Manliness in a Gathering of Old Men In his novel A Gathering of Old Men (1983), Ernest J. Gaines writes about a sugar plantation in Louisiana in the 1970s. The plantation's white Cajun foreman is shot and killed, and seventeen old black men and a white woman each claim to be the killer. These elderly men grew up in a time of extreme racism and were victims of violence and discrimination. Growing up on plantations, black men were seen as boys and not men their entire lives. Until now, they have been afraid to take a stand and establish their manhood in a society that viewed them as subordinates. Each man recounts that at some point in his life he was unable to defend himself or someone close to him from unfair treatment at the hands of a white person. White men and women feel superior to African Americans, viewing them as their dependents because of their land ownership and quasi-slave ownership. In A Gathering of Old Men, Gaines reveals that through ownership of land and people, white men were able to acquire the black man's sense of manhood. Gaines then reverses this lack of masculinity by reconstructing the vision of masculinity for black men. Black men move from being passive and immobilized by fear to taking action and taking up arms against whites. Gaines reveals the land deprivation of African Americans and how whites have a possessive notion of African Americans. Gaines then uses these ideas to show how white people were able to adopt the black man's sense of manliness and how masculinity was altered for black men. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay To begin, Gaines shows how, for more than a century, whites deprived African Americans of land. In A Gathering of Old Men, Tucker, one of the old black men, explains how African Americans were deprived of their land: "After the plantation disappeared, the Marshalls distributed the land for sharecropping, giving the best lands for the Cajuns. , and giving us the worst: the shallows near the swamps” (94). The Marshall family, a wealthy white family, owns the plantation on which Gaines focuses his novel. Even after slavery, African Americans were assigned the worst land and had little hope of agricultural success. Although Cajuns are considered lower class white, they are still considered higher class than African Americans. Without good land to cultivate, African-Americans find themselves in a position of inferiority, without the possibility of social advancement. Even with the end of slavery, Gaines wants the reader to realize that African Americans are still at a huge disadvantage compared to whites and that their sense of manhood has suffered as a result. Gaines also shows how white people have always had slave-like ownership. African Americans. Candy Marshall, who owns part of the Marshall Plantation, appears to be a friend of the African Americans on the property. She defends them when Beau Baton is killed and even claims responsibility for the death. However, she seems to want to control them and considers them part of her property. While talking with Mapes, the local sheriff, she exclaims, "I won't let them touch my people" (17). Although Candy appears to have good relations with the African Americans living on the plantation, she considers them her property. Gaines deliberately uses the phrase "my people"to show his ownership of the African Americans on the plantation. Furthermore, when the old black men ask to speak among themselves alone, Candy shouts: "No one speaks without me... This is my place" and questions one of the old men by exclaiming: "Do you know who you are talking to? Get the hell out of my house” (173). When Candy is questioned by the black men, her attitude changes towards them and she becomes angry. She views her property as disobedient and her sense of superiority. The black race takes over. Another example of African American race ownership is lynchings and murders. When speaking to Mapes, Beulah expresses anger over two boys killed years ago: "Black people are getting lynched, drowning, getting shot, guts lying around – and here he doesn't provides no proof of who did it. The proof was these two little children lying there in these two coffins” (108). Gaines shows how African Americans have been treated like property, much less property, since slavery. They were lynched and murdered as if they had no value. This view of African Americans diminished their manhood and sowed fear in their community. Through this possession of the land and this feeling of ownership of the black race, Gaines sets out to show how whites were able to appropriate the sense of virility of the black man. This lack of virility leads old men to be passive and immobilized by fear. The black race was seen as weak and incapable of defending itself. The black men on the plantation were held down by the white owners and deprived of the ability to act like men. Their land and their own bodies are considered a possession for the white race. Coot, a veteran of the First World War, was not allowed to be considered a man for defending his country. He recounts how the whites made him take off his uniform: “I used to put on my old uniform and look at myself in the rag glass. I knew I couldn’t wear it outside, but I could wear it at home…” (104). Coot had served his country fighting in World War I, but was still not considered a man in the eyes of whites or even in his own eyes. Gaines shows how Coot looks in the mirror and sees his lack of manliness. Another example of black men's deprivation of manhood is when Gable recounts how his son was killed in the electric chair for sleeping with a white woman. He explains: “And what did I do to make them kill my boy like that? What could a poor old Negro do but go to the white people and fall on his knees? Some went so far as to say that my boy should have been happy to die in the 'electric chair' instead, at the end of a rope...And it was better for us to forget all that and him” (102). Gable's son was killed for sleeping with a white woman and no one in the black community was able to stand up and do something to stop this. Years of feeling owned and exploited led to the passivity of the African American race and the inability to take action against the whites who kept them in power. In A Gathering of Old Men, old men decide to rediscover their virility and rewrite the traditional vision of the black man. Gaines wants to show the reader that African Americans can defend themselves and challenge their attackers despite the threat of violence against them. Black men decide to speak out against the intimidation and violence of the white sheriff. The sheriff asks one of the black men, "'What were you doing when Candy called you?' I was here. And I shot him. Mapes' large face turned even redder with exasperation. He still wanted.