The Sky Is Gray | The Individual and the Community in Two Short Stories by Ernest J. Gaines
In the following essay, Roberts looks at the
communal bonds found in Southern black communites,
especially those as described by Gaines in ‘‘The Sky
is Gray.’’ Along with this, he describes the dangers
inherent in a community where tradition and change
interact.
The interaction between the community and the individual, along with its role in the shaping of human personality, is a primary concern of Ernest J. Gaines in much of his fiction. It is in probing the underlying community attitudes, values, and beliefs to discover the way in which they determine what an individual will or has become that Gaines gives poignancy to the pieces in his short-story collection Bloodline. Because his fiction focuses on the peculiar plight of black Americans in the South, Gaines must consider an additional level of significance— the strong communal bonds...
[The entire page is 2028 words long]
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