A Gathering Of Old Men

Ernest J. Gaines novel, A Gathering of ageing workforce employs experimental narrative techniques in order to probe propositions of racism and classicism, as well as to examine the nature of storytelling in humanitys past and too for humanitys future.By employing no less than fifteen eliminate narrators in this novel, Gaines is able to cut through deeply into the subjective experiences of a a number of men in concert whom comprise a social microcosm of African American history and experience.Through the different range of voices at his disposal, Gaines probes a wide range of grievances and overly exaltations among his characters and demonstrates the volume of communal unity. The diverse range of narrators used in the novel expresses the novels theme of strength-through-diversity adn unity-through-intimacy.A cargonful reading of the novel reveals the deep motivations of its characters, each(prenominal) of which reveals the novels theme of repurchase and social replacing. B ecause of the tribal nature of the diversity of narrators, the reader is able to ascertain as though they are a direct participant in the action, as though reading the novel is an mental hospital rite of sorts.The novels fundamental intrigue the murder of Beau Baton, also forwards the initiation or ritualistic them the novel is meant to show the growth (or initiation) not solely of chronologic each(prenominal)y grown men into long delayed manhood, but to redefine standards of cruddy masculinity altogether for the characters in the novel itself and also for the novels readers.In the novel, the fifteen separate narrators are drawn out of their ordinary lives and into a civic, almost mythical role. Gaines signals that the unfolding of events is meant to have this mythic, ritualistic overtone when the old men hookup proclaim that things seem new again, that they feel good close to what they are doing.Wallace sees the water of the river as if it were s public treasury a mystery, while Mat admits that he is happy that they and all the rest are doing something different, for the first time ( Gathering, 40).There is also the symbolic/ritualistic firing of guns, urged by Clatoo who tells the men Let them polish there hear you ( Gathering, 48) and contrasted with the brutality of combined experience among the novels protagonists, this symbolic gunshot demonstrates controlled violence and anger emotions turned to ritualistic healing.There can be no doubt that these feelings of race-based anger contributed to the murder. When asked, Uncle Billy admits that he killed Beau out of a longing for revengeWhat they did my boy. The way they beat him. They beat him till they beat him crazy and we had to send him to Jackson (the state mental facility). He dont even know me and his mama no more. We take him candy, we take him cake, he eat it like a hog eating corn.The ritual-based and initiation based theme of the novel is meant to change the violence of the murder into a healing process,where each of the novels narrators confesses their anger and need for revenge and then each learns something through the experience of participating after-the-fact in a murder that only a single man committed.Later, for example, Gable reveals his son is killed for the false accusal for rape on a blank woman and Coot talks about his war experiences.The man who could break horses, Yank, relishes his role without at first realizing it makes him instrumental to whites. But there is also a shadow of environmental consciousness tied to the ritual murder that the renewal of black masculinity is directly tied to the renewal of nature.Johnny Paul explains the murder on behalf of the flowers Thats why I kilt him, thats why.To protect them little flowers. But they aint here no more. And how progress? (Gathering, 92). Gaines intention is to tie subjective individual renewal with the renewal of both community and environment and he portrays the murder an consequent ruse in symboli inspecty charged terms.Killing Beau might revive the river That river. Where the people went all these years. Where they fished, where they washed they clothes, where they was baptized. St. Charles River. Done gived us food, done cleaned us clothes, done cleaned us soul. St. Charles River no more, though. No more.They took it. (Gathering, 107). Because the novel relies on complex themes, it is dangerous to borrow that racial issues are any more dominant than issues of community saving and environmental preservation.The key theme in the novel, as m,mentioned, is the reviving of masculinity the renewal of masculine energy which is seen to extend beyond race and into the elements of the worldly concern and nature themselves.Mathus discovery of his community is the most starkly profoundly as portrayed in A Gathering of Old Men. When he says I been changed.I been changed. Not by that white mans God. I dont believe in that white mans God. I been changed by yall.Rooster, Clab ber, Dirty Red, Coot you changed this hardhearted old man. (Gathering, 182 ) he as admitting that even his previous contempt and mistrust of white people has been challenged by his new-found notions of community.While it is relatively easy to spot the racial themes of A Gathering of Old Men the communal themes and the themes of renewal through nature may be a bit more difficult for the casual reader to understand.When the different themes of the novel are begun to be regarded as a whole, the picture which emerges is not a picture of black anger of African American rancour or even of racism or classicism, but issues of humanism.The reclaiming of masculinity by the men in the novel can be regarded, symbolically, as the renewal of any person or any group which seeks to finally reaffirm its power after a period, perhaps even a drawn-out period, of suppression and duress.Rather than portray this accumulated anger and resentment as exploding in, say, a violent if even localized revo lution, Gaines views the kind of fusion of bitterness, anger, and resentment, to a call to awareness of and an identification and re-claiming of communal ties and environmental awareness.Taken this way, the subjective stories presented by the confused narrators of A Gathering of Old Men can be seen to transform into universal voices of awareness, and cathartic change.This transformation is heralded by community and the fire of private anger and private experience as culturally accepted, in fat culturally imperative information.The novels experimental narrative techniques weld the antediluvian patriarch oral tradition of tribal cultures with the scathingly sharp awareness of newfangled political and psychological realities.