The African American Presence in Walker Percy's "The Moviegoer"

One of the first posts on this blog focused on Walker Percy's Lancelot (1977) and his portrayal of African Americans in that novel. Since then, I have written about the African American presence in novels such as The Great Gatsby and also about the white presence in Gaines's Catherine Carmier. Today, I would like to write briefly about the African American presence in Percy's debut novel The Moviegoer (1961) which chronicles Binx Bolling's "search" for his own identity in a declining South during the post war years in the mid-twentieth century. The novel takes place over Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and as Marcia Gaudet notes, Binx's search is a type of "internal carnivalesque," upending societal hierarchies for a period of time and reveling in the grotesque. I could discuss this aspect of the novel some, but I will not do so today. Instead, I will focus on Percy's portrayal of Mercer and other African American characters.

Binx's description of his Aunt Emily's African American butler Mercer presents him as the remnant of a by-gone era and also partly as a movement away from that era. When Binx arrives at his aunt's house in the Garden District, Mercer opens the door for him. Immediately, Binx notices that Mercer thoughtfully weighs how he will greet his white employer's nephew. Binx notes, "Today he does not say 'Mister Jack' and I know that the omission is deliberate, the consequence of a careful weighing of pros and cons. Tomorrow the scales might tip the other way (today's omission will go into the balance) and it will be 'Mister Jack'" (21). Mercer, like Procter Lewis in Gaines's "Three Men," consciously weighs how he will address this white man. Emily moved from Feliciana Parish to New Orleans, and Mercer followed her, continuing to serve as her butler. In describing Mercer, Binx says, "He is thought to be devoted to us and we to him. But the truth is that Mercer and I are not at all devoted to each other" (22). For Binx, Mercer wears a mask. Mercer does not "serve" the family; instead, through his actions, the family serves Mercer providing him, ultimately costing him the ability to define himself.  Lucinda H. MacKethan points out the effect that the city has on Mercer: "In Aunt Emily's house in the city he has changed, has become a 'city man,' although still a product of a racist system that makes him a consummate maskwearer. He is defined by but also dissolved in a role of 'devotion' that is placed upon him as the beneficiary of a country family's benevolence" (34). Mercer allows the paternalist Binx family to support him, providing him with material accouterments; however, by allowing them to support him, Mercer maintains the racial hierarchy that existed within the South, rejecting his ability to create his own identity.

Binx's identity exists in relation to Mercer's. The novel traces the story of  Binx, a man from a legitimate Southern family, and his gradual degradation of Southern manhood. Part of that decay can be seen in the form of changing race relations that appear to occur on the periphery. No mention of race relations, or changing times, really appears in the novel in regards to race. However, a closer look at Mercer seems to point to changing times on the horizon. When describing Mercer in more detail, Binx says that the way Mercer breathes reminds him of the rural, agricultural Feliciana Parish, an image of the plantation or Jim Crow South. Binx reminesces, "We might be back in Feliciana. Here is the very sound of winter mornings in Feliciana twenty years ago when cold dark dawns were announced by the clatter of the handle on the scuttle and Mercer's strangled breathing" (23). Discussing Mercer's history with Aunt Emily, Binx continues by saying, "Mercer has dissolved somewhat in recent years. It is not so easy to say who he is any more. My aunt truly loves him and sees him as a faithful retainer, a living connection with a bygone age" (23). Here, Mercer appears to be an artifact of the South, one whose time has come to an end. He has "dissolved" and exists as a "connection with a bygone era." In essence, his time has passed, and the role of African Americans being treated as inferior has begun to dissolve as well.

Binx has admiration for Mercer, and to an extant, sympathy for him. Knowing that Mercer takes kickbacks and steals, Binx says that he can't be called a thief because "Mercer has aspirations" (23). Those aspirations, though, become muddled in the system that still exists. Binx refers to Mercer as a "remarkable sort of fellow" and as a person "who keeps himself well informed in science and politics" (24). Even with these aspects, Mercer still lacks a solidified identity. Binx finds Mercer uneasy to talk to because of his knowledge, and his feels sad for him because he notices the way that Mercer views himself, "neither [as] old retainer nor expert in current events" (24). At those moments, Mercer's "eyes get muddy and his face runs together behind his mustache" (24). In effect, he becomes stuck in between what Southern society expects of him and what he expects from himself. The conflicting expectations cause him to lose his own identity, conforming and wearing the mask in order to survive in a racist system.  

At the end of the novel, as Binx and Kate sit outside a church on Ash Wednesday and discuss the possibility of marriage, a car pulls up behind them and "a Negro gets out and goes up into the church" to receive ashes (233). Binx notices the gentleman and starts to speculate on why he is there at that church. Binx notes, "He is more respectable that respectable; he is more middle-class than one could believe" (233). The man exudes "respectability" and appears to be the opposite of Mercer, an African American man who has found his identity. As the man leaves the church, Binx observes him again. This passage is worth quoting at length:

The Negro has already come outside. His forehead is an ambiguous sienna color and pied: it is impossible to be sure that he received ashes. When he gets in his Mercury, he does not leave immediately but sits looking down at something on the seat beside him. A sample case? An insurance manual? I watch him closely in the rear-view mirror. It is impossible to say why he is here. Is it part and parcel of the complex business of coming up in the world? Or is it because he believes that God himself is present here at the corner of Elysian Fields and Bons Enfants? Or is he here for bother reasons: through some dim dazzling trick of grace, coming for the one and receiving the other as God's importunate bonus? (234-235)

A couple of items stand out in this quote. One is that Binx notices that the man looks down at his seat, and he speculates about what the man be looking at. For Binx, the man looks at a sample case or insurance manual, two items that would place the man as a salesman. If this is the case, the man appears to be making his own way in the world, not tied down to the past as Mercer is, or, as I have not really discussed, as Binx is. The other point appears when when Binx asks in the man's presence goes hand in hand with "the complex business of coming up in the world." Again, this very question points to the man having a clear idea of his identity and what he wants to do in his life, unlike Mercer who remains tethered to the past.

What are your thoughts on this topic? What other characters appear in the novel that are similar to Mercer and the man at the end? Let us know in the comments below.

MacKethan, Lucinda H. "Redeeming Blackness: Urban Allegories Of O'Connor, Percy, and Toole."
Studies in The Literary Imagination 27.2 (1994): 29-39. Print.
Percy, Walker. The Moviegoer. New York: Faucet Columbine, 1996. Print.

‘Deep in You:’ Encountering Gaines—Katharine Henry

Today's blog post comes to us from the Ernest J. Gaines Center's Summer Research Fellow from Cal State LA Katharine Henry. She will be with us at the center helping to transcribe manuscripts, conduct research, and encounter Gaines's works. In today's post, she speaks about her initial encounters with Gaines and his work. 

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Katharine's Picture of the Miss Jane Pittman Oak

"Deep in you, what you think? Deep in you?" (A Lesson Before Dying 100)

My first encounter with Ernest J. Gaines’s literary work was earlier this year with A Lesson Before Dying (1993). In my undergraduate and graduate studies, I deeply admired the works of William Faulkner who became a gateway for my strong desire to explore more literature written by Southern authors, especially in Louisiana, a place whose astounding natural beauty was quite different from my native California desert and immediately captured my admiration. During my frequent travels from one “LA” (Los Angeles) to another (Louisiana), I was captivated by the unique culture of Acadiana and thrilled to discover another treasure in the region: a profound and extraordinary writer living near New Roads, Louisiana. Born and raised in Louisiana until he left at the age of 15 for California, Gaines returned decades later following what he stated as, “this Louisiana thing that drives me” (Rowell 87). I thought it special that I might have this small fact in common with Mr. Gaines, that we have moved back and forth between California and Louisiana. Turning the pages of A Lesson Before Dying, I was immediately drawn to its deceptively simple narration, vernacular dialogue and its compassion, each ingredient endowing the work with poetic power. Hungry for more stories like these, I pursued Gaines’s masterful storytelling through Catherine Carmier (1964), Of Love and Dust (1967) and Bloodline (1968).

When I consider one of the most powerful underpinnings of Gaines’s works thus far, I recall Reverend Mose Ambrose in A Lesson Before Dying. Concerned with the soul of Jefferson, a young death row inmate whose execution is set the second Friday after Easter, Rev. Ambrose emerges out of the darkness of Miss Emma’s kitchen to ask Grant Wiggins about Jefferson. He asks Grant, “What’s he thinking? What’s he thinking deep in him? Deep in you, what you think?” (100). There are levels of depth, not just deep, but deep deep, and those private ideas and desires that dwell within Grant, Jefferson and so many of Gaines’s characters are frequently in conflict with their community’s immediate needs for security. In Of Love and Dust, Marcus Payne is at war against the world once he is bailed from jail by a wealthy plantation owner and exchanges the imprisonment of his cell for indentured servitude. In return, Marcus seeks revenge on his unyielding Cajun overseer Sidney Bonbon and for whomever else may suffer in that scheme, he cares not. But when his vengeful plans to take Bonbon’s wife, Louise, materialize, his impulse towards her evolves immediately into a feeling the novel challenges us to accept as love. Marcus imagines and plans for a life lived with and for Louise, her daughter Tite and himself as husband and father. With Marcus we find that isolation is not the means to self-validation. Stripping ourselves from all people and things to recover a bare, authentic, solitary self is a fiction. Rather, getting to the soul, ‘deep in you,’ requires community with others so that Rev. Ambrose’s challenge to Grant, “You think a man can’t kneel and stand?”, proves itself true (A Lesson Before Dying 216).

The mode through which many of Gaines’s characters take a stand in their newfound dignity is through acts of love. While violence is at the start of Jefferson’s and Marcus’s journeys, Jefferson’s movement towards a love of self allows him to recognize that he is no hog and that he can stand, walk to and sit in the electric chair, fulfilling his godmother’s insistence, “I want a man to go to that chair, on his own two feet” (A Lesson Before Dying 13). The possibility of transforming the rules that place Jefferson in jail, Grant in the schoolhouse, Marcus on the plantation, and Louise on the porch into circumstances of love underlie Gaines’s self-described interest in exposing how one endures—and might still find possibilities to flourish—under pressure (Rowell 91).

Communities and individuals under an almost intolerable pressure are at the core of Gaines’s dramas. His work illustrates how the ways society sees us, and forces us to see each other, fails to be a language in which we can accurately describe a human person. One particularly powerful example is the mystifying and unsettling relationship between Bonbon and his black mistress Pauline Guerin in Of Love and Dust. Their affair begins forcefully and violently but Bonbon and Pauline quickly fall in love and have been in love for years. Marcus is baffled, as readers are, asking how she could love him. His anger that he cannot have Pauline for himself and his inability to understand her feelings manifests itself in savagery, he knocks her to the ground and denunciates her, “You white man bitch” (Of Love and Dust 98). Reenacting a denial of her agency akin to Bonbon’s initial cruelty, Marcus’s denunciation of Pauline is echoed twenty-eight chapters later when he recounts his youth where he observed that white man have their “number one nigger” who receives special treatment at the expense of other black men and women (250). For Marcus, Pauline holds this role as Bonbon’s mistress and mother to his twins. And she leverages their relationship and is promoted from a field hand to a more comfortable duty as cook in the big house. Her advancement results in the firing of Marcus’s godmother, Miss Julie Rand, who worked on the plantation for 40 years.

Pauline is Bonbon’s pawn and yet this coincides with the uncomfortable acknowledgement that the novel tells us in so many ways that the couple really is in love. Jim Kelly, the young narrator who is trusted and respected within the community, observes how intimate their feelings are. We can be skeptical of each character’s perspectives while simultaneously acknowledging that Marcus simplifies Pauline and Bonbon’s bond in ways that the narrative complicates for readers. In the novel we find that white and black communities accept that black female bodies are the property of men and tolerate sexual violence and yet cannot imagine interracial love. The rules dictate that men can do anything to black women but love them. When Bonbon leaves the plantation and Pauline follows so that they may live together as husband and wife, how do we come to terms with Marcus’s paradigm now? It seems insufficient to working through this complex relationship, especially when Pauline does not see herself as the passive, abused woman that Marcus demonizes her as. We are witnesses to what happens when one begins to see themselves as more than what society first allowed them to be—when Pauline loves Bonbon and endures Marcus’s violence, when Bonbon loves her and becomes the laughing stock of the town and when Louise leaves Bonbon to pursue a life with Marcus at the risk of her father and brothers forcefully dragging her back to her home. Perhaps we might consider the possibility that each person transforms a relationship that the rules deemed should have remained wholly exploitative and violent, into one of care? It’s a challenging and necessary discussion. We become Louise on the porch of her home, staring out to consider the agency and humanity of others at the same time they question and consider her own.

Gaines is a brave writer, writing with critique and compassion in equal parts, asking his readers to think deep about the apparatus which Jim calls “this big thing that said Yes” (Of Love and Dust 269) and which Munford Bazille in “Three Men” calls “they” (140). Yet rather than succumb to the doom inherent in facing this giant, Gaines writes with humanity about the “little people” who endure, acknowledge their participation in the making of tragedies and learn to kneel, stand, walk and sit with dignity like Jefferson (Of Love and Dust 258).

Gaines, Ernest J. A Lesson Before Dying. New York: Vintage, 1994. Print.

 ---. Of Love and Dust. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1979. Print.

 ---. “Three Men.” Bloodline. 159-220. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1976. Print.

Rowell, Charles. “This Louisiana Thing That Drives Me: An Interview with Ernest J. Gaines.” Conversations with Ernest Gaines. Ed. John Lowe. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1995. 86-98. Print.

Katharine's Picture of Trees Surrounding Area Where
The Overseer's House Was on River Lake Plantation

First Ever Ernest J. Gaines Society Panel at ALA 2015

May 23, 2015, saw the first ever panel of the Ernest J. Gaines Society. The panel took place at the American Literature Association and involved three papers on the continued importance of the works of Ernest J. Gaines. Each paper brought new perspectives to Gaines scholarship and opened new avenues for examining Gaines's works in relation to the American and African American literary tradition. The panel, entitled "Rethinking Race and Culture in the Fiction of Ernest J. Gaines," explored differing thematic elements in Gaines;s works. Covering "A Long Day in November," The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and Catherine Carmier, the papers varied from discussing marital traditions, literary genres, and social hierarchies. Overall, the panel presented eye-opening avenues to expand Gaines scholarship. For this post, I would just like to briefly discuss the papers, providing a little information about each of them.

Pearlie Peters's "Rekindling Old Marital Traditions in African American Folk Culture, Southern Style: Domestic Violence in Selected Fiction of Ernest J. Gaines and Zora Neale Hurston" opened up the panel. In her paper, Peters discussed the closing scene of Gaines's "A Long Day in November" where Amy tells Eddie that he needs to beat her in order to save face in the community. When Amy threatens to leave Eddie again at the end of the end of the story, she tells him that he better stop her before she leaves for good. Eddie picks a switch off the floor and hits her twice. Amy tells him, "Beat me," and he proceeds to beat her even harder (74). After he beats her, Eddie runs towards Amy and picks her up to take her to bed. At dinner, Amy's face is swollen and she's been crying. Eddie finally asks Amy why she wanted him to beat her, even when he didn't beat her for that thing with Freddie Jackson; she responds by saying, "Because I don't want you to be a laughingstock of the plantation" (75).

Upon first reading this scene, it confounded me because I did not understand why Amy wanted Eddie to beat her so he would not be the laughingstock of the community. Perters's presentation covered this topic in some detail, even bringing in examples from Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Amy's request, as Peters argues, comes from a space that conflates the public and the private. Everything in the quarters becomes public in some form or another, so if Eddie does not rectify the situation of his wife deciding to leave him, the whole community will see him as a laughingstock because his masculinity has been contested. Peters draws on Robert Hemenway's "Are You a Flying Lark or a Setting Dove" and Hurston's "Story in Harlem Slang" and "Characteristics of Negro Expression" to show that the domestic violence portrayed at the end of "A Long Day in November" and in Hurston's novel was once perceived as being good, respectful domestic violence. This does not justify domestic violence in any way; she just maintains that the situations shown within these texts have precedent in socio-cultural folk communities.

Erin Salius's "Rethinking Historical Realism in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" argues that the way we typically read Gaines's famous 1971 novel needs to be altered. Instead of reading Pittman as historical realism, Salius proposes that we read it as a precursor to more disruptive neo-slave narratives such as Octavia Butler's Kindred, Charles Johnson's Middle Passage and Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada. Scholars place Gaines's novel at the forefront of the neo-slave narrative genre; however, they do not typically see it as novel that mirrors either Butler's or Toni Morrison's Beloved because it is a straightforward, chronological narrative. Other neo-slave narratives contain disruptions and temporal overlap, and they work to, as Dubey argues, to fill gaps in existing historical narratives. Salius argues that we should read The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in this way.

Salius proposes that we should read Gaines's novel like a "palimpsest novel." Ashraf Rushdy argues that this form of neo-slave narrative is a novel "in which a contemporary African American subject describes modern social relations that are directly conditioned or affected by an incident, event, or narrative from the time of slavery" (535). This comes from the fact that during Part III of the novel there are numerous references to characters appearing possessed by forces beyond their control. During the scenes with Tee Bob and Mary Agnes this possession appears. Ultimately, the residual effects of slavery come into play withing the novel in regards to the "rules" that Jules Raynard and Jimmy Caya espouse in regards to what Tee Bob can, and should, do with Mary Agnes. To find out more about Salius's argument, check out the summer 2015 issue of Callaloo where her paper will appear.

Matthew Teutsch's "'They want us to be Creoles. . . There is no in-between': Creole Representations in Gaines's Catherine Carmier and Lyle Saxon's Children of Strangers" looks at what Keith Byerman calls "the death of the Creole" in Gaines's and Saxon's novels. To highlight the decline of the Creole community, Teutsch focuses on the trope of passing in both novels. He looks at Famie's son Joel in Children of Strangers and how Joel's desire to pass for white in California ultimately causes him to lose all contact with his mother Famie. He essentially separates himself from her and from the rest of the community in order for him to pass as white. Lillian does the same thing in Gaines's Catherine Carmier. She talks about being unable to live a life between the black and white world, so she ultimately decides to pass as well, leaving her family behind.

Teutsch opens up new ways to look at Gaines's work by exploring it in relation to other writers in Louisiana their treatment of Creole communities. Both Saxon and Gaines explore Creole communities in their works, and both discuss the insular aspects of the people, shunning both black and white penetration into the group. This insulation leads to a gradual decline that ultimately causes the death of the community. Both Joel and Lillian show this because they both decide to pass, and in so doing, they sever all ties with the community itself.

This is just a brief overview of the first annual Ernest J. Gaines Society panel. Next year, there will be two panels at the American Literature Association in San Francisco, CA and one at the Society for the Study of Southern Literature Conference in Boston, MA. Make sure to check back on the center's website for the CFPs.

Gaines, Ernest J. "A Long Day in November." Bloodline. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1976. 3-79. Print.

Langston Hughes's "Mulatto: A Tragedy of the South" and Gaines's "Bloodline"

Ambassador Theater
Playbill for Hughes's Mulatto

Last post, I wrote about Frank Laurent being a representation of the decaying South in Ernest J. Gaines's "Bloodline." Today, I would like to continue that conversation by showing how a similar image can be seen in the character for Colonel Thomas Norwood from Langston Hughes's Mulatto: A Tragedy of the South (1935). Like "Bloodline," Hughes's play takes place on a Southern plantation and involves a mulatto character, Robert, returning and starting to create trouble for the owner of the land, Colonel Norwood. In this case, though, Norwood is Robert's father with Cora, an African American woman who works in the house and has been Norwood's mistress, moving into the house when Norwood's wife passed away. Norwood and Cora have four children together, and Norwood refuses to recognize any of them. He does, however, continually try to support them by providing them with educational opportunities on the property (building a school and staffing it) and allowing them to go North to attend school, even helping to pay for their education there. While he does these things, he refuses to completely recognize them as his progeny, always referring to them as "Cora's kids." Robert, home for the summer, resents this, and the play centers around him seeking recognition from his father.

The character list for the play describes Colonel Norwood as "a still vigorous man of about sixty, nervous, refined, quick-tempered, and commanding" (2). Norwood does embody all of these qualities throughout the play, but I would also say that he becomes a representation of the plantation past losing its grip on the present. At the very beginning of the play, we see Norwood becoming frustrated when he experiences the same things that Frank Laurent does in "Bloodline." Norwood questions whether or not he actually has any control over his house. after ringing for his servant Sam and having to wait for him to arrive, Norwood intones, "Looks like he takes his time to answer that bell. You colored folks are running the house to suit yourself nowadays" (emphasis added 5). After Sam arrives, Norwood asks about the delay; Sam simply says that he was helping Sallie, one of Norwood and Cora's children, with her bags. This leads Norwood to explode: "Huh! Darkies waiting on darkies! I can't get service in my own house" (5). This brief exchange mirrors that of Little Boy and Frank Laurent discussed in the last post. Norwood notices that he does not have the same power he once did.

Part of the conflict surrounding Norwood's recognition of Robert revolves around Robert's arguments that he should be able to enter the house through the front door and Norwood's staunch refusal to allow him to do that. Robert does enter and leave through the front door, and when he goes to the front door and encounters Norwood walking in the front door, the two square off. At the beginning, Norwood only "points toward the door at the rear of the house" when he tells Robert which door to walk through (19). Robert refuses, and he confronts his father, remaining adamant that he will leave through the front door, not the back door. The stage directions during this confrontation are important:

The COLONEL raises his cane to strike the boy. CORA screams. BERT draws himself up to his full height, taller than the old man and looking very much like him, pale and proud. The man and the boy face each other. NORWOOD does not strike. (19)  

As the two continue to square off, Norwood becomes rattled and tells Robert  "(In a hoarse whisper) Get out of here. (His hand us trembling as he points)" (19). Norwood goes from being confident and strong to weak, and as the stage direction says later, filled with "impotent rage." Norwood must look up to Robert in the same way that Frank Laurent does with Copper. He does not have anymore power over Robert or the rest of the people who reside on his plantation.

When Norwood enter for what will become the final confrontation with his son, he looks "bent and pale" (21).   He starts towards Robert and "[s]uddenly he straightens up. The old commanding look comes into his face. He strides directly across the room towards his son" (21-22). This movement causes Robert to become afraid yet still defiant, and when he rises to his full stature, "the white man turns, goes back to a chair near the table, right, and seats himself" (22). Norwood knows that he cannot intimidate Robert with his physical appearance, so he decides to sit and tell Robert what he has done for Cora's children. Robert remains standing, again the tableau resembles the scene between Copper and Frank in "Bloodline." When Robert attempts to leave by the front door, the symbolic threshold of the play, Norwood steps between his son and the door. The two tussle, and Robert grabs his father by the throat, choking the life out of him. Robert symbolically kills the old South that Norwood represents, but in the process, he condemns himself to death as well. The play ends with white men chasing him into the house. He retreats upstairs and shoots himself in a bedroom.

There is a lot, and I mean a lot, more in this play and in Gaines's story. I have not even touched on Cora's thoughts regarding her relationship with Colonel Norwood. The way she describes it appears similar to the relationship between Pauline and Bonbon in Of Love and Dust. Their relationship also contains residual elements of slavery when a slave master could do whatever he wanted to do to his "property." In this way, we could read Hughes and Gaines in relation to someone like Harriett Jacobs. Finally, I do not completely discuss the progeny that arise from the relationships in these texts. Their position, as has been seen some, is precarious at best, existing not as a Creole community but as illegitimate children that the white fathers will never acknowledge, no matter how much people know. Lansgton Hughes tackles this aspect in the play and in his poem "Mulatto." The video below is Hughes reading the poem.

What other items should we discuss with these works? What other works could we examine in correspondence with them? Let us know in the comments below.

Hughes, Langston. Mulatto: A Tragedy of the South. Five Plays by Langston Hughes. Ed. Webster Smalley. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968. 1-35. Print.

   

The Decaying South in "Bloodline"

River Lake Plantation 1938 

This past weekend, I read Gaines's "Bloodline" (1968) alongside Langston Hughes's Mulatto: A Tragedy of the Deep South (1935). Reading these two pieces together, one can see many thematic similarities even though they are ostensibly different genres and appear about thirty three years apart. I do not have time to touch on every similarity between each text. Instead, I just want to focus on one essential aspect that appears in each text, namely the appearance of the central white characters in each story. Both texts center around the return of a "mulatto" character who comes back to the plantation, either to move people to action as in "Bloodline" or to seek what is rightfully his and recognition from his father as in Mulatto.

Frank Laurent owns the plantation in Gaines's "Bloodline," a story that centers of the return of Copper Laurent to the quarters. Frank fears that Copper, who is his nephew from a relationship that Walter Laurent had with Copper's mother, has come back to rile up the inhabitants of the quarter and to start trouble. One must keep in mind that the story appeared in 1968, during the Civil Rights Era, and throughout Gaines's work, whites fear demonstrations occurring on their land and African Americans continually comment that the movement has not reached them yet. Typically, a student who has left the quarters and returns tells the inhabitants about the movement taking place. (Think of Jimmy Aaron in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.) Felix, the narrator of "Bloodline," even says, "They doing that [demonstrating] everywhere else, 'Mailia. Everywhere else but here" (161).

Over the years, Frank's grip on the plantation fades, representing the changing times that have made their way  into the Deep South. Felix describes "the last of the old Laurents" as feeble and struggling "to look hard" when those around him knew "that hardness had gone" (164, 165). The people who still live on the plantation and work in the big house notice Frank's decline and challenge his "rules" in small ways. For example, whenever Frank tells Little Boy and Joby to go down to the quarters and retrieve Copper, Little Boy looks in the corner to Miss Amalia and asks her if it she is all right with him forcefully bringing her nephew up to the big house to see Frank. The exchange is worth quoting at length:

"You're asking her if it's all right when I told you to do something?" Frank asked him.
"I wouldn't want to do nothing she might not--" Little Boy stopped again before he finished.
"Do like Mr. Frank say," 'Malia said, with her head down.
"Just a minute," Frank said. "Who the hell's running this place, me or Amalia?"
"I guess you, Mr. Frank," Little Boy said.
"You guess, nigger?" Frank said. "You guess?"
Little Bot lowered his head, but Frank kept on looking at him. Then all of a sudden his face changed. Like only now he re'lized maybe he wasn't running the place. Maybe somebody else was running it after all. Or, maybe nobody was running it. Maybe it was just running down." (emphasis in original 173-174)

These types of exchanges also occur between Frank and Felix. One could assume that Little Boy's deference to Miss Amalia does not occur because of Copper's appearance on the plantation; instead, he asks her blessing because he respects her and knows that the man he is about to confront is her nephew.

 Little Boy and Jorby fail to bring Copper back to the big house. In fact, Copper beats them up and ties them together with a chain. Furious, Frank tells Felix to gather up another group of men to go fetch Copper. Like Little Boy and Jorby, the group of six men fail to get Copper to return to the house. Ultimately, Frank must descend to leaving the big house in order to meet Copper; he rides out the quarters and speaks with Copper on the porch of Amalia's house. When he arrives, Felix describes Frank's movements as he extricates himself from the automobile: "The tall, sick, white man went in the yard with his head high. . . Frank stood before Copper, leaning on the cane and breathing hard" (203). Even though Frank's power deteriorates, he remains adamant that he will maintain control until he dies. He approaches the house "with his head high" and at the end of the story he convinces Copper to leave the plantation. However, Copper still reminds Frank that his time has come to an end. Copper looks down at a seated Frank, not on an equal level or up at him, and he informs him, "Your days are over, Uncle" (217). Frank knows that his way of life has come to an end, and he even mentions this at various points throughout the story. Felix's descriptions of Frank, and Frank's comments, illuminate the changing times taking place on the plantation in much the same way that the description of Colonel Thomas Norwood does in Hughes's Mulatto.      

On Thursday, I talk about Hughes's play and how it relates to "Bloodline," specifically in regards to the changing South and to the decaying plantation traditions. Until then, what are your thought's on Gaines's "Bloodline"? What other themes do you see in the story?

Gaines, Ernest J. "Bloodline." Bloodline. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1976. 159-217. Print.

Aunt Clo in Ernest J. Gaines's "Just Like a Tree"

Ernest J. Gaines's "Just Like a Tree" concludes his short story collection Bloodline (1968).  It originally appeared in the Sewanne Review, and it tells the story of a gathering of people in the quarters as the say goodbye to the ninety-nine year old fixture Aunt Fe as her daughter and son-in-law plan to take her away to the North so she will not have to endure anything like the recent bombing that occurred in the quarters. Readers do not hear directly from Aunt Fe in the story, even though the story is essentially about her. Instead, multiple narrators from young to old tell the events of the gathering, similar to Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, which Gaines says served as influence, along with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, for the story.

Today, I would just like to focus on one section of the story, Aunt Clo's. All of the narrators in the story focus on the events occurring in the room, moving to the past and looking to the future periodically. Aunt Clo, unlike the other narrators, does not provide any action that necessarily moves the narrative forward; her section is more philosophical and metaphorical, talking about Aunt Fe as a tree that is currently being uprooted and dragged reluctantly from her home. The section recalls, in many ways, Miss Jane Pittman's musings on the oak tree she speaks with in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. More similarities exist between Aunt Fe and Miss Jane. One interviewer even asked Gaines about their similar characteristics. Gaines replied that when he started Pittman he realized it was too much like Aunt Fe because others told the story, not allowing Jane to speak for herself. He said, "I've got the same characters telling the same thing. All I've done with Aunt Fe is that instead of her dying, I tell everything that happened before she died" (49-50). Looking at each work closely, similarities appear, but that is not my entire focus here.

Aunt Clo compares Aunt Fe to a tree that has a chain wrapped around it then someone is just a "jecking and jecking, and then shifting the chain little bit and jecking and jecking in some direction, and then shifting it some mo' and jecking and jecking in that direction" trying to wrestle the roots out of the ground so it can be moved (235). When the person extricates the tree from the ground, a big hole remains with a "piece of the taproot still way down in it--a piece you won't never get out no matter if you dig till doomsday" (236). The taproot grows deep, and removing it becomes difficult. Aunt Fe's daughter and son-in-law plan to take her away, to the North, but her roots run deep. Aunt Fe becomes like others who have left. They leave holes behind, but the taproot remains. Aunt Clo continues by explaining that once the tree leaves, two holes remain: "You get a big hole in the ground, sir; and you get another big hole in the air where the lovely branches been all these years. Yes, sir, that's what you get. The holes, sir, the holes. Two holes, sir, you can't never fill no matter how hard you try" (236). The holes, of course, represent what Aunt Fe will leave behind. She will not physically be in the quarters anymore, and the people who loved her will not see her again.

While the holes appear, the taproot remains. When the trees gets dragged to the North, Aunt Clo says that the person taking the tree has to find a space for it. She says, "You look in this corner and you look in that corner, but no corner is good. She kin o'stand in the was no matter where you set her. So finally, sir, you say, 'I just stand her up a little while and see, and if it don't work out, if she keep getting in the way, I guess we'll just have to take her to the dump'" (237). This quote, which ends Aunt Clo's section, is full of themes that I do not have time to explore in this post. The tree, like Aunt Fe, becomes a representation of the past, and specifically the South, that upon entering the North must be done away with or placed in a corner. Gaines speaks about this in his own experiences when he went to California in "A Very Big Order: Reconstructing Identity" and James, a Northerner, exemplifies it in his section in "Just Like A Tree."

At the end of the story, everyone has left Aunt Fe's house and Aunt Lou helps her get ready for bed. As she watched Aunt Fe, Aunt Lou notices "her making some kind o' jecking motion there, but I feel she crying 'cause this her last night here, and 'cause she got to leave ever'thing behind" (249). Important here is the word "jecking." Aunt Clo uses the word repeatedly in her section while she describes the tree being removed from the ground and transported North. Here, Aunt Lou uses it to describe Aunt Fe before she goes to bed, and ultimately dies. This key word links the image Aunt Clo speaks about with Aunt Fe. Unlike the tree, whose taproot remains, Aunt Fe doesn't leave in the end. She goes to bed and passes away in her sleep.

No matter how hard someone tries to relinquish the past, it remains. This in not necessarily a bad thing. The past is important, all of its tribulations and triumphs. When speaking about his grandmother's death, Gaines talks about the fact that "all she talked about was the South" (50). His grandmother maintained her insurance payments so she could be buried back home in the South because that mattered to her. Gaines continues,

When she died, there were no arguments as far as I was concerned that Momma was coming back to the place where she grew up. And there were other people in the family who said, "Well she's dead now, does it matter?" But to me it mattered and to her it mattered. She never did say, 'Send my body back home' or anything like that. We never did talk about death like that, but we knew. She'd say, "I'd like to be buried there" you know, but she never said "Send my body there." She'd just say "I'd like to be buried home." (52)

Even though his grandmother passed well after the story first appeared, Gaines's comments here reflect Aunt Clo's description of Aunt Fe. As well, they describe his thoughts regarding the continual pull of Louisiana and the South to his own writing and life.

What do you think of "Just Like A Tree"? Let us know in the comments below.

Gaines, Ernest J. "Just Like A tree." Bloodline. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1976. 221-249. Print.
Ingram, Forrest and Barbara Steinberg. "On the Verge: An Interview with Ernest J. Gaines." Conversations with Ernest Gaines. Ed. John Lowe. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1995. 39-55. Print.