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A Gathering of Old Men begins with a child narrator who relates the report that there has been a shooting on a Louisiana plantation, and a white, Cajun farmer, Beau Boutan, is dead. He has been killed in the yard of an old, black worker, Mathu. Because of the conflict between Cajuns and blacks in South Louisiana, the tension in the situation and the fear of the black people is immediately felt. The Cajuns were the greatest competitor of the black people in Louisiana, but the Cajuns had the advantage of race in a segregated society. The author, Ernest J. Gaines, uses fifteen narrators (white, black, young, and old) to deal with the changing relations between the Cajuns and the blacks in Louisiana in the late 1970 s.
As each narrator picks up the story, we see the tensions between the past and the present, the conflict between the whites and blacks, and most important, the conflict and tension between each old black man and his former, younger self as he tries to deal with why he has waited so long to face the problem. Mapes, the white sheriff who traditionally dealt with the black people by the use of intimidation and force, finds himself in the frustrating situation of having to deal with a group of old black men, each carrying a shotgun and each claiming that he shot Beau Boutan. In addition, Candy Marshall, the young white woman whose family owned the plantation, claims that she did it. There seems to be only one real suspect, Mathu, the old black man whom Candy is determined to protect whether he wants or needs her protection or not. All of the old men have a motive to kill Beau, but only Mathu is perceived as being man enough to have done it; he is the only one who had ever stood up to a white man before. As each man tells why he shot Beau, neither the reader nor the sheriff regards him as a real suspect.
However, we are given an unforgettable picture of that person in terms of ghosts from his past. The old men try to deal with a past that they have not yet forgotten and try to gain enough courage to deal with it. As each tells his part of the story, he bravely takes upon himself the quilt of the past and regains his pride. Gaines, the author, allows the characters to reveal themselves and their interrelationships with others. We hear the story through the narrative voices of the old black men, a black woman (Janey), a child (Snookum), and the white narrators: Lou Dimes, Sully, Miss More, and Tee Jack. We see not only the conflicts of the blacks, but also the conflicts of their rivals through the voices of Sully and Tee Jack.
The old world of Fix Boutan, the leader of a Cajun mob known for violence toward blacks, has come to an end, and they must come to terms with a new world symbolized by Fixs youngest son, Gil Boutan, an LSU football player whose partner on the football field is black, the Salt and Pepper of LSU. As Fixs friend Auguste says, Im an old man, Fix. I dont know who is right and who is wrong, anymore (142). Most of the novel takes place in the course of one day, and as the events of the day come to a climax, an unexpected climax, we are moved along with the characters to a better understanding of the conflicts and changes that have occurred.
A Gathering of Old Men is a warm, sensitive, honest novel that combines humor and truth when dealing with conflict, and only a person who knew these people well could have done such a good job.
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