Ernest J. Gaines sets his book, A Gathering of Old Men, in the 70’s on the sugarcane plantations of Louisiana. It is about the conflicts between the whites and the blacks within an isolated parish. This story revolves around a young white woman, Candy, several older black men and the death of a Cajun, Beau, to whom they all confess to killing. Gaines’ paints his story in a very vivid way by going into great detail to describe each character and his/her looks. Also within the story he expresses clearly the racial tensions and the oppression that the blacks were put under by the white people.
Beau and his family were the source of pain and hardship on the local black people. They had been used as their slaves up until the end of slavery but they were still looked down on and mistreated badly. The blacks were scared of the Boutan family and what it stood for. They had always been beaten down by them but th
ings changed with the killing of one of the Boutan sons. The gathering of the men showed strength and determination to stand up finally after a lifetime of submission and suppression.
The shoot out at the end, between the blacks and the whites, is fought within the weeds. As Luke Will and his followers come for the killer of Beau, the blacks run out to hide in the weeds to defend themselves. Gaines describes the weeds as being dry, scratching, thick and cracking (196). Much physical pain was brought on the blacks by the whites. Gaines description of the weeds seems to tell the pain that was bestowed upon the blacks. The blacks felt overpowered by the whites just like the land felt overpowered by the weeds but in the end the blacks are able to resist the killing effect of the “weeds.” They were able to bridge the gap between the ways of the old South to the ways of the new South. They do this by not backing down to Luke Will and his men and fighting for
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