The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

After Joe is killed by a horse on Mr. Clyde's ranch, his daughter Ella gets married to a young boy called Gable, who is also a skillful horse breaker. The couple moves to Texas, taking Ella's...

I think you are asking why Miss Jane went into the city of Bayonne after Jimmy was killed, correct? The folks on the pecan plantation learn of Jimmy's death, and then Jane stoicly announces that...

These words, spoken by Miss Jane Pittman herself toward the end of the book, are a reference to the black community's hope to one day have raised a child who will grow properly to adulthood and...

Jane's narrative spans from slavery to Civil Rights and it is this that makes it so effective. As a slave heading North, Jane, as a child, utters one of the most powerful quotes of the narrative:...

I think that one theme from Gaines' work that has a contemporary meaning would be the idea that political activism can be experienced and embraced by anyone. Jane Pittman is an old lady by the...

When Miss Jane talks about the Freedom Beero, she is referring to the Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees and Abandoned Lands, more commonly called the Freedmen's Bureau. It was established on March 3rd...

Jules Raynard is speaking to Miss Jane Pittman about the death of his godson, Tee Bob Samson, who has ended his own life. Raynard is referring to the unwritten social code between blacks and...

While Dr. King and Rosa Parks are not immediate figures in the narrative, they do occupy significant roles. Figures like them are what inspires Jimmy Aaron to return to where Jane lives and...

Miss Jane Pittman has witnessed one hundred years of life in Louisiana, so she has a great deal of wisdom to share with her readers. She realizes early in her life that she can't count on anyone...

I am assuming that when you say "this old blackman", you are referring to the hunter Jane and Ned encounter in Chapter 8. The hunter, an old black man, calls himself "a friend, not an enemy". He...

Ned and Jimmy are two characters that Jane knows who have tried to help out the poor and wind up getting killed. Ned is Jane's adopted son. She and Ned escaped the plantation together and headed...

Some writers might have created Miss Jane Pittman to be a bitter character, based on her early life, which was informed by the tragedy of slavery, the Jim Crow era and a long series of decades that...

I believe that being "smoked" is a disciplinary measure that was being used by Oscar, the father of Tee Bo and Tee Lo. Apparently, the boys had sassed their elders, because when Miss...

This scene is in Book I in the chapter titled "Massacre." At the end of the war, several of the former slaves decide to go north, with Big Laura leading them. They stop and make camp for...

Gaines's work is usually categorized as Southern fiction or African-American fiction, and showcases elements of oral history, slave narratives, and the influences of fellow Southerners William...

Published in the early 1970's, this work of historical fiction is probably best described as a blend of oral history and slave narrative and has been categorized as Southern fiction and/or...

Author Ernest Gaines created a memorable composite portrait of one of American literature’s most resilient heroes, Jane Pittman, who was apparently modeled on Augusteen Jefferson. As the character...

I think that one of the most significant events out of the Fourth Book of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is the emergence of Jimmy and his impact on Jane. Jimmy is significant because he...

Ernest Gaines’s novel spans a century, ending in the 1960s. Gaines deliberately chose this period because it begins with the Civil War era and brings the reader into the heyday of the US Civil...

Jimmy is "the one" in a variety of ways. The first would be that Jimmy demonstrates that he is one to break the mode of what can be and create what could or should be. As a youngster, Jimmy is...

There are many themes in this work by Ernest J. Gaines, but one of the more interesting and/or ironic is the racial divisions that extend past black versus white into whites versus whites, and...

In one way or another, every character living in the South is negatively affected by the social expectations that were shaped by racism. One character whose whole life is shaped by those negative...

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is usually categorized as Southern fiction, African-American fiction, or sometimes even the more general historical fiction. Gaines created a unique...

The philosopher George Santayana wrote (in The Life of Reason, 1905), "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." The main idea of this quote is that the past contains both...

I think that Jane Pittman's primary motivation is to serve as a testament to history. I sense that she understands this function towards the end of the narrative. Jane Pittman had been presented...

I think that we have to establish the narative's resolution as being one in which one understands the need to take social action when what is right is being denied. Jane Pittman demonstrates...

There are several references to Jim Crow Laws in the novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. To begin, however, there needs to be a thorough understanding of what Jim Crow Laws were. During...

This is a great question. I think that one of Gaines' primary motivations in detailing the end of the story in the way he did was to show how social activism and seeking to create change is not in...