Novel A Gathering Of Old Men example essay topic

Ernest J. Gaines was the brilliant author of the novel, A Gathering of Old Men. This book mainly is a fictional story about the real life prejudices whites had against blacks in the 1970's. Earnest displays these prejudices through carefully thought out characters. The main protagonist of the story is a white woman known as Candy. She is an orphan who was raised by neighbors near a plantation in the Deep South where the story takes place. At the time of the story, Candy is around 18 years old.

Another main character is a white sheriff known as Mapes. He is also a protagonist in the story but is more of a neutral character than Candy. Many antagonists appear throughout the book, but the only one who takes any action is Luke Will. He is a huge young man who appears to be bull headed and never backs down from a fight. Also, Luke has a great dislike for the blacks in the area, and feels that whites are superior to blacks. In all these are the major characters that appear throughout the novel.

The story begins with a young boy, known as Skookum, running from house to house telling all the "old men' in the area to meet at Mathu's house with a twelve gauge shotgun and an empty number five shell. Each old timer is rounded up one by one and many come from towns far away from the Marshall Quarters, the small town in which Mathu's house lies. In this part of the novel the reader is introduced to all the abused black folks who are fed up with being picked on by the whites. Each and every man has a different story about how the white folks, especially the plantation owner Fix and his son Beau, had abused him or his family.

Around this time, the reader learns that Beau has been shot in Mathu's yard. Also, the reader is lead to believe that Mathu did indeed shoot him but Candy, being like Mathu's daughter was going to protect him by having all the old fed up men around the plantation come down and say that they had shot Beau. Even Candy her self claims to have shot Beau but no one seems to believe her. All the black men with empty shotguns gather on the "gary' or the porch. Here they sit and wait for Mapes the sheriff to come. By know there are at least 13 aged black men sitting on the porch with shotguns.

As Mapes arrives he questions each of the men with shotguns and they all claim that they put the one fatal wound into Beau. All of them give a good reason why they shot Beau but Mapes still believes that Mathu shot him because he is the only real man around who would have the nerve to do such a thing. Tucker, one of the old men on the porch tell Mapes that he shot Beau for revenge because Tucker was forced by Beau to beat his own brother with a piece of sugar cane after he had won a race to Beau that he was not supposed to win. This was just one of the many pitiful stories the black told Mapes. The group pretty much sat on the porch all day accompanied by a few neighbors and relatives waiting for Fix, Beaus father to come and try to lynch the men. Fix was known around these parts for abusing blacks that crossed his path and with the act of killing his son he was sure to show up.

This is where the novel takes an interesting twist and Fix's other son is brought into the plot. His name is Gil and he plays football at a nearby university where he plans to go All-American. The funny part is that his best teammate is a young black man from around the plantation. The two players are known as Salt and Pepper for the way they play so well together on the field.

When news of the killing comes to the school Gil is very disturbed and leaves for home even though the biggest game of the year is in less than a day. He returns home to find a house full of close friends and relatives many of which are planning on going down to Marshall and beat up the feeble old men at Mathu's house. The head of this group is of course Fix, Gil's dad. After many pages of explanation, mostly that Gil will not become All-American if Fix goes through with the beating, Gil finally gets his dad to not take part in the lynching. When word gets to Mapes that Fix is not coming, the group of old men do not know what to do. Mapes finds the situation humorous because the black men wanted Fix to be his old abusive self so they could kill him, but instead he lets the death of his brother go and does not take revenge.

Restlessness occurs on the gary and the men with shotguns go inside Mathu's house to decide what to do. Just as Mathu was about to turn himself in Charlie, a beastly black man, shows up and he turns out to be the real killer of Beau. He announces this to all, even Mapes. It appears that Mathu was protecting Charley while every one else was protecting Mathu.

Before a decision can be made on what to do with Charlie, Luke Will shows up with a couple of friends to lynch the group in Fix's absence. When Mapes refuses to hand over Mathu, Luke shoots him in the shoulder wounding him badly. He falls to the ground, unable to get up. At this moment a huge gunfight breaks out between Luke's crew and the black men in Mathu's house. They had all been secretly loading their guns while Mapes wasn't looking so everyone's gun was loaded. Many shots were fired but a bullet hit only Luke's friend.

Soon Luke found he was greatly outnumbered and asked for Mapes' help but, he did not give it to him and Mapes said that he doubted Luke would make it out of there alive. He was correct, for Charlie stood up and aimed at Luke but Luke hit Charlie first. With his last ounce of strength Charlie shot Luke and they both were killed. The fight was over and only Luke and Charlie were seriously harmed.

Everybody went home and slept. A trial occurred within the next couple of weeks and it lasted 3 days. Many witnesses were called and several stories were heard but by the end, the judge ordered that no one be sent to Jail because the two killers were already dead, and the rest of the people involved were to be on probation for 5 years. In addition to this sentence, the people involved could not carry a firearm within that probation time. Every one went home and all appeared to be satisfied. The reader finds out that Salt and Pepper won their game and are most likely to become All-Americans.

After this occurs the book pretty much just ends. Several Historical events appear throughout the novel, A Gathering of Old Men. To start, the characters in the book describe their experiences with segregation and how it had been a long time since they had to sit in separate rooms as whites but that nothing had really change. This indicates that the book's setting takes place many years after desegregation but not far enough into the future where prejudice was greatly eliminated. This alone can tell the reader that the book probably takes place sometime in the 1970's.

Next, Tucker talks about how the machine came into farming and took the place of horses. This tells the reader that the story took place many years before now because, although Tucker is a 70 year old man, he still can remember that when he was young and breaking horses for a living, he got shut down by the white man and his machines. This proves that the story happened several decades after the industrial farm revolution took place in the south. To continue, the book talks of the Klan openly representing men in a court of law. This is unheard of today and would be protested, but it proves that the novel's setting is at least a decade before today. Moving on, the characters talk about how nearly nobody black owns a car or truck.

Today this is very untrue, almost all people who live in the country or suburbs own a vehicle no matter what race or gender they are. This historical element tells the reader that the book took place before the 1980's when most families in a town owned a car. Lastly, the characters, especially the old men, complain that a near-by river was being ruined because cabins were being built along its banks. This means that little development was going on in the Deep South during the time the novel takes place. This makes the setting perfect for the 1970's because then population was growing rapidly in the Deep South and more and more progress as well as development was being made. The above are examples of historical elements found in the novel A Gathering of Old Men.

This novel certainly gives a very deep understanding of the prejudices that went on in the Deep South during the 1970's. For instance, the book gave great examples of how black workers were still being treated like slaves. The author gave graphic depictions of cane workers being sliced open by a razor sharp piece of cane for no apparent reason except for the fact that they were black. Also, stories of law injustices show up all over the book. To better explain, one of the old men on the gary tells how his son was wrongly accused of raping a white women.

He goes onto say that even though the court knew he was innocent, they gave him the chair rather than call a white woman a liar on the account of a black man saying so. Also, the novel tells of how the black people stuck together and stood up for one another in the face of prejudice, as did all the old men stand up for Mathu when they thought he was in trouble. Moving on, the novel clearly showed that whites would find any excuse to try to prove they were better than blacks. Such an example was given when Luke Will would not let the law handle his brother's death because a black man was to blame. He had to go and try to make the whole town of black people pay for what one black man did. By the end of this book, I had a true understanding of the prejudice blacks went through in the Deep South in the 1970's.

I would recommend A Gathering of Old Men to anyone interested in learning about the racial prejudices that went on in the south during the 1970's. The book is well written in an interesting format. A different character tells each section of the book, which makes it possible to show the views of many different types of people and how they felt about the prejudices. This book also appears to be written backwards in a way. All the characters are introduced in the beginning but the reader does not find out who they actually are or who they are related to until? through the book.

This gives the novel an interesting twist and keeps the reader interested until the very end. Also, this book is wonderful because it is written they way a southern person would talk. This, more than anything, kept my attention focussed on the book because it gave the feeling that they were really in the deep south listening in on all the conversation. Over all, I liked A Gathering of Old Men tremendously for its content and creative writing style.