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INFORMATION TO USERS The most advanced technology has been used to photo graph and reproduce this manuscript from the microfilm master. UMI fîlms the original text directly from the copy submitted. Thus, some dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from a computer printer. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyrighted material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are re produced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each oversize page is available as one exposure on a standard 35 mm slide or as a 17" x 23" black and white photographic print for an additional charge. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. 35 mm slides or 6" X 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. A ccessing the World’s Information since 1938 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA Order Number 8820246 The individual and tradition in the fiction of Ernest J. Gaines Anthony, Booker T., Ph.D. The Ohio State University, 1988 Copyright ©1988 by Anthony, Booker T. All rights reserved. UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 THE INDIVIDUAL AND TRADITION IN THE FICTION OF ERNEST J. GAINES DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Booker T. Anthony, B.A., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1988 Dissertation Committee: Approved by T. Cooley J. O. Stewart Adviser ^ ^ D. R. Barnes Department of Englisti Copyright by Booker T. Anthony 1988 To my parents n ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I express sincere appreciation to Dr. Thomas Cooley for his guidance and insight throughout the research. Thanks go to the other members of my advisory committee, Drs. Daniel R . Barnes and John O. Stewart, for their suggestions and comments. Gratitude is expressed to members of The Good Shepherd Baptist Church of Columbus, Ohio for their spiritual support and encouragement. The editorial assistance of Drs. Elaine Newsome and Lonnell Johnson is gratefully acknowledged; I also thank my work-study student, Ms. Cheryl Medley, who forced herself to proofread without absorbing the content. From the inception of this work three friends have shared some of its burdens and, I hope, some of its joys as well. Christina R. Pinkston Betts, Harold E. Pinkston Jr., and Edwina Cunningham have responded in ways that have made this a richer document in every respect. I am also grateful to Dr. Evelyn Burrows and Mr. Tony Powell for their confidence that this work would some day be finished. ni VITA August 28, 1958 .................Born - Scotland Neck, North Carolina 1980 . ................ B.A., St. Augustine's College, Raleigh, North Carolina 1980-1982 ........................ Special University Fellowship, The Ohio State University 1982 ............................ M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1982-1986 ........................ Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1986-Present ................... Assistant Professor/Lecturer, Fayetteville State University, Fayetteville, North Carolina FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: American literature to 1900, Professor Thomas Cooley Minor Fields: Renaissance literature. Professor Robert Jones Restoration and 18th-century literature. Professor James Battersby Rhetoric and the Teaching of College Composition, Professor Edward P. J. Corbett i V TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ............................................ Ü ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .........................................i ü VITA ................................................... iv INTRODUCTION ........................................ 1 CHAPTER I. GROWTH AND STASIS: CATHERINE CARMIER . 16 II. "YOU NOT A BUM. YOU A MAN": BLOODLINE . 46 III. VICTIMS OF CHANGE: OF LOVE AND DUST . 81 IV. TRIUMPH OP TIME: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MISS JANE PITTMAN .............................107 V. THE PRODIGAL FATHERS IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE ..........................................147 VI. "THE TRUMPET OF CONSCIENCE": A GATHERING OF OLD M E N ...................................... 173 BIBLIOGRAPHY 210 Introduction Ernest J. Gaines, an Afro-American novelist and short story writer, was born to Manuel and Adrienne J. (Colar) Gaines on January 15, 1933, "in the bayou country near Oscar, Louisiana, which lies about twenty- five miles northwest of Baton Rouge in Pointe Coupee parish."/!/ His father was a laborer on a Louisiana plantation, and even Gaines worked on a plantation until he moved away at fifteen years of age./2/ Gaines completed high school and junior college in Vallejo, California, where his mother had moved with his stepfather. This was around 1948. For a while, Gaines wandered the streets of Vallejo, trying to decide what to do. Occasionally, he visited the public library. From 1953 to 1955, Gaines served in the army. Afterwards, he enrolled in San Francisco State College and was graduated in 1957 with a B.A. degree. The beginning of Gaines's writing career came in 1955 when he was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship to study creative writing at Stanford University, "where he spent the 1958-1959 academic year."/3/ As early as 1956, Gaines had begun publishing his work in little 1 magazines. In 1959, he published "Comeback," a story which earned him the recognition of the Joseph Henry Jackson Award. In 1964, Gaines published Catherine Carmier. written while he was at Stanford. The plot and theme of.Catherine Carmier came to Gaines after he read Turgenev's Fathers and Sons, a novel of rebellion that presents a lively picture of conflict between the older and the new generation in time of change./4/ Although Gaines's second book to be published was Of Love and Dust (1967), he had already published three short stories: "A Long Day in November," "Just Like a Tree," and "The Sky Is Gray." These three, along with "Three Men" and "Bloodline" were later published as a collection entitled Bloodline (1968). "Three Men" and Of Love and Dust should be read together, since the idea which inspired Gaines to write the novel is a spin-off from the idea which inspired him to write the short story. The first idea came to Gaines as he was listening to a verse from Lightnin' Hopkins' record entitled "Mr. Tim Moore's Farm": "The worst thing this black man ever done, when I moved my wife and family to Mr. Tim Moore's Farm. Mr. Tim Moore's man never stand and grin, say if you keep out the graveyard, nigger. I'll keep you out the pen."/5/ Gaines received the second idea from an experience two years later in 1958 when a friend and he had gone to a bar in the country. "So it was here that I saw the knife-fight between the two young men/" says Gaines in an interview. "Fortunately, for both, the fight was stopped before either was fatally wounded. Now, when I saw this fight, just as when I heard the record by Lightnin' Hopkins, I had no idea that either event would eventually lead into writing Of Love and Dust, or writing anything else. There was a period of eight or ten years between those events and the time I wrote one word of the book."/6/ Gaines's best known novel. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), portrays a legendary black woman who has lived 110 years and who has been both a slave and witness to the black militancy of the 1960s. Gaines's next novel. In Mv Father's House (1978), has as its premise the dilemma of a man who is torn between the past and the present. Five years later, Gaines followed this novel with A Gathering of Old Men (1983), which examines the principle upon which America was founded: "E Pluribus Unum." This is also the principle, says Ralph Ellison, by which black Americans can best find themselves, individually and collectively, in a culture dominated by whites./?/ From Catherine Carmier to h gathering of Old Men. Gaines is concerned with the effect of racism on people. The present study not only examines the various aspects of racism as a tradition but also shows how the external and internal forces of this tradition influence the characters' ability or inability to deal with personal and social struggle. The term "tradition" generally brings to mind beliefs and customs handed down fay word of mouth or by example from one generation to another. The term can also be used to refer to an inherited pattern of thought or action. In the first cnapter, Catherine C a m i e r (1964) is analyzed in terms of the relationship between stasis and change. The problem that some critics have with the novel is that it "seems to float outside time and place rather than being solidly anchored in the real world of the modern South."/8/ Although it is set at the time of the Civil Rights movement, the novel does not dwell on political and contemporary situations but concentrates on the emotional situations of people. In this sense, the force of tradition ie internal. The status QUO that the main character upsets is not necessarily the right of the people to drink beer in the white man's store but the hatred and prejudice that have been passed from generation to generation in the Carmier family. Bloodline is the focus of CHAPTER TWO. In this collection of stories, tradition is represented by communities or societies that prescribe the patterns of man's total existence. Anyone who steps outside such patterns, contends Addison Gayle, becomes a paradigm for future generations./9/ The circumscribed historical patterns of which Gayle speaks are also evident in Of Love and Dust, the focus of chapter three.