The Sky Is Gray Photos View All Photos Movie Info. The storys protagonist, or main character, James is a young boy of about eight who lives with his mother, aunt, and their immediate family in the outskirts of Bayonne, Louisiana. Other Sellers on Amazon. In 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated in New York and outbreaks of anti-black violence occurred in Selma, Alabama, including Ku Klux Klan shootings and Martin Luther King leading a procession of 4,000 in a protest march from Selma to Montgomery. Introduction Characters The Sky Is Gray Analysis. My heart tells me, the boy says. All the leaves are brown (all the leaves are brown) And the sky is gray (and the sky is gray) I've been for a walk (I've been for a walk) On a winter's day (on a winter's day) I'd be safe and warm (I'd be safe and warm) If I was in L.A. (if I was in L.A.) California dreamin' (California dreamin') The Individual and the Community in Two Short Stories by Ernest J. Gaines, in Black American Literature Forum, Vol. His choices should involve a conscious effort to integrate the extremes. 01 Mar 2023 12:32:41 Because his fiction focuses on the peculiar plight of black Americans in the South, Gaines must consider an additional level of significancethe strong communal bonds characteristic of Southern black folk culture. 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. 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. Synopsis. . 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 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. ''The Sky is Gray'' is fundamentally a story about the process of coming of age, of going from one state to another. It suggests at first the bleak mood of the story but also hints at hope in the future. 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. Bajo el cielo gris y nubes bajas, las olas oscuras ocultan su potencia bajo una aparente tranquilidad. Next, James discovers that the dentists colored waiting-room is a place of intensified vocality and aurality, where patients are hollering like pigs under a gate and where all round the room people are talking. I was very much impressed, not only with form, but with how [the Russians] used their peasantry, how they used their serfs.. She insists that they come inside while she calls the dentist to tell him that they are coming. Contrary to what Octavia would have him believe, the choices that James must eventually make about the quality of his existence should not be between bum and man, or between adhering to the dictates of the head or heart as advocated by the student and the minister respectively. with superstition. Jamess mother Octavia is a strong, proud, uncompromising woman largely based on Gainess own mother. The Sky Is Gray Thank you for downloading The Sky Is Gray . Source: David Y. Kippen, An Overview of The Sky is Gray, in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 1999. The symbolic significance of the gray sky is the key to an understanding of the complexity of the issue raised in the story. The sky is gray. From henceforth, Jamess own long day will be comprised of this struggle between black blood and white blood within a cerebral sky of graya terrifying and chilling confrontation with ones own senses and sensibilities. 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. Historical Context 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. Their meal finished, James and his mother thank the woman for her hospitality. 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. Analysis: "The Sky Is Gray". The reader only sees a small part of this process, a few hours one . 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.. In 1964, for example, Zanzibar and Tanganyika came together to form Tanzania, expelling a sultinate, while Zambia was formed out of Northern Rhodesias ashes by Kenneth Kaunda the same year that Kenya became a republic under Jomo Kenyatta. 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. 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. Gaines, Ernest. On the other hand, the student maintains a defensible position, but his egotistical stance exposes his feelings of alienation from his community. You are free to use it for research . But this much is clear. The Sky is Gray. 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. "The Sky is Gray" should be a required literary experience for both adults and students who share Louisiana's educational complexity. The title of the story by Ernest Gaines is ironic. In 1968, the same year that Gainess Bloodline was published, Reverend Martin Luther King himself was assassinated in a Memphis hotel. Through the stories of the many fascinating people who touch Jane's life, Gaines presents not only a moving perspective on the struggles of African Americans but also a social history of the United States since the Civil War. In Los Angeles, race riots in Watts resulted in 35 deaths, the arrest of 4,000, and $40 million in property damage. But Jamess narration creates a rationale for reading the story as a moral story. The Sky is Gray Essay example. Gainess story is meant as more than an entertainment; it is meant as a critique of the racial injustice he experienced as a boy made vivid again by a visit to Louisiana in 1968. James also lets it be known that "the sky is gray" and that there isn't much grass. . With James and his mother departing for the day, the rest of the family is left alone without enough firewood, the breadwinners are not able to work, and money has to be used that could have been put towards food for the house. You have remained in right site to start getting this info. Each of the first two stories in Ernest J. Gainess BloodlineA Long Day in November and The Sky Is Gray describes a black boy or youth attempting to come to terms not just with the world in which he lives, his parents problems, and the racism which circumscribes him but, more importantly, with the sensory orientation of his own body, the struggle between what William Faulkner called a black blood and white blood. It is this private or internal struggle more than any public or external debate that creates the real identity crisis for the young black and for the artist or writer who would contend with an America which has painted the senses white! Both Sonny in A Long Day in November and James in The Sky Is Gray have to resolve the conflict between their African/aural roots and their American/visual reorientationbetween James Baldwins declaration that it is only in his music . Consequently, his feelings of isolation cause him to alienate himself from the emotional support and comfort of the members of his community, whom he, in turn, deprives of the benefits of his education. It made me tear up mutiple times and shook me out of the comfort of privileges. It made my poor heart skip a beat. 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. Themes It suggests at first the bleak mood of the story but also hints at hope in the future. Short Stories for Students. Mama tries to teach James that he is the man of the family now. XIX, No. It suggests at first the bleak mood of the story but also hints at hope in the future. ostreet9 Plus. 1. . The experiences of his early years, particularly the experience of paternal abandonment, provided the bedrock on which his fiction would later be built. [Chorus 2] All the leaves are brown (All the leaves are brown) And the sky is gray (And the sky is gray) I've been for a walk (I've been for a walk) On a winter's day (On a winter's day) If I didn't tell her (If I didn't tell her) I could leave today (I could leave today) California dreamin' (California dreamin') On such a winter's day (California dreamin') On such a winter's day, (California . "The Sky is Gray" refers to the literal winter scene in which the story takes place. 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. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Can I live here tomorrow? . With the exception of Auntie and Mr. Bayonne, who attempt to explain his mothers cold, dispassionate treatment of him on one occasion, James is alienated in his effort to come to grips with both the social and personal forces governing his life. 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. 18, No. 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 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, the clouds are low and the dark waves are hiding their power under a more neutral appearance. Only slightly less prominent than the theme of Civil Rights is class inequality. 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. 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. Last Updated on May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. But if one takes a step back from the more obvious reading another, more subtle, reading begins to emerge. 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. On one hand, Alnest is little more than an offstage voice, the voice of an old man cautioning Helena, his wife, against the cold. Cane, c. 1917 As the narrative opens, James and his mother, Octavia, are waiting by the roadside for the bus that will carry them to . Sold by: Tidal Wave Group . Twenty-five for me to come back, twenty-five for him. And since his stories are set in the past, his African-American characters appear subservient and are not placed in the revolutionary poses favored by some of Gainess contemporaries such as James Baldwin, Ishmael Reed, John O. Killins, John Wideman, or David Bradley., In sum, while Gaines may not have had the wide recognition of other African-American writers early in his career, there is a broad critical consensus that he is an important writer, a good writer, and a writer who has perhaps been undervalued and may continue to gain increasing recognition in the years to come, in part because he was somewhat overshadowed by his contemporaries during his early years, in part because of the increasing importance of studies of masculinity in the literary canon. The best-known version is by the Mamas & the Papas, who sang backup on the original version and released it as a single in 1965.The lyrics express the narrator's longing for the warmth of Los Angeles during a cold winter in New York City. With Olivia Cole, James Bond III, Margaret Avery, Cleavon Little. ostreet9 Plus "Angel Levine" by Bernard Malamud. kui. There is fear that his family might not have enough wood to keep them warm, but a new concern of a toothache has come about and now how will they have enough money to pay the dentist. Print. In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Human existence does not lend itself to such neat categorizing. It also involves the problem of integrating the individual and the community in a mutually rewarding relationship in the face of dehumanizing individualistic forces. But Im not supposed to do that. 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. Historical Context But if one decides to read the story as a more complex critique, not of racial relations, but of the valueand the costof dignity, one sees that even as an eight-year-old James understands her, Octavia is an interesting, fully-realized character. Rather than reading a good book with a cup of coffee in the afternoon, instead they cope with some harmful bugs inside their computer. 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. . In both cases, the situation is presented as a puzzle to the young who must attempt to resolve the conflicts that come about as a result of this realization. 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. 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. Me, I dont listen to my heart. Action is the only thing. There he developed a keen interest in reading, and he wrote his first novel the next year; on news of its rejection, he destroyed the only manuscript copy he possessed. I wouldn't turn down bright colors either. 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. 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 doctors office to the street, and to the office again, and so on. kayeeaugust17. Get help and learn more about the design. 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. 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. With his degree in hand, Gaines won the Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship for Graduate Work which allowed him to begin work in Stanfords Creative Writing program, the first of many fellowships he has received. By recording and preserving his peoples culture in his literature, Gaines creates both an ongoing memorial to a vanishing way of life and an enduring testament to human concerns., Marcia Gaudet and Carl Wooton share many of Babbs observations, particularly with regard to the importance of dignity under strain and courage. His father left his mother when Gaines was a small boy, forcing his mother to move to New Orleans to find work. $18.75 + $3.99 shipping. 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. Set in Louisiana, Octavia is forced to raise her family by herself when her husband is sent off to war. 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. However, the trip to the dentist is weighty too because of the prejudice that exists outside his little community. But what the narrative loses from one hand it gains in the other. Short Stories for Students. I went for a walk on a winter's day. Supporting these ideas is Gainess keen awareness of the all-pervasive and profoundly formative influence of race on virtually every aspect of life in the rural South of this era. What this suggests is that in the highly polarized world in which James is growing up, external appearance can be more significant that internal realityafter all, whether Jamess collar is up or down, hes clearly not a bum, but a boy, and even a man can be permitted, under conditions as cold as those James and Octavia find themselves in, to pull his collar up around his throat. She uses her new awareness to structure her world into clear-cut oppositional units. 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. but should you say the sky is gray well, it still looks blue to me i know the road is light and i've known this all along but should you say the sky is gray then i won't say that you're wrong [chorus] because today, i love everybody everybody i see today, i think that all folks are great and everybody here loves me ooh, today, i'd give . Well, if I cant, to hell with it. Criticism Ill take coke, or Ill use any kind of profanity, I dont give a damn. On the other side are the preacher and the other woman the young man speaks to after the preacher departs. 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. (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. His narrative begins as he and his mother wait for a bus to take them to a dentists office where James is to have his tooth pulled and ends that same day, sometime shortly before (the reader presumes) that tooth is finally pulled. "The Sky Is Gray" is a story narrated by eight year old James which tells the events of a Louisiana morning in which James and his mother, Octavia, take a bus to Bayonne to have a dentist take a look at James' ailing tooth. If one reverts to the easiest sort of race-based reading, one will invariably decide to read the story as one about victimhood. 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. She feels her first duty to her children is to toughen them up and show them how to live and survive. But the conflict goes much deeper than that. But this cure fails, too. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. It is through Jamess eyes that the story is told; consequently, the story is heavily filtered through his sensibilities. 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. James is sympathetic without being an object of sympathy; the reader feels his cold, his confusion, his hunger directly, authentically, without the intrusion of another character or narrators impressions or observations. The purpose of the heart is to pump blood throughout the body, and nothing else. I know I dont.). That though there are grave issues of race and class and poverty that Gaines used an "innocent"black child and an old white woman to bring hope and lovea very touching, emotional and humbling story. He just reads in his book. RT @BuddhistCeo: Morning meditation The first day of Spring I look from the zendo window Hoping the world has changed Alas no There is frost on the ground And the sky is gray As I sit zazen I dream of summer flowers The bell rings I smile I bow #thebuddistceo #buddhism #poetry #meditation . (18421910) A black boy comes of age in Louisiana during the 1940's and learns of racism and poverty firsthand. Categories: American Literature, Literary Criticism, Literature, Short Story, Tags: Analysis of Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray, appreciation of Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray, criticism of Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray, Ernest J. Gaines, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray analysis, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray appreciation, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray essays, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray guide, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray notes, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray plot, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray story, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray summary, Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray themes, essays of Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray, guide of Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray, notes of Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray, plot of Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray, story of Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray, summary of Ernest J. Gainess The Sky Is Gray, themes of Ernest J. 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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. 110-13. The Sky is Gray. . This tooth of endless remorse/aurality may be deniedIt aint hurting me no morebut will never be extracted from the central black consciousness of The Sky Is Gray. Of course, too, there is a shrewd and even humorous irony involved in attempting to exorcise the black hyperverbality by prayerwhether this be Baptist or Catholic incantationfor the Word/word, spoken or sung, lies at the root of black religiosity. Under a more neutral appearance, Octavia is a strong, proud uncompromising! The individual and the other hand, the trip to the easiest of! Back, twenty-five for me to come back, twenty-five for him it. 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