The+Gathering+of+Old+Men



Title:The Gathering of Old Men Author: Ernest Gaines Publisher: Vintage Books/Random House 1983

The integration of the white and black races is the most remarkable event of the second half of this century, surpassed only by two world wars in its significance. A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest Gaines is a remarkable mystery about a young white woman and seventeen old black men in an isolated Louisiana township, each of whom confess to the murder of a brutal Cajun farmer. The simple symbols used in A Gathering of Old Men have a great impact on Gaines' audience. These symbols are the tractor and the sugar cane. The tractor symbolizes an image of the present, whereas the cane represents the days of the past when the blacks worked the land. The old black men are strong-minded, but the Cajun farmers' changes are huge and demoralizing. The black men grow through the novel and become individuals and depict their inner pain. The Cajuns do not see nor realize the years of pain and guilt that the black men have carried with them. This story illustates two worlds and how the people survive in them. 

**Acclaims:**
 * [|Chevalier] (Knight) of the [|Order of Art and Letters] (France) (2000)
 * The [|American Academy of Arts and Letters] Department of Literature (2000)
 * The National Governors’ Arts Award (2000)
 * The [|Louisiana Writer Award] (2000)
 * [|National Humanities Medal] (2000)
 * National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (1993)
 * John D. and Catherine T. [|MacArthur Foundation fellow] (1993)
 * [|Dos Passos Prize] (1993)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Louisiana Humanist of the Year (1993)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">[|Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation] fellow (1971)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">[|National Endowment for the Arts] grant (1967)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">[|Wallace Stegner] fellow (1957)

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; vertical-align: 150%;">The Gathering of Old Men Tv Movie: A Lifetime of Injustice...A Moment of Vengeance.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; vertical-align: 150%;">A regular day in a Louisiana sugarcane plantation changes course when a local white farmer is shot. A group of old, black men takes a courageous step by coming forward en masse to take responsibility for the killing of a white racist, whom one of their members has shot. As the sheriff confronts the suspects, the young plantation owner stands alone in her daring defense of this group of men, provoking racial tension that makes a compelling drama. Volker Schlondorff directed this film in 1987.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; vertical-align: 150%;">The Cast: <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; vertical-align: 150%;">Louise Gossett Jr: Mathu <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; vertical-align: 150%;">Richard Widmark: Sheriff Mapes <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; vertical-align: 150%;">Holly Hunter: Candy Marshall <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; vertical-align: 150%;">Joe Seneca: Clatoo

<span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; vertical-align: 150%;"><span style="color: #000000; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; vertical-align: 150%;">[|Information about the film] <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; vertical-align: 150%;">[|Full Video of the movie of The Gathering of Old Men] <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; vertical-align: 150%;">[|A short clip of the movie] <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; vertical-align: 150%;">**Awards**: Nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; vertical-align: 150%;">**Movie Reviews:** <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; vertical-align: 150%;">[|Movie Review from Yahoo!] <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; vertical-align: 150%;">[|New York Times Review] <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; vertical-align: 150%;">

<span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; vertical-align: 150%;">**Recommendations for Teachers:**<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> This can be taught at the 7th grade level through grade levek 12 <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">This is a book about manhood and redefining black masculinity. It is a book about race, about social and legal statuses. Students will be able to learn a great deal from this book. If someone wanted to create a unit about racism and trying to stand up for something, then this is the book to incorporate into the classroom. Initially titled "The Revenge of Old Men," the novel is a tale about action and self-realization. The old men who gather at the plantation have spent their days running from trouble. After years of social and economic subjugation in a racist system, they long to stand up for something. The transformation that they long to undertake is best illustrated by Charlie. Charlie is a legendary weakling who has always been defined by his servile personality. By the end of the novel though, Charlie has changed. Not only did he kill Beau, but he returns to confess, and then becomes the most courageous man in the battle. In just one day, Charlie has become a man without fear. The old black men look for a similar transformation. There is also a theme of racial interdependence in this book. The existence of racial interdependence is mostly obvious seen with the combination of "Salt and Pepper," the star football players. The success of these two players relies on their cooperation with one another. If Cal, the fullback, did not support Gil, the halfback, the duo would fail. Their need for joint playing is a metaphor for the entire South and in fact, the entire country. The races need to work together for everyone to be successful. Working separately will not allow for success in an American society. Similarly, the United State of America will become more truly "all- American" if races fairly work together and are equally appreciated for the roles that each of them play. This book can bring many lessons to the classroom. Below is a list of websites the shows a variety of different lesson plans and activities used to teach this book.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">**Teacher Reviews**:

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">[|Ron Corio] <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">We read this book in an Advanced Reading class that I taught for the Spring session. This was the second or third time that I have used this book in a reading class, and with each read it reveals more to me and increases my appreciation of Ernest Gaines' writing. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Gaines' device of using different narrators for each chapter gives this book a layered perspective of the events that happen over one day on a Louisiana sugar cane plantation in the nineteen seventies. Gaines knows his subject, Southwestern Louisiana and its people, well. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">After a couple of chapters the students became interested in the story and often commented that they wanted to read beyond the assignment in order to find out what happens next. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">[]

[|Unit Plan for The Gathering of Old Men] <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; vertical-align: 150%;">[|Activity for The Gathering of Old Men] <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; vertical-align: 150%;"><span style="color: #000000; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; vertical-align: 150%;">In order to feed all Multiple Intelligences of your students, a fun and easy activity to do is having them create their own trailor, or version of A Gathering of Old Men. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; vertical-align: 150%;">This is a way to get the students who are more vocal linguistic, body-kinesthetic, and/or visual-spatial learners to create something of their own interpreting. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; vertical-align: 150%;">Here are some examples: <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; vertical-align: 150%;"><span style="color: #000000; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; vertical-align: 150%;">[] <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; vertical-align: 150%;">[] <span style="color: #000000; display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; line-height: 150%; text-align: left; vertical-align: 150%;">
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: small;">Lessons and Activites for the classroom ** :


 * Biography of Ernest Gaines**:

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Ernest James Gaines was born on the River Lake Plantation near the small hamlet of Oscar, in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. His ancestors had lived on the same plantation since slavery, remaining after emancipation to work the land as sharecroppers. Gaines and his family lived in the houses, much expanded, that had once served as slave quarters. His parents separated when he was eight; the strongest adult influence in his childhood was a great aunt, Augusteen Jefferson, crippled from birth, who crawled from kitchen to the family's garden patch, growing and preparing food, and caring for him and for six of his brothers and sisters. Story-telling and oral tradition were a powerful part of African American life in the rural South, and young Ernest Gaines absorbed the stories of his family and neighbors, acquiring a sense of history and an ear for the rhythms of vernacular speech. The only school for African American children in the district was conducted in a single room of the black church. School was open for less than half the year; from the age of nine, Ernest Gaines and the other children were sent to labor alongside their elders in the fields, harvesting vegetables and cotton. Pointe Coupee Parish offered no public high school to its black citizens. At 15, Gaines joined his mother and stepfather in Vallejo, California, northeast of San Francisco. To keep him off the streets and out of trouble, his stepfather urged him to spend time in the public library. He soon became enthralled with literature, particularly the 19th century Russian masters, whose tales of a countryside steeped in feudal tradition echoed his own experience of plantation life. Finding no literature that directly portrayed the life of African Americans in the rural South, he began to write stories of his own, recreating the world of his childhood.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The Ernest J. Gaines Center at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette is an international center for scholarship on Ernest Gaines and his work. The center honors the work of UL Lafayette’s Writer-in-Residence Emeritus and provides a space for scholars and students to work with the Gaines papers and manuscripts. Gaines’s generous donation of his early papers and manuscripts (through 1983) and some artifacts to Edith Garland Dupré Library provided the foundation for the center’s collection. The center also anticipates acquiring the remainder of Gaines’s papers. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">[|The Ernest Gaines Center]
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Additional Accolades **:

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence by the AALBC (African American Literature Book Club) in honor of Gaines. Named for the world-renowned Louisiana author, the $10,000 annual award will honor one African-American writer's novel published every year. [|AABLC Ernest Gaines Award]

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Books <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Short stories
 * Other works by Ernest Gaines:**
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Mozart and Leadbelly: Stories and Essays (2005)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">A Lesson Before Dying (1993) – National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction (1993); Oprah's Book Club (1997)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">A Gathering of Old Men (1983)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">In My Father's House (1978)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">A Long Day in November (1971)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Bloodline (1968)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Of Love and Dust (1967)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Catherine Carmier (1964)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">My Grandpa and the Haint (1966)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">A Long Day in November (1964)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The Sky Is Gray (1963)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Just Like a Tree (1963)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Mary Louis (1960)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Boy in the Double-Breasted Suit (1957)
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">The Turtles (1956)

[|Short Introduction to The Gathering of Old Men] [|Interview with Ernest Gaines]
 * Additional resources**:

Created By: Kelly Gooden, Alicia Lemmen, Carlos Lozano, Brian Frye