Ernest Gaines’s novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman [1] may be considered a representation of the black Southern experience, with the titular heroine serving as a symbol for the collective of her ethnicity as opposed to a character who...

One of the most distinctive and immediately impressive things about Ernest Gaines’ novel, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, is the way the author opens his story with an introduction of a collective of speakers, his cast of...

Novels are able to use both physical and psychological events to help shape a character or theme. They often act as building blocks for the meaning of the writing as a whole, and they are often thought invoking. In the novel, A Lesson Before Dying...

Faith has always played a role in human society. Some put their faith in a divine being, while others put their faith in more physical things. In the historical fiction novel A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest J. Gaines, a reader can see the...

Storytelling is a historic art form, its first traces beginning thousands of years ago, and yet it is relevant in today’s society more than ever. Around the world, individuals took to storytelling as a form of self-expression, some even working it...

Manhood in A Gathering of Old Men In his novel, A Gathering of Old Men (1983), Ernest J. Gaines writes about a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s. The plantation’s white, Cajun work boss is shot and seventeen old black men and one white...