SOURCE: Duncan, Todd. “Scene and Life Cycle in Ernest Gaines' Bloodline.” Callaloo 1, no. 3 (May 1978): 85-101.

In the following essay, Duncan examines the way Gaines depicts the process of maturation and aging in Bloodline, comparing events in the stories to the eight life-cycle stages theorized by psychoanalyst Erik Erikson.

When Ernest Gaines published The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in 1971, he secured his footing within the American literary world as an important artist. The critical acclaim was nearly unanimous, and the transformation of the work into a popular television drama embellished that success. But Gaines' quiet vision of endurance was no sudden occurrence. With the patience of a journeyman becoming master of his vision, his view of life had been worked out in three previous books; of these earlier works, Bloodline, a cycle of short stories published in 1968, is a minor-keyed masterpiece. This is so, despite an age in...