Jamess mother talks at length about how much it will cost while James pretends to sleep. Burke, William. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, 2 nd Edition. The purpose of the heart is to pump blood throughout the body, and nothing else.. Babb cant decide. But what the narrative loses from one hand it gains in the other. 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. Why did Jamess mother think it was important for him to kill the songbirds? 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 . As they wait, his mother thinks about homeabout his aunt, the other children, the farm animals and the weatherthe narrative follows Jamess thoughts back to the origins of his toothache. 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. It is important to recall that the Civil Rights era coincided with the casting off of imperial control by a series of African countries. Regardless of the scope, however, Gaines . (18421910) She offers them food, but though James is hungry, his mother will not accept any charity, so Helena has James move some empty trash cans to the street as a face-saving gesture for his mother. They are struggling for survival after James' father is taken in the army. While precisely dating the start of an era is difficult, most agree that the beginning of the Civil Rights era can be dated to John F. Kennedys election in 1961 as this countrys 35th and youngest President, and with the United Nations decision that same year to condemn the South African apartheid. 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. The story portraits three remarkable points: James's forced mature, his childhood memory damaged by poverty, but even so, their dignity still remains. But Jamess narration creates a rationale for reading the story as a moral story. 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. 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. Dollar and a half to have it pulled. Encyclopedia.com. Synopsis. Gravel crunches under the tires of the Rolls Royce as it trundles up the country road. James soon finds himself walking through the cold of Bayonne. The bus arrives and, while his mother pays, James moves to the back of the bus, where the blacks are made to sit. But the question remains whether or not in this blending of black and white into The Sky Is Gray there still may be too great a personal pain and sense of loss or self-betrayal for black youth or artist ever to transcend Gunnar Myrdals penetrating observation: The colored peoples are excluded from assimilation.. 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. Short Stories for Students. Not added . 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. It growls so loud you can hear it a mile. Moreover, it soon becomes clear that the black mother and son must accept the fact that they have now become the observed, not the observersthat they are the ones who dearly need to be seen for what they are, cold and hungry. 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. Due to the several barriers James and his mother, Octavia, encounter trying to get to the dentist, the theme of . 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 Sky is Gray Essay example. The Winter Soldier peers through the scope and adjusts his grip, his finger ghosting over the trigger. 01 Mar 2023 12:32:41 4, June, 1976, pp. His father left his mother when Gaines was a small boy, forcing his mother to move to New Orleans to find work. 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. 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). Babb, Valerie Melissa. The symbolic significance of the gray sky is the key to an understanding of the complexity of the issue raised in the story. New York: Longman, 1997, 511530. James, in The Sky is Gray, is a somewhat older black youth who rightly faces a more complex dilemma concerning his ear and eye. . 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. For me, the wind is pink, the grass is black.. The Harlem Renaissance was a period between World War I and the Great Depression when black artists and writers flourished in the United Stat, Sweat Moreover, while an adult may be judged on the basis of his or her thoughts and actions, a child is still too completely a product of his or her parents to evaluate as an independent being. The trip to town on the bus marked White and Colored represents the real rite de passage for the black youth in white Americathe blurring of his sensibilities into gray: The river is gray. I wouldn't turn down bright colors either. 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. 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. . 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. 4, June, 1991, pp. I've got a real bad feeling. Consequently, in attempting to communicate with the community, he feels frustration, which reinforces his belief in his own isolation. The Sky Is Gray Analysis. Though it is indeed difficult, particularly for Americans, to step far enough back from the late 20th century American present to see the world Gaines describes with the same dispassionate clarity as one might see the Ireland, India, or South Africa that Joyce, Rushdie, and Coetzee respectively describe, nothing is lostand much is gainedif one makes the effort. It is a testimony to Gaines's skill as a writer and storyteller that many people believe Jane Pittman was a real person. Gaudet, Marcia G. Porch Talk with Ernest Gaines: a Conversation on the Writers Craft, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1990. But if one takes a step back from the more obvious reading another, more subtle, reading begins to emerge. During the exchange between the men, the minister exposes the weakness of his position when he becomes frustrated and strikes the student. 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