Ernest James Gaines is the beneficiary of the National Humanities Medal, Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters from the administration of France National Medal of the Art and a National Books Critics Circle Award champ. He died on 5th November 2019. He died at his home in Oscar, Louisiana. He was 86 when he died.
His splendid depictions of race, network, and culture in rustic south Louisiana made him a significantly regarded and darling widely acclaimed creator. He specifically depicted both disheartening and triumphal encounters of dark personhood. He wrote ten books of fiction. He was an essayist in living arrangement Emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Ernest J Gaines was conceived on January 15, 1933, on River Lake Plantation. He was born in the little town of south Louisiana Oscar in Pointe Coupee Parish. He was the child of Adrian Jefferson and Manuel Gaines. His folks took a shot at the manor, and he experienced childhood in the estate quarter.
His folks isolated when he was eight years of age and his mom later wed Raphael Norbert Colar. At the point when they moved to Vallejo, California, Gaines stayed in Louisiana with his auntie, Miss Augusteen Jefferson, until 1949. Later on, he moved to his mother and stepfather. Gaines is the oldest of his mom’s twelve children.
Gaines accomplished both basic and well-known approval in 1971 with his novel ‘The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.’ This novel is described by a former slave of 110 years. This novel is a significant commitment to African American writing, with its first individual storyteller dependent on the memory of the past.
The 1974 film adaptation won nine Emmy Awards, including Cicely Tyson’s Best Actress Award for the lead spot. Gaines’ next novel especially centers on the topic of the quest for the dad and the deplorable disappointment of the dad-child relationship.
‘A Gathering of Old Men’ (1983) highlights different individual storytellers, including a young storyteller. This book is a dramatic story of the repercussions of the murdering of a white man in the estate quarter.
Ernest James Gaines’ Biography
Ernest James Gaines was an American writer. He was born on 15th January 1933. He was born in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. He had eleven siblings. He was the eldest among them. He was raised by his aunt. He was raised in a poor family.
He attended plantation church as his first school. A teacher would come to the village and teach the students who would be roaming freely. Afterward, he attended St. Augustine School. It was a Catholic school for African Americans. It was located in New Roads, Louisiana.
He came to Vallejo, California when he was 15 year old. There he started living with his stepfather and mother. His mother had come to California in the wake of World War II. He was only seventeen when he completed his first novel. It was rejected by publishers. This disappointed him and he burnt down the book. Later on, he had to re-write the book. It was titled ‘Catherine Carmier.’
He published his first short fiction in 1956. It was ‘The Turtles.’ This was published in the magazine of San Francisco State University. In 1957, he completed his degree in literature from San Francisco State University. Afterward, he served in the army for two years. He was then given a writing fellowship to go to Stanford University.
He served as a writer-in-Residence at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette from 1981 to 2004. He served as a visiting professor at the University of Rennes, France in 1996. There he was given the responsibility to teach creative writing.
In the last part of his life, he lived on Louisiana Highway 1. It was in Oscar, Louisiana. He died because of natural causes. He died on 5th November 2019. At the time of his death he was 86 years old.
Gaines’s works have been translated into nineteen languages, and four of his works have been made into films (The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, 1974; “The Sky Is Gray,” 1980; A Gathering of Old Men, 1987; and A Lesson Before Dying, 1999). In addition, Gaines’s life and work have been presented in three documentary films, sixteen scholarly books, and 25 doctoral dissertations.
Gaines’ works have been converted into nineteen languages and films have been made on four of his works. Gaines’ life and work have been introduced in three narrative movies, sixteen academic books and 25 doctoral papers.
Ernest James Gaines’ Writing Style
Narrative Technique
Gaines’ story method permits the characters to uncover themselves and their interrelationships with others. We hear the story through the account voices of the old individuals of color, a person of color, a youngster, and the white storytellers ‘In a Gathering of Old Man.’ We see the contentions of the blacks, yet additionally the contentions of their Cajun foes through the voices of Sully and Tee Jack.
The old universe of Fix Boutan has reached a conclusion. He is the pioneer of a Cajun”mob” known for brutality toward blacks. They should deal with another world represented by Fix’s most youthful child, Gil Boutan, a LSU football player whose accomplice on the turf is dark, the “Salt and Pepper” of LSU. As Fix’s companion Auguste says that he is an elderly person. He does not have a clue who is correct and who isn’t right any longer.
It is an intriguing point that however, the novel has fifteen storytellers, Gaines doesn’t give an account voice to any of the fundamental characters. It is clear why Mathu isn’t a storyteller. He is the main character who realizes who truly murdered Beau. As Gaines has called attention to, Mathu would need to lie. Mathu realizes what occurred.
What’s more, on the off chance that one begins hearing Mathu’s voice and he doesn’t mention to him what occurred? They’re deceiving him, and he’d preferably not stunt him. With every one of the three of the fundamental characters, the method of coming at them from indirection as opposed to through their own voices. This will in general uplift the impact of their inclusion and investment in the entire thing. This is likewise evident with the primary Cajun characters.
We see them through the story voices of Sully and Tee Jack. Generally significant is that barring the fundamental characters as storytellers fortifies the people’s narrating strategy of relating publicly on a mutual occasion. It is with every teller bringing his concentration or viewpoint. Gaines’ utilization of numerous storytellers likewise makes conceivable the sort of great, understanding funniness that he accomplishes in his short stories.
We consider the old men as they see one another. Uncle Billie attempting to point a weapon and shaking so much that it would appear that a divining bar, and Johnny Paul attempting to disclose to Mapes that he must be there at that point, for seventy-seven years. He needs to have the option to don’t see what they don’t see now. The reader can snicker with them since he is brought into their circle. The reader turns into an insider.
Gaines accomplishes both the promptness and closeness of people narrating and the multifaceted nature of the backhanded methodology. It isn’t basic that the reader recalls or recognizes every storyteller. What is significant is relating the mutual impressions, fears, emotions, and encounters.
His Uniqueness
The greater part of his novels happen throughout one day and as the occasions of the day go to a peak we are moved alongside the characters to a superior comprehension of the contentions and changes that have happened.
‘A Gathering of Old Men’ is a warm, touchy, fair novel that consolidates cleverness and empathy in managing strife. It is just a dexterous expert who realized these individuals could have so effectively taken care of the fifteen-story voices to make this procedure work.
Gaines’ style and his capacity to catch the French kind of the discourse of the bilingual Creole-Cajun culture give his fiction a realness that would not be conceivable. Simultaneously, his specific utilization of vernacular empowers him to keep up a straightforward, clear style and a quality that has been portrayed as the everyday respect of his account style.
His Quality of Reiteration
Another element of Gaines’ composed style is the prudent and specific utilization of reiteration. In “Style in Oral and Written Narratives,” Sandra Stahl expounds reiteration as an element of oral portrayal and gives assortment and advancement as equal expressive highlights in composed accounts.
These include word decisions. Gaines utilizes a sort of reiteration adequately in his composition to recreate an oral account since redundancy is such a basic piece of the people’s discourse in South Louisiana.
For instance, In ‘A Gathering of Old Men’ Mathu was dark, dark with white facial hair, or she didn’t state a thing. She didn’t say ‘Uh-huh’ or anything. She was simply looking old and tired looking. She was eating on her front teeth—looking old and tired looking.
Influence of Music
In talking about the impact of music on his composition, Gaines has stated that he thinks the dark blues artists gave us. It is a preferable depiction over even the dark journalists did at that specific time. Something else, particularly in jazz music, is a reiteration of things, rehashing and rehashing to get the point over, which he attempts to do in exchange.
It appears that what Gaines is doing isn’t just catching the content of the oral society story. It is catching the subtleties of mind-set and setting, what has been called the surface and setting of oral accounts.
Gaines additionally utilizes the story inside the story, a significant technique in people’s portrayal as he has the elderly people recount stories from quite a while ago. Gaines comprehends the unpredictability of the people’s story style and he can catch that style in artistic structure.
His Knowledge of Culture
Gaines’ experience and his insight into the people’s culture give him a system for his account style and for his introduction of individual individuals and their interrelationships. That Gaines utilizes an accounting procedure from oral custom appears to be normal since the story appears to have advanced from the way of life and its kin.
One significant distinction among Gaines and numerous other dark essayists is that Gaines came back toward the South. He isn’t an outcast. He can show both the recorded racial clash between the Cajuns and blacks. He also shows the changes, especially in the old people of color and the youthful Cajuns.
He knows and comprehends the dynamic elements of the communications of two people’s societies. From his story voices, unmistakably he has not put some distance between the individuals.
His narrating strategy is bona fide and his account voices are certified. In Gaines, the exemplary indignation is there, however not the serious annoyance of numerous other dark authors. There is both displeasure and comprehension in Gaines, a sort of delicate indignation, which sees the offenses of the past, but at the same time is happy to perceive the positive changes of the present.
His Settings
Ernest Gaines is known for his portrayal of the South, his solid characters, his authentic exactness, and his reasonable utilization of setting. He has made a town in Louisiana, Bayonne, a supported spot like Faulkner’s formation of Yoknapatawpha County. Bayonne is the setting for the greater part of his accounts.
The readers come to know this piece of Louisiana which depends on the spot where Gaines went through the initial fourteen years of his life. Despite the fact that he utilizes this setting over and over, he includes new subtleties each time. He regularly utilizes foil characters who present the differentiation between what is and what may be. His most popular works are all set in this setting.