to reconcile their individual needs with community prerequisites. From a larger, more global viewpoint, these motions support and underscore Jamess own transformation. (18421910) But if one takes a step back from the more obvious reading another, more subtle, reading begins to emerge. Me, I don't listen to my heart. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. Short Stories for Students. . The purpose of the heart is to pump blood throughout the body, and nothing else.. whatever their motivation may be, their small generosity will only be accepted as kindness, not as charity. 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. allivarnell13. 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. The Sky is Gray Essay example. Two years later, in 1963, the conflicts began in earnest, with riots and acts of racial brutality against demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama, culminating with Martin Luther Kings being jailed in Birmingham. 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. Furthermore, the story implies that the community can continue to provide the individual with emotional support in his efforts to fulfill his individual needs. The title of the piece hints to the general dreariness which lingers throughout the story. By forcing James to sublimate his emotions and accept them as signs of human weakness, she fails to provide him with a means of dealing with the emotional responses of others in a way consistent with her philosophy. The argument between the men focuses on the existence of God. The story occurs on a cold winter day in Louisiana, whose gray sky suggests the lack of hope for many African Americans. 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. 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 Sky Is Gray stream The Sky Is Gray online for free | Watch online movies through best free 1080p HD videos on desktop, laptop, notebook, tablet, iPhone, iPad, Mac Pro and more. The great fear here is not the capriciousness of white townfolk, but of being beholden, as a result of their poverty, to anyone. The Sky Is Gray watch online free. 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. Ernest J. Gaines was thirty in 1963, the year in which The Sky is Gray was first published, but it was not until five years later, in 1968, that the story was published as the second story in Bloodline, the thematically interwoven collection with which readers associate it today. Twenty-five for me to go, twenty-five for him. The sky is gray Its like this everyday The town is full of predators Dont turn into the prey I Flip a million out of nothing Make them feel a certain way Hoping that this swisher Puts me in a purple haze I got my eyes on the money The only reason I'm gonna keep goin' And I am back in the zone and its funny Chronic bag the cologne Another half . Style 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. Twenty-five for me to come back, twenty-five for him. She uses her new awareness to structure her world into clear-cut oppositional units. Plot Summary Short Stories for Students. The student, or the boy, is somewhat out of place in this story, but was certainly not out of place at the time the story was written. Regardless of the scope, however, Gaines . 23 Feb. 2023 . I was very much impressed, not only with form, but with how [the Russians] used their peasantry, how they used their serfs.. What is the allegorical meaning of the student turning the other cheek when the preacher hits him? It made me tear up mutiple times and shook me out of the comfort of privileges. Investigate the relationship between the Civil Rights movement in America and the anti-Apartheid movement in Africa. 545-58. 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. Why does he later say that grass is black? The overarching theme in this story is change and transformation. Summary. You are free to use it for research . Short Stories for Students. 28 terms. Here, hiding her true feelings and motives, she makes use of the technique of masking and teaches her son a valuable lesson in pride and survival. The Sky is Gray is told entirely from the point of view of the eight-year old narrator, James. 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 . Dollar and a half to have it pulled. 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. ." 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. Although he claims to have a solution for the black community, he refuses to consider its level of comprehension. Octavia shows the characteristics of a good parent by being stern, loving, and independent. 01 Mar 2023 12:32:41 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. Their thought process, social standing, and personality are the key aspects that influence their pathway to maturity. 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.. 3, Fall, 1984, pp. with superstition. 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. 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. 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 Godfreedom and libertyare empty of meaning unless they signify the same thing to speakers both black and white. Sets found in the same folder "If The Sky is Gray" by Ernest Gaines. After graduating from high school, Gaines attended Vallejo Junior College, did a stint in the Army, and then returned to the Bay Area to take a degree from San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University). 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. Houston Community College English 1301 Professor Hinchen-Bryan "The Sky is Gray" Discussion Questions Directions: Type your answer to the following questions on this sheet in a different color and submit it canvas by Saturday, October 30, 2021 by 11:59 p.m. 1. My baby don't love me no more. 2324- 2333. Summarizes Bloodline, noting of the work: The five stories in [this] collection demonstrate their excellence in two ways; they are human storiesmoving, humorous, ironic; and they are symbolicwhich tradition tells us is a quality of great literature.. The reader only sees a small part of this process, a few hours one morning, a few more that afternoon, but these hours are important: they form some of the bedrock upon which the foundation of Jamess manhoodhis sense of personal dignity and worth, as well as courage and silence in difficultywill be built. It is both more reasonable and more in keeping with Gainess own views on the importance of dignity to read Octavia as intentionally withholding warmth from James to teach him that the value of their personal dignity is greater than the value of the most basic comfortsbeing warm and well-fed. "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. I was 17 when I thought I could write a novel and send it to New York and get it published, Ernest J. Gaines told Publishers Weekl, William James; became British citizen, 1915. In one instance Octavia enters a white-owned hardware store and pretends to inspect ax handles for purchase while James heats himself at the wood stove. i love Gaines' use of symbols senses in this story it is one of hope I think. Characters The Sky is Gray by Ernest J Gaines; Learning in Focus, inc. 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. 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. SHORT STORY TEST! Four of his works were made into television movies. He responds to the emotional intent of the act. The bus arrives and, while his mother pays, James moves to the back of the bus, where the blacks are made to sit. It also refers to the complexity of the time in which James's character livesthe mid- to late-1950s or early-1960sand how previous values will no longer hold as the South shifts toward modernity. But this much is clear. 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. In her efforts to make James a man, Octavia apparently believes that she has only her own behavior and attitude toward life to offer as a model. Their meal finished, James and his mother thank the woman for her hospitality. JAMES, WILLIAM Critical Reflections on the Fiction of Ernest J. Gaines, Athens: Georgia University Press, 1994. "The Sky is Gray" refers to the literal winter scene in which the story takes place. Powerfully told with a convincing use of African-American dialect and dialogue, the story features nine-year-old James and the lessons he learns from his mother, Octavia, and others. 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. that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story and Ralph Waldo Emersons assumption that the eye is final; what it tells us is the last stroke of nature; beyond color we cannot go. This hyperverbal/hypervisual trauma or rite de passage forms the real theme or subject of both black childrens accounts in A Long Day in November and The Sky Is Gray. . In Gainess words, describing the type of person he depicts in the student to Carl Wooton in an interview reprinted in Porch Talk: you will have this rebellion against authority. 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. Added . 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). The Sky Is Gray Analysis. Synopsis. The narrator, James, has developed a toothache resulting in him needing to go to the dentist. As they ride in the back of the bus reserved for blacks and walk the streets of . 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 Jamess narration creates a rationale for reading the story as a moral story. 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. The Sky is Gray is a heartbreaking story of James and his Mama. Kept completely offstage except for his terrifying effect on Little John Lee, who screams bloody murder on receipt of his dental ministrations, Dr. Basset exists in the narrative not for what he is, but for what he isntDr. They are struggling for survival after James' father is taken in the army. But Im not supposed to do that. Rather than reading a good book with a cup of coffee in the afternoon, instead they cope with some harmful bugs inside their computer. [Instrumental Bridge] [Verse 3] I've got a bad feeling. Style My students, of multi-ethnicities, enjoyed following along in . The story occurs on a cold winter day in Louisiana, whose gray sky suggests the lack of hope for many African Americans. In the introduction to Ernest Gaines, Valerie Babbs biography of Gaines through the lens of his work, Babb writes, taken as a whole, Gainess canon represents a blending of Louisiana, African-American, and universal human experience. 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. Are the two related? With nowhere to go, and no money to buy anything, James and his mother have no choice but to walk, aimlessly, until the doctors office opens again. 110-13. These days, we know how to bring summer closer.<br><br>A plate of hot cherries, juicy, smelling berries, here it is summer on ! In Ernest Gaines's "The Sky is Gray", James is the protagonist and main character. The reader only sees a small part of this process, a few hours one . Taking what she hasher pride and her povertyshe moves toward her goal of inculcating in James a sense of independence and dignity in self undeterred by offers of kindness and generosity. "The Sky is Gray 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. 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. In Los Angeles, race riots in Watts resulted in 35 deaths, the arrest of 4,000, and $40 million in property damage. 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. I know I dont.). Whereas the minister clings to the traditional religious value of faith, the student espouses the development of more individualistic values based on reasoning and logic. 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). Ralph was strict about the kinds of children he would allow Gaines to befriend; because of his stepfathers insistence that most of the local children were trouble, Gaines turned to the local public library for entertainment and solacean institution that had been closed to him in Louisiana because he was black. 18, No. Gaines, Ernest. Nor is it likely a coincidence that I . If one reverts to the easiest sort of race-based reading, one will invariably decide to read the story as one about victimhood. 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. It is through Jamess eyes that the story is told; consequently, the story is heavily filtered through his sensibilities. Pressure continues to mount on the government over a number of events that allegedly took place in Whitehall and Downing Street while COVID-19 restrictions were in force. But it was "The Sky Is Gray" that first drew me in and that still evokes a certain atmosphere in my mind. All in all, the only pride that can be salvaged at the conclusion of the story is the black mothers verbal assuranceYou not a bumand the visual accommodation whereby James turns down the collar of his coat in order to appear as an Afro-American or newly reconstituted hyperaural/ hypervisual man. This is what the black student in the dentists office had desiredthe best of both cultures, of ear and eye. Encyclopedia.com. The title of the story "The Sky is Gray" by Ernest Gaines is ironic. They are struggling for survival after James' father is taken in the army. Jamess thoughts then turn to the memory of two redbirds he and his brother, Ty, had trapped, and to his mothers inexplicable insistence that he kill them and her equally inexplicable fury when he couldnt. Print. Ernest Gaines has written a non-fictional story that has three major characters apart from him as the narrator. The first strong character trait James possesses is that he . His feelings of isolation are clearly illustrated in his conversation with a woman who attempts to take his side in the disagreement. Bajo el cielo gris y nubes bajas, las olas oscuras ocultan su potencia bajo una aparente tranquilidad. Awesome read. 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. Though her family is clearly poor, it is evident that they have learned to function within the constraints of their poverty. 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. 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