Though the motivation for their careful charity is not described, it is ultimately accepted, the suggestion being that. whatever their motivation may be, their small generosity will only be accepted as kindness, not as charity. 436-38. 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. "The Sky is Gray.". On one hand, Alnest is little more than an offstage voice, the voice of an old man cautioning Helena, his wife, against the cold. 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. Babb would have Octavia read as a woman whose prideful dissembling and technique of masking, whatever that entails, are the necessary consequence of living in a dangerous world in which the whim of any white is empowered to affect their destiny. But this is a significant, even inexcusable oversimplification of Octavias motivations. It is also clear that race, racial injustice, the years of segregation, and the particular way these things play themselves out in rural Louisiana are central to Gainess writing and therefore are central to understanding his works. You have remained in right site to start getting this info. The Sky is Gray. 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. With James' toothache at the central point of the plot, the story takes us through the obstacles this black family faces in terms of safety, racism, hunger, cold and money. Set in Louisiana, Octavia is forced to raise her family by herself when her husband is sent off to war. Her final statement to James in the story is probably the most illustrative of her world view: You not a bum, she says. Source: David Y. Kippen, An Overview of The Sky is Gray, in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 1999. His father left his mother when Gaines was a small boy, forcing his mother to move to New Orleans to find work. In this transformation, as he puts his collar down, the reader has taken a small but important step with James from childhood to adulthood. 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. Sometimes itd stop long enough to let me get little rest. But Im not supposed to do that. Me, I don't listen to my heart. The limitations imposed on the narrative by an eight-year-old narrator are more obvious when he tries, unsuccessfully, to understand his mothers frequent mood changes or her mysterious decisions to fight or flee at each of the stations of mood the narrative visits. Bloodline, his collection of short stories published in 1968, is a work that includes some of his best known short fiction, "The Sky Is Gray," "Just Like a Tree," and "A Long Day in November" (also published as a children's book in 1971). Word Count: 1084. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. 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. James tries to keep silent about his tooth not out of fear, but because he knows how expensive it will be to have a dentist pull it. She uses her new awareness to structure her world into clear-cut oppositional units. Ernest James Gaines (January 15, 1933 - November 5, 2019) was an American author whose works have been taught in college classrooms and translated into many languages, including French, Spanish, German, Russian and Chinese. The black student demands hypervisuality Show me one reason to believe in the existence of a God (italics mine)while at the same time demanding a reinterrogation of is verbality: What do words like Freedom, Liberty, God, White, Colored mean? (italics mine). She feels her first duty to her children is to toughen them up and show them how to live and survive. In physical terms, there is motion from one pole to its opposite: from warm, to cold, to warm again; from beyond the outskirts of Bayonne to the city and back again; from the doctor's office to the street, and to the office again, and so on. The Sky Is Gray Watch Online Streaming 123Movie. 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. 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. A micro book of poems inspired by love, dreams, little flights of fantasy and the misty climes of the Pacific Northwest. 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. The feeling of community which permeates A Long Day in Novemberthat sense that whatever happens to Amy and Eddie is everybodys concernis conspicuously absent from the second story in Bloodline, The Sky Is Gray. James, the eight-year-old narrator of this story, struggles to understand his mother and her conceptions of manhood and dignity without aid from the community. 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. From a larger, more global viewpoint . 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. They briefly duck into a hardware store to warm up, but must soon leave. He could have told it through the eyes of Jamess mother Octavia, or Val; he could have told it in epistolary form (as a letter) from Jamess mother to his father; or from an omniscient perspective, one that allowed him to describe the sensory and sentient world from all of these vantage points in turn. Characters Although her primary goal is to project a model of strength for James through her own actions, her inability to make her sense of the world comprehensible to him leaves James vulnerable to the very forces from which she would shield him. In short, the unfortunate consequence of exclusively race-based readings is that they narrow the readers scope of inquiry, inviting the reader to ask fewer questions and questions of a more particular nature than one would ask of an author like James Joyce, Salman Rushdie, or J. M. Coetzeeeach of whose writings are intimately concerned with different conceptions of race and their ramifications. Nor is it likely a coincidence that I . From a larger, more global viewpoint, these motions support and underscore Jamess own transformation. It made my poor heart skip a beat. Sources 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. Dependency on the philanthropy and good will of others leads to vulnerability when that support is no longer forthcoming. 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. 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. The Sky Is Gray: Directed by Stan Lathan. 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.. Understanding The Sky is Gray requires that one not only understand something about the Louisiana of the 1930s and 1940s but also understand what was happening with regard to race in the United States during the 1960s, because the events of what later came to be called the Civil Rights era made a substantial and lasting impression on Gaines, one that can be seen not too far beneath the surface of The Sky is Gray in the person of the student and in the storys preoccupation with racial inequality. (WMG owns this not me)(Lyrics)All the leaves are brown and the sky is greyI've been for a walk on a winters dayI'd be safe and warm if I was in L.A.Californi. SHORT STORY TEST! Yeah, the sky . Rather than reading a good book with a cup of coffee in the afternoon, instead they cope with some harmful bugs inside their computer. 110-13. Their meal finished, James and his mother thank the woman for her hospitality. Lessons of Tough Love in The Sky is Gray Ernest Gaines' short story, The Sky is Gray, was published in 1963, towards the end of the Civil Rights Movement. Although the point is never explicitly stated, it is apparent that Octavia finds the values of her community inadequate to make James the kind of man that she feels he must become. XIX, No. 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 ones body. With James' toothache at the central point of the plot, the story takes us through the obstacles this black family faces in terms of safety . Words, he says, mean nothing. 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. A young boy named James comes of age in 1940s Louisiana and grapples with what it means to be black during a time of racism and poverty. 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. Forced to raise her family by herself when her husband is sent off to war awareness to structure her into... Will only be accepted as kindness, not as charity the Sky is Gray: Directed by Lathan... Her hospitality significant, even inexcusable oversimplification of Octavias motivations support is longer... 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