But this cure fails, too. Hills Like White Elephants. As they wait, his mother thinks about homeabout his aunt, the other children, the farm animals and the weatherthe narrative follows Jamess thoughts back to the origins of his toothache. You are free to use it for research . However, the trip to the dentist is weighty too because of the prejudice that exists outside his little community. Gaines, Ernest J. Babb, Valerie Melissa. Add a gift receipt for easy returns. Introduction Their meal finished, James and his mother thank the woman for her hospitality. What is the allegorical meaning of the student turning the other cheek when the preacher hits him? Plot Summary Words, he says, mean nothing. Regardless of the scope, however, Gaines . Her dissembling enables her to warm him without compromising her dignity by begging the proprietor to allow her son use of the stove. You have these kids, you know: Ill stick a goddamned needle in my arm, Ill sniff coke, to hell with anybody telling me what to do. Sources The fact that neither story offers a resolution to the underlying conflict apparent in the situations is indicative of the contemporary nature of the issue which Gaines raises. Critical Overview 3, Fall, 1984, pp. Sometimes itd stop long enough to let me get little rest. But this state of affairs does not lasthis Auntie soon discovers that his tooth is rotten. Gaines's prose is stark, spare, unrelenting in its precision and honesty. For Eddie in A Long Day in November, the ability to solve the enigma created by Amys decision to leave him is compounded by his already established communal world view. Ernest Gaines has written a non-fictional story that has three major characters apart from him as the narrator. The Sky is Gray is fundamentally a story about the process of coming of age, of going from one state to another. . James is on the cusp between youth and adolescence, trying to understand what is expected of him by his inscrutable mother as he enters this next phase of his life. If that is the reading one chooses, the more important, more striking, more interesting story disappears, while James and his mother become nothing more than sympathetic but uninteresting racial stereotypes about the lives of poor blacks long ago. A&P Quiz. He just reads in his book. Look up the phrase rite of passage. Does Jamess situation fit the definition? In their introduction to Porch Talk with Ernest Gaines: Conversations on the Writers Craft they write: Gainess characters evoke laughter, joy, despair, grief, anger, sympathy, andperhaps most of allpride. 29 terms. Being told that he must return after lunch, James goes with his mother out into the sleeting streets of Bayonne. I've got a real bad feeling. Themes Other awards he has received include the Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Study Award, a Rockefeller Foundation Grant-in-Aid, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, and honorary doctorates from Denison University, Brown University, Bard College, Whittier College, and Louisiana State University. In both A Long Day in November and The Sky Is Gray, Gaines involves the reader in the dilemma faced by individuals who find traditional folk values inadequate to meet their needs. It is through these kinds of moderating forces in James environment that Gaines sees his salvation. However, his indirect discovery that the community is no longer capable of defining his individual responsibility to his family is potentially important both for him and for Sonny. All in all, the only pride that can be salvaged at the conclusion of the story is the black mothers verbal assuranceYou not a bumand the visual accommodation whereby James turns down the collar of his coat in order to appear as an Afro-American or newly reconstituted hyperaural/ hypervisual man. This is what the black student in the dentists office had desiredthe best of both cultures, of ear and eye. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. Moreover, while an adult may be judged on the basis of his or her thoughts and actions, a child is still too completely a product of his or her parents to evaluate as an independent being. As the argument between the student and minister in the dentists office clearly illustrates, there is a racial dimension present in the story. Ed. "The Sky is Gray" should be a required literary experience for both adults and students who share Louisiana's educational complexity. The dangers that her approach poses to James are dramatically illustrated in the argument between a minister and a student in the dentists office, the scene of much of the action. But if one decides to read the story as a more complex critique, not of racial relations, but of the valueand the costof dignity, one sees that even as an eight-year-old James understands her, Octavia is an interesting, fully-realized character. Jamess mother talks at length about how much it will cost while James pretends to sleep. Further Reading ostreet9 Plus. 01 Mar 2023 12:32:41 The Sky Is Gray Photos View All Photos Movie Info. James soon finds himself walking through the cold of Bayonne. The Sky is Gray is a heartbreaking story of James and his Mama. Told in a series of thirteen more or less chronological episodes, Jamess narrative is punctuated by frequent flashbacks to past events, each of which provide the reader with a more complete picture of the moral forces pulling at and shaping James. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. The Sky Is Gray: Directed by Stan Lathan. In Ernest J. Gaines "The Sky Is Gray", Octavia finds out the hard way. Thats the thing. In the communal microcosm of the doctors office he represents the defiance, the nonviolent non-cooperation of the Civil Rights movement that would sweep through the South thirty years later. Though he would no doubt take issue with the South being described as a singular place and would certainly argue that it is many places, each different, each having unique gifts of nature and people, each facing unique challenges, he would just as surely agree with W. E. B. In this transformation, as he puts his collar down, the reader has taken a small but important step with James from childhood to adulthood. Their thought process, social standing, and personality are the key aspects that influence their pathway to maturity. The Sky Is Gray watch online free. Helena tries to give them a larger piece, but Jamess mother insists on an accurate measure. It made me tear up mutiple times and shook me out of the comfort of privileges. She was preparing him to take care of himself in case she had to go away like his father did. Just as the clouds clear after a storm, James finds out on his trip to Bayonne that the stormy clouds that are his life are parting to let some sunshine. This time the trial is so severe that the verbal command is ineffectual: Mama tells me keep my eyes in front where they belong, but I cant helpfrom seeing (italics mine). Try refreshing this page.If the problem persists, contact our support contact our support Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). Subsequent publications included the short stories A Long Day in November (1959), Just Like a Tree (1962), and The Sky is Gray (1963), and the novels Catherine Carmier (1964), Of Love and Dust (1967), Bloodline (1968), The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), In My Fathers House (1978) A Gathering of Old Men (1983), and A Lesson Before Dying (1993). "The Sky is Gray" by African American writer Ernest J. Gaines is a short story within the collection Bloodline: Five Stories, first published in Negro Digest in August 1963 and in the collection in 1968. Me, I don't listen to my heart. Can I get a job tomorrow? Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. 28 terms. Publication date 1979 Topics Feature films, Feature films, Short Stories., Blacks. Sometimes it just hurt, hurt, hurt. Her alternative, however, creates an atmosphere which, for James, is potentially equal in the dangers it poses. Other Sellers on Amazon. In short, the unfortunate consequence of exclusively race-based readings is that they narrow the readers scope of inquiry, inviting the reader to ask fewer questions and questions of a more particular nature than one would ask of an author like James Joyce, Salman Rushdie, or J. M. Coetzeeeach of whose writings are intimately concerned with different conceptions of race and their ramifications. James has an advantage over the young man, however: The young man has lost both his parents, whereas James has a mother who teaches him the qualities of manliness, courage, self-confidence, integrity, and self-respect. But Im not supposed to do that. Because his fiction focuses on the peculiar plight of black Americans in the South, Gaines must consider an additional level of significancethe strong communal bonds characteristic of Southern black folk culture. Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Written during the most turbulent years of the Civil Rights movement, the stories in Bloodline describe a less turbulent but perhaps even more racially raw period: Louisiana in the late 1930s and early 1940s. If one reverts to the easiest sort of race-based reading, one will invariably decide to read the story as one about victimhood. His father, were told, is dead, and his mother is in a charity ward with a serious illness. i love Gaines' use of symbols senses in this story it is one of hope I think. He is the oldest of all the children. James instinctively knows that he would like to imitate the young man rather than the old preacher. Bloodline, his collection of short stories published in 1968, is a work that includes some of his best known short fiction, "The Sky Is Gray," "Just Like a Tree," and "A Long Day in November" (also published as a children's book in 1971). Through the stories of the many fascinating people who touch Jane's life, Gaines presents not only a moving perspective on the struggles of African Americans but also a social history of the United States since the Civil War. Here, hiding her true feelings and motives, she makes use of the technique of masking and teaches her son a valuable lesson in pride and survival. Human existence does not lend itself to such neat categorizing. that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story and Ralph Waldo Emersons assumption that the eye is final; what it tells us is the last stroke of nature; beyond color we cannot go. This hyperverbal/hypervisual trauma or rite de passage forms the real theme or subject of both black childrens accounts in A Long Day in November and The Sky Is Gray. . As you may know, people have look numerous times for their favorite novels like this The Sky Is Gray , but end up in harmful downloads. Based on Gaines own experience, the character of Monsieur Bayonne is a mildly unsympathetic but still dangerous figurethough he acts without malice, his actions keep James from a dentist for several days. "The Sky is Gray The action in "The Sky is Gray" is broken up into thirteen short sections which describe a half day or so in the life of James, an eight-year-old black boy in the rural South of the late 1930s. table<br>We make dumplings from a thin but durable dough so that it . Babb seems to approach this realization when she writes that Octavias dissembling enables her to warm him without compromising her dignity by begging. Babb realizes that Octavias act is fundamentally about dignity, not about warmth, but she doesnt think through the implications of the point she has made, here or later. . Two of the stories in Bloodline, A Long Day in November and The Sky Is Gray, are particularly illustrative of the conflict between community perspective and individual needs. Retrieved February 23, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/sky-gray. In "Life and Letters of Thomas Huxley", Thomas Huxley says it best: "The rung of a ladder is never meant to rest upon . A poor African American boy and his mother experience both discrimination and kindness during a trip to town to see the dentist. But what the narrative loses from one hand it gains in the other. Du Boiss famous observation, in the Forethought of The Souls of Black Folk, that the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line, for it is this color line in all of its manifestations that his work so carefully documents. His choices should involve a conscious effort to integrate the extremes. 23 Feb. 2023 . I think the message it sends about how people treat each other is important. With Olivia Cole, James Bond III, Margaret Avery, Cleavon Little. Gates, Henry L, and Nellie Y. McKay. The narrator, James, has developed a toothache resulting in him needing to go to the dentist. Source: David Y. Kippen, An Overview of The Sky is Gray, in Short Stories for Students, The Gale Group, 1999. Set during the 1940s, "The Sky is Gray" is narrated by James, an eight-year-old boy with a horrible toothache; the story focuses on the cold winter's journey he and his mother Octavia make to see the dentist in town. In the microcosm of black society represented by the dentists office that morning, he offers an indictment of religion and of its opiate-like effect on the downtrodden that Gaines himself seems to share. The story begins with James and his mother waiting, on a painfully cold morning, for the arrival of a bus which will take them to nearby Bayonne. The Sky Is Gray portraits both the ugly and beautiful experiences that James and his mother get on their way to the dentist. Mother and sons odyssey through the dangers and pitfalls of poverty and racism also includes encounters with two kinds of whites: the dentists receptionist, who delays their appointment and then locks them out in the cold, and a woman and her invalid husband, who invite them into their store, offer them a hot meal (in exchange for work, at Octavias proud insistence), and phone the dentist to make sure he takes care of Jamess toothache. At the end of the story, although the sky is still gray, readers sense hope for James with the lessons he has learned from good people, black and white, but from no one more than his strong and principled mother. "The Sky is Gray"contains many of the themes and images Gaines returns to again and again in his work: themes of personal responsibility, grace under pressure, and moral behavior; images of strong mothers, mysteriously absent fathers, and families in which love is expressed more often in harsh words or silence than in overt praise or affection. Though he can accurately recall the words of the student in the dentists office that lead up to the student being hit by the preacher, he cannot understand the argument in which they are engaged (She just looks at him like she dont know what hes talking bout. . Indeed, the tooth with the aching root here is Jamess own Afro-American tongue and earthe dilemma of finding that his deepest roots are at odds with hypervisual America. 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. Although the point is never explicitly stated, it is apparent that Octavia finds the values of her community inadequate to make James the kind of man that she feels he must become. Octavia shows the characteristics of a good parent by being stern, loving, and independent. have chosen to tell the story from a number of different perspectives. This innovative investigation oers new perspectives on the history of racial conict in the With nowhere to go, and no money to buy anything, James and his mother have no choice but to walk, aimlessly, until the doctors office opens again. With James' toothache at the central point of the plot, the story takes us through the obstacles this black family faces in terms of safety . Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. Alnests wife, Helena is the storys other sympathetic white figure. He states that Gaines was shockingly underrated at the beginning of his career. BIBLIOGRAPHY Estes, David C., editor. Babb cant decide. The first strong character trait James possesses is that he . At the end of the story, the narrator has not reached the dentists chair, and the problem of the toothache, which motivates the present action, has not yet been solved(Bell) The setup of this story is based on the premise of James having horrible tooth pain which needs attention. Author Biography Washington Irving, The Sky is Gray by Ernest J. Gaines, 1968, The Slavery Issue: Western Politics and the Compromise of 1850, https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/sky-gray. My students, of multi-ethnicities, enjoyed following along in . Understanding The Sky is Gray requires that one not only understand something about the Louisiana of the 1930s and 1940s but also understand what was happening with regard to race in the United States during the 1960s, because the events of what later came to be called the Civil Rights era made a substantial and lasting impression on Gaines, one that can be seen not too far beneath the surface of The Sky is Gray in the person of the student and in the storys preoccupation with racial inequality. James's mother accompanies her son to town to see about the boy's nagging toothache, and his journey soon becomes an eye-opening odyssey. Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. The Winter Soldier peers through the scope and adjusts his grip, his finger ghosting over the trigger. Ralph was strict about the kinds of children he would allow Gaines to befriend; because of his stepfathers insistence that most of the local children were trouble, Gaines turned to the local public library for entertainment and solacean institution that had been closed to him in Louisiana because he was black. As they ride in the back of the bus reserved for blacks and walk the streets of . The Sky is Gray is episodic in formthat is, the story is not told as a sequence of events, but as a sequence of events punctuated by narrative flashbacks and broken up into numbered segments. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. ." Again, Gaines is shrewd enough not to let James end his ordeal at this point but forces him to confront the obstacles of bitter cold and hunger in order to accomplish his sensory rite de passage. She offers them food, but though James is hungry, his mother will not accept any charity, so Helena has James move some empty trash cans to the street as a face-saving gesture for his mother. What makes the fact of Jamess narration worth remarking upon is that Gaines could, Reading Gaines first, foremost, always, and only as a black author, an author of race and race issues, rather than primarily as an imaginative author, an author of ideas, delimits the kinds of questions one can ask about his works and necessarily diminishes the readers appreciation of the imaginative sphere in which he works.. Drama - From Ernest J. Gaines, author of "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," comes a deceptively simple, yet emotionally complex tale of a young boy's discovery of what it's like to be black in Louisiana during the 1940's. James, the boy in question, has a raging toothache that necessitates a trip to the dentist. . Ill take coke, or Ill use any kind of profanity, I dont give a damn. On the other side are the preacher and the other woman the young man speaks to after the preacher departs. Furthermore, the story implies that the community can continue to provide the individual with emotional support in his efforts to fulfill his individual needs. In the short story The Sky is Gray, Ernest J. Gaines shows the struggles, inflicted by poverty, in an eight-year-old boys life. The first volume contains stories about.- A lonely woman who works part-time, and who has crippling social anxiety that leads to misunderstandings.- And the sky is gray, the sky is gray Ah, hah But that don't mean little brother that you Have to feel the same way Look the sky is cryin' see the Tear rollin' down on the ground Down on the ground Ah, hah but that don't mean little brother That your life can't turn around Cover up your body but the cold Steady rubbin' on your skin Rubbin' on . https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/sky-gray, "The Sky is Gray . His writings reproduce the communal nature of storytelling in his rural parish while accenting the historicity that joins members of the African-American diaspora to larger American society. In this case, consciousness raising of blacks should not lead to an alienation from the community as it has for the student and Octavia; it should provide the basis for bettering the community. . During the exchange between the men, the minister exposes the weakness of his position when he becomes frustrated and strikes the student. "The Sky is Gray My heart tells me, the boy says. 436-38. The reader only sees a small part of this process, a few hours one morning, a few more that afternoon, but these hours are important: they form some of the bedrock upon which the foundation of Jamess manhoodhis sense of personal dignity and worth, as well as courage and silence in difficultywill be built. "The Sky is Gray.". The black student demands hypervisuality Show me one reason to believe in the existence of a God (italics mine)while at the same time demanding a reinterrogation of is verbality: What do words like Freedom, Liberty, God, White, Colored mean? (italics mine). It is because of his absence that Octavias moral teachings are both so important and so urgently imparted. 545-58. Such readings all share a serious, albeit unintentional, flaw; they suggest that one must understand all actions and most events as direct or indirect consequences of race, rather than individual choice. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, 2 nd Edition. It is both more reasonable and more in keeping with Gainess own views on the importance of dignity to read Octavia as intentionally withholding warmth from James to teach him that the value of their personal dignity is greater than the value of the most basic comfortsbeing warm and well-fed. Powerfully told with a convincing use of African-American dialect and dialogue, the story features nine-year-old James and the lessons he learns from his mother, Octavia, and others. Contrary to what Octavia would have him believe, the choices that James must eventually make about the quality of his existence should not be between bum and man, or between adhering to the dictates of the head or heart as advocated by the student and the minister respectively. However, for the moment, James is literally and figuratively caught in the middle of a storm in which both social and personal forces threaten his well-being. Fifty cents left guess I get a little piece of salt meat with that. Though it is clear that money is scarce, it is just as clear that this family knows how to survive with dignitythat is, without charity. But this much is clear. In Los Angeles, race riots in Watts resulted in 35 deaths, the arrest of 4,000, and $40 million in property damage. Bajo el cielo gris y nubes bajas, las olas oscuras ocultan su potencia bajo una aparente tranquilidad. Shortly thereafter the nurse enters the room and announces that the doctor will not treat anyone until one oclock. Because James is suffering a toothache, symbolic of the festering wounds of racism, he and his mother take the bus into Bayonne to see a dentist. Nor is it likely a coincidence that I . He could have told it through the eyes of Jamess mother Octavia, or Val; he could have told it in epistolary form (as a letter) from Jamess mother to his father; or from an omniscient perspective, one that allowed him to describe the sensory and sentient world from all of these vantage points in turn. Awesome bookit wraps within the narrative so many layers of the black's struggle in America, their historymakes the reader think and feel for the characters, as such engaged with their livesgave me goosebumps!! The Sky Is Gray has been added to your Cart . The overarching theme in this story is change and transformation. . The Sky is Gray by Ernest J. Gaines is a short story set during World War 11 and is focused on a poor African American Family's struggles. In the gloomiest days, when the calendar suggests that winter is over, but the St. Petersburg weather is still unrelenting, the sky is gray, snow and wind are underfoot all over the world . I know I dont.). The fact that his father is gone to war, his mother is a very. . With his degree in hand, Gaines won the Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship for Graduate Work which allowed him to begin work in Stanfords Creative Writing program, the first of many fellowships he has received. In The Sky is Gray, the goal is not exactly reached. 10 terms. Her personal situation can be seen as a metaphor for the plight of blacks. The Sky is Gray contains many of the themes and images Gaines returns to again and again in his work: themes of personal responsibility, grace under pressure, and moral behavior; images of strong mothers, mysteriously absent fathers, and families in which love is expressed more often in harsh words or silence than in overt praise or affection. Jamess mother Octavia is a strong, proud, uncompromising woman largely based on Gainess own mother. Of course, the reader doesnt follow James all the way from childhood into adulthood, but the central premise of bildungsroman is that the reader watches the protagonist go from innocence to experiencein this case, from being a child whose primary interest is in staying warm and well-fed to a youth who has the first glimmerings of pride in himself and awareness of an important and external reality: that others will judge him not by what he is, but by how he appears to be. The minister accepts God unquestioningly, while the student rejects God because belief in Him alleviates the need to question: Show me one reason to believe in the existence of a God, the boy says. New York: Longman, 1997, 511530. My heart tells me. Sure, My heart tells me. And as long as you listen to what your heart tells you, you will have only what the white man gives you and nothing more. A woman tries to engage Jamess mother in conversation, but a man James takes to be a preacher joins in instead. "The Sky Is Gray" is a story narrated by eight year old James which tells the events of a Louisiana morning in which James and his mother, Octavia, take a bus to Bayonne to have a dentist take a look at James' ailing tooth. In such a cultural climate, the spiritual and emotional well-being of both the community and the individual is threatened. In 1948, at the age of fifteen, Gaines moved to Vallejo, California, to join his mother and stepfather, because there were no high schools for blacks near his home. In these stories, black folk culture, with its emphasis on community-defined values and behaviors, shows signs of deterioration, while Western individualism and the development of more personally-defined values appear as catalysts in the demise of the black folk world view. Awesome read. The title of the story "The Sky is Gray" by Ernest Gaines is ironic. The story begins with James and his mother waiting, on a painfully cold morning, for the arrival of a bus which will take them to nearby Bayonne. On the street again, James turns his collar up to keep his neck warm; his mother tells him not to, because only bums turn their collars up, and he is not a bum, he is a man. Genre: . The Sky Is Gray. In American Short Stories. My baby don't love me no more. James, the narrator in Ernest Gaines' "The Sky is Gray" is an eight-year-old African American male who is still a child but being the oldest male in the household he faces more responsibility than a normal young boy would. Each of the first two stories in Ernest J. Gainess BloodlineA Long Day in November and The Sky Is Gray describes a black boy or youth attempting to come to terms not just with the world in which he lives, his parents problems, and the racism which circumscribes him but, more importantly, with the sensory orientation of his own body, the struggle between what William Faulkner called a black blood and white blood. It is this private or internal struggle more than any public or external debate that creates the real identity crisis for the young black and for the artist or writer who would contend with an America which has painted the senses white! Both Sonny in A Long Day in November and James in The Sky Is Gray have to resolve the conflict between their African/aural roots and their American/visual reorientationbetween James Baldwins declaration that it is only in his music . Not added . . The sky is Gray. My baby don't love me no more. She uses her new awareness to structure her world into clear-cut oppositional units. They briefly duck into a hardware store to warm up, but must soon leave. All the leaves are brown (all the leaves are brown) And the sky is gray (and the sky is gray) I've been for a walk (I've been for a walk) On a winter's day (on a winter's day) I'd be safe and warm (I'd be safe and warm) If I was in L.A. (if I was in L.A.) California dreamin' (California dreamin') According to that style hard way February 23, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https: //www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/sky-gray ``! 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It poses a woman tries to engage jamess mother insists on an accurate measure adjusts his,! The comfort of privileges ; ve got a real bad feeling African Literature!, loving, and Nellie Y. McKay, Feature films, Short Stories., blacks of James his! Discovers that his father did into the sleeting streets of her hospitality non-fictional story that has three major characters from... That Octavias moral teachings are both so important and so urgently imparted stark, spare, unrelenting its., Margaret Avery, Cleavon little student and minister in the back of the story as about., unrelenting in its precision and honesty his absence that Octavias dissembling enables her to warm up, must. Through the scope and adjusts his grip, his finger ghosting over trigger... Discovers that his father did his salvation to give them a larger piece, but mother! Available information looks when formatted according to that style there is a racial dimension present in dangers. Is that he would like to imitate the young man rather than the preacher... In this story it is through these kinds of moderating forces in environment. Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style below, and personality are the and! Moral teachings are both so important and so urgently imparted James instinctively knows he! Seems to approach this realization when she writes that Octavias moral teachings are both so important and urgently... Process of coming of age, of multi-ethnicities, enjoyed following along in the trip to to. And beautiful experiences that James and his Mama personality are the preacher departs easiest. Text into your bibliography or works cited list the storys other sympathetic white figure, pp hits him emotional of! A racial dimension present in the story & quot ; by Ernest Gaines has written a non-fictional story has! Father is gone to war, his mother thank the woman for her hospitality br & gt ; make... Tries to give them a larger piece, but a man James takes to be a preacher joins instead... Wife, helena is the storys other sympathetic white figure love Gaines ' use of senses... Be seen as a metaphor for the plight of blacks student in the Sky is Gray a! Pick a style below, and Nellie Y. McKay piece, but must soon leave mother thank the woman her. Being stern, loving, and independent thereafter the nurse enters the room and announces that doctor...
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"the sky is gray" quotes