[In the following essay, Burke views the five stories in Bloodline as “the record of changing race relations in America.”]

One of the finest collections of short stories published in the past few years—Bloodline by Ernest Gaines (New York: Dial Press, 1968, to which all page numbers refer)—has gone generally unrecognized by literary critics in spite of its praise by reviewers, and it is time to give the volume recognition. The five stories in the collection demonstrate their excellence in two ways: they are human stories—moving, humorous, ironic; and they are symbolic—which tradition tells us is a quality of all great literature. Several of the five stories, usually “A Cold Day in November” or “The Sky Is Gray,” have appeared in various anthologies, but this kind of exposure is insufficient. As compelling as these two stories are, their significance is greater when seen in relation to the whole volume. Independently, each of the stories illuminates various aspects of black life; but together they present a general historical pattern: the decline of the old “Southern way of life” and, by extension, the record of changing race relations in America. Gaines, like Faulkner to whom he has been compared by reviewers, has constructed a mythical locale centered around the fictional city of Bayonne, Louisiana. In this area and among its people Gaines has constructed a symbolic story of the South—and America—from the experiences and point of view of its black citizenry. It is a dynamic and charged history, moving from a defensive past to a frighteningly hopeful future.

Race relations are changing, the collection argues, primarily because the black male is changing. For a long time forced to cede his masculinity to the woman or at least divert it away from confrontation with the dominant white society, the black man of the recent past has reclaimed his masculinity which, in turn, has forced some of the recent “political lynchings” we have witnessed—most notably Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King, Jr. The change in race relations, moreover, has changed the “code,” the written and unwritten rules that limit and ritualize interracial behavior. This disappearing code, always dehumanizing to both white and black, is leaving a void, to be replaced by either violence or a more human form of racial interaction. The code has been itself supported and justified by racial stereotypes, and one of Gaines' triumphs is that he both acknowledges and destroys the stereotypes: the stereotypical fact becomes the misleading fact. In short, the volume presents in microcosm a dramatic and human history of black Americans.

“A Long Day in November,” the first of the five stories, portrays a tough matriarchal society which all but destroys the possibility of masculinity for black males. The central conflict is between Eddie and his wife Amy. Since Eddie has been spending more time with his ＄300 automobile than with his family, Amy takes their son and leaves home to go back to her mother. The story traces Eddie's attempts to win back his wife and son from his man-hating mother-in-law, attempts in which he is unsuccessful until he finally sets his car afire at the advice of a Madame Touissaint, a black-magic fortune-teller. Finally, the story dramatizes the effect of the marital squabble on six-year old Sonny.

Although Eddie does win back his family, each step in his accomplishment ironically points up the dominance of women over men in this black society. Eddie first tries to regain his family by going directly to his mother-in-law's house, but this old war-horse drives him away in tears by firing a shotgun over his retreating form. Next he asks a black male preacher to intervene, but he too is turned away by “Gran'mon.” Only by consulting a woman, Madame Touissaint, is Eddie able to obtain the formula for the return of his family. And the plan he must follow—the burning of his car—confirms his impotence. A poor cane-cutter with little control over his life, he was able to assert himself in a small way through his automobile, yet even this token independence will not be tolerated by the women.

Caught in this sexual power struggle is the boy Sonny. The story is presented through his eyes in a modified stream-of-consciousness, this technique very effectively contrasting the innocence of the boy with the woman-ridden world he encounters. For example, when his mother takes refuge in her shrewish mother's house, “Gran'mon” immediately commands an old suitor of Amy's, Freddie Jackson, to console her daughter. Sonny senses the tastelessness of his grandmother's act without fully recognizing its moral implications. At prayers he “don't like old Gran'mon too much. … [and] don't like Freddie Jackson either” (pp. 78-79). His negative attitude towards the two outsiders desirous of destroying his family also contains a vague awareness of the sexual ethics involved: “I just don't like [Freddie Jackson]. I don't like him to hold my mama, neither. My daddy suppose to hold my mama” (p. 36).

The full psychological effect of his parents' dispute is dramatized in a scene that reveals Gaines' talent at its best. When Sonny goes to school the morning he and his mother have moved to Grand'mom's house, he is not prepared for his lesson. When called on to recite he is very nervous and the following scene ensues:

I'm next, I'm scared. I don't know my lesson and Miss Herbert go'n whip me. Miss Hebert don't like you when you don't know your lesson. I can see her strap over there on the table. I can see the clock and the little bell, too. Bill split the end of the strap, and them little ends sting some. Soon's Billy Joe Martin finishes, then it's me. I don't know … Mama ought to been … “Bob and Rex” …

“Eddie,” Miss Hebert says.

I don't know my lesson. I don't know my lesson. I don't know my lesson. I feel warm. I'm wet. I hear the wee-wee dripping on the floor. I'm crying. I'm crying because I wee-wee on myself. My clothes's wet. Lucy and them go'n laugh at me. Billy Joe Martin and them go'n tease me. I don't know my lesson. I don't know my lesson. I don't know my lesson.

“Oh, Eddie, look what you've done.” I think I hear Miss Hebert saying. I don't know if she's saying this, but I think I hear her say it. My eyes's shut and I'm crying. I don't want look at none of them because I know they laughing at me.

“It's running under that bench there now,” Billy Joe Martin says. “Look out for your feet back there, it's moving fast.”

(pp. 24-25)

The poignancy is exquisite. The pathos of Sonny's shame combined with the outrageously funny remark of Billy Joe Martin is a remarkable mixture of the bitter and the sweet; indeed, the humor rescues the passage from sentimentality. It is the kind of emotion and scene that Gaines renders masterfully. The scene is also crucial thematically as Sonny thereby becomes the subject of female scorn; his giry friend Lucy refuses to continue their romance after he has wet his pants in public.

The story also illustrates Gaines' handling of stereotype. Looked at from a distance Eddie certainly embodies that figure much of affluent America scorns and patronizes: the irresponsible member of a minority group who in spite of his poverty manages to keep a purple Cadillac or color TV around his shack. Thus Eddie enforces his white neighbors' sense of superiority as they observe him buy a car he can hardly afford, see him in tears as his mother-in-law fires a shotgun over his head and then, as a final absurdity, watch the flames as he deliberately destroys his one material possession. Closer up, however, Eddie is more understandable. With the white man emasculating Eddie in the world and as a consequence the black woman doing the same at home, his impulsiveness and frustration are logical. The human dimension of Eddie's plight both explains and transcends the stereotype he so precisely fits.

Yet the story implies amelioration for the male. Amy is not the shrew either Gran'mon or Madame Touissaint is. When Amy and Eddie finally do return home after the car-burning she insists that Eddie, against his wishes, beat her. Ironically he is thus able to salvage the appearance—no more—of his masculinity. But the emasculating white society, the presence of which is only subtly suggested in this story, must be taken into account in the achievement of any true masculinity for the black male.

The shaping of black masculinity is one of two subjects that combine to form the theme of “The Sky Is Gray,” the second story in the collection. The other subject is the “code” which, with its social and political implications, provides the context in which the protagonist James is taught to grow into manhood. The story's theme is a comment on this combination: retaining manhood under the code entails the loss of compassion and gentleness. In this loss is sorrow, pathos, and it is underscored by both physical and psychological suffering. The sense of loss is effectively communicated by the technique of modified stream-of-consciousness in which, as in the first story, there is a contrast between boyish innocence and a harsh world. Like the first story this one contains its moving and poignant moments—more intensely, in fact—and a rich pathos and humor are there; but the humor is more grim.

The story concerns a trip to the dentist by eight-year old James (the male protagonist progressively older in each story) and his mother from their rural home to the town of Bayonne on a cold winter day. In the office of the clumsy dentist who gets all black patients because he is cheaper, a dispute arises between a sensitive but cynical college student and an elderly preacher. The student accuses black society of selling out to the white man by refusing to question and use its intelligence; black society instead hides from reality by retreating into feeling, emotion, and acceptance of the white man's truth. “The wind is pink, the grass is black,” (p. 100) he claims, as a version of his own cynical truth. When the student announces his disbelief in God and in any justice based on the good will of the white man, the preacher strikes him first on one and then on the other cheek. James decides he wants to grow up like the student.

Shortly afterwards, James and his mother are forced to walk the icy streets at noon after they are unable to gain admittance to the office in the morning. At one point they are intercepted by a white lady (dressed in black like James' mother) who has been watching them and who wants to offer warmth and food. Only after an elaborate ritual by which both the white and black women are able to preserve their pride (and their distance) are the boy and his mother finally fed. Suffering is temporarily relieved, but at the cost of lost humanness.

Suffering is a keynote of the story. It is a cold, sleety day; the boy and his mother have neither the clothes to keep warm nor the money to buy lunch; and there is always the boy's aching tooth. But physical suffering is not all, and it becomes clear that the psychological or spiritual suffering induced by the code is more profound and deadly. The sensitive but disillusioned college youth is one casualty. The mother is another, and James is likely to be a third.

James' mother is attractive—one man whistles at her and another makes a pass—but her femininity must be sacrificed. As head of a family of seven—her husband has mysteriously disappeared “in the army”—she sees that her survival in a gray world depends on her suppression of feeling, on her toughness, and she works to inculcate her attitudes into her eldest boy. She teaches him not to complain because “that's weakness and that's crybaby stuff.” (p. 84) When James turns his coat collar up against the sleet his mother orders him to turn it back down. “You not a bum, … you a man,” (p. 117) she tells him, summing up the painful lessons she has forced upon him.

As this incident suggests, in their teacher-student relationship there is a destructive element. The mother seems cruel in eroding her son's gentleness and innocence, however necessary their tempering may be. Her desire to toughen him is too zealous, and her refusal to show feeling leaves him without a rationale to understand her hardness. After he was once beaten severely for not killing a little bird, for example, it was not his mother but an aunt and a friend who explained the purpose of his mother's harshness in an attempt to counter her insensitive action.

Even more to blame, however, is the inhuman system which demands such violence. In some of the nicest touches in the story Gaines makes this point very effectively. When James and his mother board the bus for town he knows he must “pass the little sign that says ‘White’ and ‘Colored’” (p. 91) before looking for a seat; he ends by standing in the aisle while there are empty seats in front of the little sign. In town over the courthouse he sees a flag flying that “ain't got but a handful of stars. One at school got a big pile of stars—one for every state” (p. 93). The effectiveness of these two observations is that James is unaware of the implicit political and social injustice revealed there. It is the reader who supplies the appropriate value judgements and outrage. The inevitable breaking down of innocence and courage by both white society and a black mother is the source of pathos here.

Considering the code that governs society and the expected roles of black men and women in it, the achievement of true manhood is difficult and rare, as the story “Three Men” makes clear. The title refers to three occupants of a jail cell. Two of these represent the two poles of adult male life generally available to black men; the third man is nineteen-year old protagonist Procter Lewis whose adult male role has not yet been fully determined. His two older cell-mates are either dehumanized or broken by social pressures on black manhood. One is Munford, a druken tough old tavern brawler who regularly spends weekends in jail. The other is Hattie, a homosexual or “woman.” Both figures are reduced to half-men, the former lacking compassion, the latter lacking toughness. The story's focus is on Procter Lewis' effort to complement his physical courage with compassion, thus achieving a third kind of man, one who rises above his deterministic environment.

Procter has been thrown into jail after a bar fight over a girl in which he has cut and possibly killed a man. Like Munford, Procter may be excused from a five-year prison term for the murder of a Negro because he works for an important white man. But then he would fall into an inhuman cycle. As Munford warns:

“Started out just like you—kilt a boy … and … got off scot free. My pappy worked for a white man who got me off. At first I didn't know why he had done it—I didn't think; … Then I got in trouble again, and again they got me off. … Then I realized they kept getting me off because they needed a Munford Bazille … to prove they human. … Because without us, they don't know what they is … With us around, they can see us and they know what they ain't.”

(pp. 137-138)

And Munford warns later, “they grow niggers just to be killed, and they grow people like you to kill ‘em. That's all part of the—the culture. And every man got to play his part in the culture, or the culture don't go on” (p. 142).

The other way, the difficult way to go, is also suggested by Munford, but its risks are high. Procter could refuse any offered release and serve his time. This action, however, would upset the code, would make Procter a “smart aleck” and liable to certain beatings and possible death. The reward would be an attainment of manhood and a freedom of spirit, however shortlived. While Procter is considering this possibility, a young boy is thrown into the cell, badly beaten. Hattie the homosexual immediately goes to the boy's aid, and shortly thereafter Procter follows suit, feeling that he “felt some kind of love for this little boy,” (p. 153) undoubtedly because the boy is a younger version of himself. At the story's conclusion he decides that with the boy's prayers he can go the hard way, accepting prison and rejecting the code. His choice, then, joins in him the best of what Munford and Hattie have retained of their humanity: courage and compassion.

These remarks, I think, trace the major concerns of the story. Once again the white-black conflict is treated, but its social implications are more explicit than in the preceding two. The violent hatred is more open: for example, the white policeman T. J. tells Procter that every Negro “man, woman, and child should be drowned” (p. 125). And here close to the centers of power the code is more rigorously enforced. The opening scene in the story when Procter presents himself at the jail nicely documents the great care the black man must take in the presence of powerful whites:

“You Procter Lewis?” T. J. said

“Yes, sir.”

“Come in here.”

I pushed the little gate open and went in. I made sure it didn't swing back too hard and make noise. I stopped a little way from the desk.

“Give me some papers,” T. J. said. He was looking up at me like he was still trying to figure out if I was crazy. If I wasn't crazy, then I was a smart aleck.

I got my wallet out my pocket. I could feel T. J. and the other policeman looking at me all the time. I wasn't supposed to get any papers out, myself, I was supposed to give him the wallet and let him take what he wanted. I held the wallet out to him and he jerked it out of my hand.

(pp. 121-122)

Besides recalling the ritual in black-white relationships of the second story, “Three Men” also returns to the theme of stereotype central to the first story. Procter and Munford are “bad niggers,” wasting their lives drinking, screwing, and fighting until they end dead or derelict. But that is only a half-truth; the stereotype misleads. Procter of course reveals atypical honor by the decision to refuse “pardon”; and Munford's surprising understanding of his social role is a vital force the stereotype does not take into account.

One last note on the story. As Procter paces about in his cell he frequently looks out the bars at the sky, and when he really decides to forego physical for spiritual freedom, he is gazing at the stars and weeping. This represents an upward direction in Procter's aspirations; and it also suggests vision, a theme more central to the fourth and title story, “Bloodline.”

This splendid story is historical, looking backward and forward in time. Copper, or General Christian Laurent as he prefers to be called, is a logical product of the tradition that produced him: half-white and half-black, half-mad and half-mystic, and single-minded in his militancy. At the same time he is a forerunner of the new black men who are willing to risk their lives and the lives of others so that a new order may be established in accord with their visions.

Copper has returned to the plantation he left as a boy to claim his birthright; as the illegitimate son of a deceased owner, Walter Laurent, he comes to demand his inheritance from his uncle Frank Laurent. Frank, although not filled with the viciousness of his brother, is far from changing the established black/white relationship:

“Change the rules? Do you know how old these rules are? They're older than me, than you, than this entire place. I didn't make them, I came and found them here. And I—an invalid—am I suposed to change them all?”

(p. 188)

The plot thus revolves around Frank's attempts to force Copper to submit to the historical white hegemony and Copper's equally adamant refusal to do so. Specifically, Frank wants Copper to explain his presence on Laurent property but only after he has entered through the back door of the plantation house. Copper will talk, but finds that manner of entrance demeaning to a nephew, a Laurent, a gentleman, and a General. After two unsuccessful attempts by field Negroes to bring Copper forcibly, Frank condescends to go out to meet Copper, where in conference (or confrontation) they express their irreconcilable positions.

It is clear, however, that regardless of their conference and whatever specific future changes may occur, the old order is dying. The invalid Frank, “the last of the old Laurents” (p. 164) has not long to live. He seldom leaves his grave-like living room to oversee the working of the plantation. Both the living room and plantation reveal their decay, the former with its pictures of past military heroes of the family looking on in gloomy darkness, the latter rotting away without adequate supervision. The field hands sent out by Frank to capture Copper fear him more than the owner, an attitude unheard of under the rule of Walter Laurent. And the closest allies Frank has are a black man and woman in their seventies, simply too tired to switch allegiances from Frank to Copper at this point in their lives.

The irony of the tale is that the forgers of the future will resemble the men who made and maintain the past. The title refers to the kinship of Frank and Copper, and it also suggests the trail of blood such strong-willed men leave, for Frank and Copper are strikingly alike. They are both unafraid, so set in their convictions they are ready to die for them. As the seventy-two year old maid Malia says, “One ain't no better than the other one, … They the same, that same blood in ‘em” (p. 190).

Where they are most alike and most different, however, is in their respective diseases. Frank has had two serious heart attacks and has a habit of lightly rubbing his chest; Copper has the visionary's gaze in staring past and through people and a nervous mannerism of touching his temples: “Copper raised his hand to his left temple. But I [Felix, the seventy-year old narrator] noticed just before he touched his face, his mind drifted away a moment. He didn't rub his temple, he touched it lightly—the way Frank touched at his chest every so often” (p. 206). Both men have gone wrong, one in the intellect and the other in the emotions. Copper is a general whose troops exist only in his imagination, and one of the field hands says he is “crazy, crazy, crazy” (p. 195). But Frank is insane in his own way too. In explaining his moral position to Felix he betrays a massive contradiction between feeling and action:

“Even if they didn't lynch him, I wouldn't let him come in through that front door,” Frank said. “Neither him, nor you nor her over there. And to me she [Malia] is only the second woman I've had the good fortune of knowing whom I can call a lady. But she happens to be black, Felix, and because she's black she'll never enter this house through that door. Not while I'm alive. Because, you see, Felix, I didn't write the rules. I came and found them, and I shall die and leave them. They will be changed, of course; they will be changed, and soon, I hope. But I will not be the one to change them.”

(p. 199)

His real affection for Malia but his refusal to treat her as an equal, his willingness to die for a way of life he thinks should be changed—these denials of his own humanity in order to serve an inhuman and abstract code constitute a madness of the heart. The code is clearly dying, but it may pass only with some of the same violence that established it.

This story clarifies the historical pattern of the stories and this brief commentary cannot even suggest its richness. But I should like to quote one great comic scene where Little Boy and Joby, a pair of two-hundred pound field hands as child-like as their names suggest, return scratched, tied, and chained from their unsuccessful attempt to capture Copper and now must face a dumbfounded and irate Frank Laurent.

“Where did you meet the bears?” he said.

“B'ars, sir?” Little Boy said.

Frank nodded. “B'ars.”

“Me and Joby ain't met no b'ars nowhere, sir,” Little Boy said.

“Sure, you did,” Frank said.

Little Boy and Joby looked at each other like two small children. They didn't know if to agree with Frank or not. To say yes, they met bears would ‘a’ been a lie, and they could be punished. To say no, they didn't meet any bears would ‘a’ been calling Frank a lie, and they could be punished for that, too. So they looked at each other, not saying a thing. For my part, all I wanted to do was laugh.

“I sent you and Joby down the quarters to find Copper,” Frank said. “But Copper told both of you to go to hell. You didn't go to hell—no, you came back up here to tell me what Copper had said, and that's when you met the two bears. One grabbed you and threw you down, the other one grabbed Joby and did him the same. They took off your belts, wore out your butts, and tied your hands behind your backs. But that wasn't all. One of the bears happened to have a chain ‘cross his shoulder. Where he got the chain from, we won't question. But he tied you and Joby together and sent you on your way.”

Little Boy started shaking his head and giggling

“Mr. Frank, you too much,” he said.

(pp. 181-182)

“Just Like a Tree,” the final story, complements “Bloodline” in showing the demise of the black matriarchal society which has lived hand in hand with the decaying white paternalism. Thus one historical era ends and a new begins. The future is open, ambiguous, and dangerous; but it will be shaped by a new kind of black man and a new kind of white. The new black man is willing to risk his life for social and civil causes, and the kinds of lynchings he is subject to are political, with the bomb replacing the rope. The new white man is confused and potentially vicious, lacking the parental concern of a Frank Laurent or the white storekeepers in “The Sky Is Gray.”

“Just Like a Tree” treats an evening when black and white neighbors gather to pay tribute to an old black woman, Aunt Fe, who is being moved from her lifelong home in the South to relocate in the North with Louise, a young woman who is like a niece to her, and Louise's husband James. To pay tribute and say good-by to Aunt Fe, friends and relatives gather on the stormy eve of her departure. Families arrive, drinks are served, a squabble emerges between two children, and James gets drunk. That is most of the action. Discussion in the group concerns the tractors now replacing mules, a bombing in the neighborhood, and some humorous lies. Both the action and the discussion, however, are only supporting elements to the real subject of the story: the passing of one age and the onset of a new.

Aunt Fe represents the passing era and a young man significantly named Emmanuel represents the new. Aunt Fe is like an institution: “Aunt Fe, Aunt Fe, Aunt Fe; the name's been ‘mongst us just like us own family name. Just like the name o' God, like the name of town—the city” (p. 227). Emmanuel, on the other hand, is harder to categorize. He is a leader of sorts in the civil rights activities in the area, and he seems to embody the idealism and courage of a General Christian Laurent and the compassion of a Hattie, or an Aunt Fe. He is, moreover, indirectly responsible for the forced move of Aunt Fe, as civil rights activities have brought about white reprisal through a bomb that killed three blacks; it is because of the tension and danger that Aunt Fe must leave. But as an old tree cannot be moved from its native soil, Aunt Fe dies before the move north.

This story like the first and third of the volume also deals in stereotype. The farewell is a sad occasion, but the story abounds in comic scenes: a stubborn mule Mr. Bascom, the tearing down of a fence, the fall into a mud puddle, the fighting and kissing by the two boys, to list a few. There is, moreover, a general background of laughter. White Mrs. Duvall produces the stereotype: “Sometimes I think niggers can laugh and joke even if they see somebody beaten to death” (p. 242). But this stereotype is explained by one of the black characters: These accidents of humor merely reflect a general ritual of humor to deal with sadness:

Just like him, though, standing up there telling them lies when everybody else feeling sad. I don't know what you do without people like him. And, yet, you see him there, he sad just like the rest. But he just got to be funny. Crying on the inside, but still got to be funny.

(p. 237)

Even James, the Northern Negro reacts to the stereotype when Aunt Lou takes her favorite sitting chair with her for the evening. He tells himself with proper scorn:

Wait, man, I mean like, you ever heard of anybody going to somebody else's house with a chair? I mean, wouldn't you call that an insult at the basest point? I mean, now, like tell me what you think of that? I mean—dig—here I am at my pad, and in you come with your own stool. I mean, now, like man, you know. I mean that's an insult at the basest point. I mean, you know … you know, like way out …

(p. 232)

Gaines satirizes James through the latter's super-cool language; and he suggests that both James and Mrs. Duvall are alike: as outsiders they cannot see the dignity of this group of rural, Southern blacks that lies beneath the clownish stereotype. For the dignity is real; it pervades the story; and Gaines' technique is significant in establishing the sense of dignity.

Gaines employs the soliloquy method—used, for example by Faulkner in As I Lay Dying—where we visit the minds of all but two most important characters, Aunt Fe and Emmanuel. Their silence, except at second hand, sets them apart, elevates them. The pointed omission also, I think, suggests the inaccessibility of the past embodied in Aunt Fe and the future uncertainties in the hands of Emmanuel. The future will be difficult, but it will be informed with a masculine dignity which the past lacked, while a massive and consoling maternalism will disappear.

The comedy and pathos so richly blended in this and all the Gaines' stories are the proofs of a new and true talent. And Gaines' talent is balanced by an honest intelligence; he sees in both white and black people the shells of human beings whose centers have been eroded by a senseless, inhuman code; he sees in both races the potential to destroy and transcend that code. And in his sense of history, the history of a given race in a given place, his work becomes symbolic and universal.