A Gathering Of Old Men

“There will always be men struggling to change, and there will always be those who are controlled by the past.” -Ernest J. Gaines. Although Ernest J. Gaines often told stories of the past, he was certainly not a man controlled by it. Through the creation of his own characters, Gaines attempted to change not only his own character for the better, but to achieve his goal of changing the reader’s character for the better. Emerging from the turmoil of racial and socioeconomic inequality, Gaines became one of the greatest and most influential African American writers of the 20th Century. He struggled to change the perspective of the world by shedding light on the poverty and social issues present in his homeland. Inspired by his poor childhood,
One reference to a famous civil war book is in Chapter 8, when Clatoo says of Uncle Billy, “His lips were swollen from where Mapes had hit him. He seemed as proud of his swollen lips as was Crane's boy in The Red Badge of Courage.”(Gaines 50). Gaines’ style was also influenced by authors he read in the Vallejo Library. For example, the style in which Gaines tells the story of A Gathering of Old Men is very reminiscent of the technique of William Faulkner, a famous Southern writer, which tells the story from one character’s perspective for a chapter. Gaines uses this approach to bring a variety of voices to the novel and add a layer of complexity that could only be achieved by using Faulkner’s approach. Additionally, A Gathering of Old Men is described as “. . . an honest novel by an honest, no-frills author who is committed to writing about the old way of life in the rural south…” by Eddie Lopez in his review of the book when it was first published in 1983. In his opinion, Gaines achieved his goal of writing about his people, and “. . . does it better than anyone else.”