SOURCE: Harper, Mary T. “From Sons to Fathers: Ernest Gaines' A Gathering of Old Men.” CLA Journal 31, no. 3 (March 1988): 299-308.

In the following essay, Harper examines the significance of the father-son theme in A Gathering of Old Men, focusing on the novel's development of figures of speech.

In A Gathering of Old Men, Ernest Gaines again returns to the Louisiana plantation, where he focuses on the black elders of a community who collectively are challenged to rise above their individual turmoil to confront an oppressive society—a group of men who develop from benign “men-children” to respected “fathers” and role models of the community.

As the novel opens, Beau Boutan, a Cajun farmer and boss of leased Marshall Plantation land, has been killed in the Quarters in front of Mathu's cabin. Determined to protect Mathu, the eighty-plus-year-old black man who helped rear her, Candy Marshall, the plantation's young...