Manliness in a Gathering of Old Men In his novel, A Gathering of Old Men (1983), Ernest J. Gaines writes about a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s . The plantation's white, Cajun labor leader is killed, and seventeen old black men and one white woman each claim to be the killer. These older adults 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, rather than men, their entire lives. Until now they have been afraid to take a stand and assert their virility in a society that considered them subordinate. Each man reports that at some point in his life he was unable to defend himself or a loved one against unfair treatment by a white person. White men and women feel superior to African Americans, viewing them as their dependents due to their ownership of land and holding slaves over them. In A Gathering of Old Men, Gaines reveals that through possession of land and people, white men were able to acquire the black man's sense of manhood. Gaines then proceeds to reverse this lack of masculinity by reconstructing the vision of masculinity for black males. Black males go from being passive and immobilized by fear to taking action and taking up arms against whites. Gaines reveals African Americans' land deprivation and how whites came to have a possessive view of African Americans. Then Gaines uses these ideas to show how white people were able to grasp the black man's sense of masculinity and how masculinity was changed for black men. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay To begin, Gaines shows how whites have deprived African Americans of land for over a century. In A Gathering of Old Men, Tucker, one of the old black men, talks about how African Americans were deprived of the land: “After the plantation was dying out, the Marshalls subdivided the land for sharecropping, giving the best land to the Cajuns. , and giving us the worst: the seabed 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 given the worst lands and had little hope of agricultural success. Although Cajuns are seen as a lower white class, they are still considered a higher class than African Americans. Without good land to cultivate, African Americans were placed in an inferior position, with no room to rise socially. Even with the end of slavery, Gaines wants the reader to realize that African Americans are still at an extreme disadvantage compared to whites and their sense of manhood has suffered as a result. Gaines also shows how whites still had slave-like ownership of property. African Americans. Candy Marshall, part owner of the Marshall Plantation, appears to be a friend of the African Americans who live on the property. She defends them when Beau Baton is killed and even claims responsibility for the death. However, he seems to want control over them and considers them part of his property. Speaking to Mapes, the local sheriff, he exclaims: “I won't let them touch my people” (17). Although Candy appears to have a good relationship with the African Americans living on the plantation, she considers them her property. Gaines purposely uses the wording “my people” to show his ownership of the African Americans on the plantation. Also, when old black men ask to talkalone among them, Candy shouts, "Nobody talks without me... This is my place" and questions one of the old men, exclaiming, "Do you know who you're talking to? Get out of my house" (173). When Candy comes questioned by black men, her attitude towards them changes and she becomes angry. She sees her ownership as disobedient and her feeling of superiority over the black race takes over. Another example of possession of the African American race is seen through lynchings and the murders. Speaking to Mapes, Beulah expresses her anger at two boys killed years ago: “Black people get lynched, drowned, shot, with their guts all hanging out – and here she has no proof of who did it those two children that lay there in those two coffins” (108). Gaines shows how African Americans have been treated as property, even less than property, since the days of slavery. They have been lynched and murdered as if they had no value. This view of African Americans diminished their manhood and instilled fear in their community. Through this possession of land and the feeling of ownership of the black race, Gaines sets out to show how whites were able to capture the black man's sense of virility. This lack of virility leads old men to be passive and immobilized by fear. The black race was seen as weak and incapable of standing up for itself. Black men on the plantation were held back by white owners and denied the ability to act as men. Their land and their very bodies were seen as possessions for the white race. Coot, a World War I veteran, had no right to be considered a man for defending his country. He tells his story of how white people made him take off his uniform: “I wore my old uniform and looked at myself in the glass mirror. I knew I couldn't wear it outside, but I could wear it indoors…” (104). Coot had served his country fighting in World War I, but he was still not seen as 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 manhood. Another example of black men's deprivation of manhood is when Gable talks about 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 son like that? What could a poor old Negro do but walk up to the whites and fall to his knees? Some went so far as to say that my son should have been happy to have died in the 'electric chair' at the end of a rope...And it was better that we forgot all about him and him” (102). Gable's son was killed for sleeping with a white woman and no one from the black community was able to stand up and do something to stop him. Years of feeling owned and exploited led to the passivity of the African American race and an inability to take action against the whites who kept them subjugated. In A Gathering of Old Men, old men decide to find their manhood and rewrite the traditional view of the black man. Gaines wants to show the reader that African Americans can stand up for themselves and challenge their attackers despite the threat of violence against them. The black men decide to oppose the white sheriff's intimidation and violence. The sheriff asks one of the black men, "'What were you doing when Candy called you?' I was right here. And I shot him." Mapes' big face had grown redder with exasperation. He wanted to hit the old man again, maybe even strangle him” (79). Black men are no longer afraid to stand up to a white man. They are fed up with their treatment and realize it's time.