A Gathering of Old Men (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Ernest J. Gaines
- First Published: 1983
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Social realism
- Subjects: African Americans, 1970’s, Racism, Blacks, Crime or criminals, Murder or homicide, South or Southerners, Social issues, Friendship, Yards or backyards, Ethnic relations, Cajuns, Lynching, Mysteries
- Locales: South (U.S.), Louisiana
Unlike The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman with its epic sweep, A Gathering of Old Men limits its primary action to a single day and to locales in and around the plantation quarters near Bayonne. It is only in Lou Dimes's last narrative, a sort of epilogue, that the reader is carried past the climactic day on which a group of old black men gather to protect their friend, Mathu. They assume that Mathu has killed Beau, a white farmer and son of a powerful Cajun patriarch, Fix Bouton.
The old men congregate at Mathu's house, each carrying a shotgun and confessing...
[The entire page is 1088 words long]
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