Jamil Burney Professor Veronica Von ENC 1102 23 March 2022 The Narrative Structure of “A Gathering of Old Men” “A Gathering of Old Men”is a novel written by Earnest J Gaines; it was inspired by the challenges he wentthrough in the face of discrimination and divisions among black people. the story addresses racialism and the relationship between law enforcement agencies and the black community in the 19thand 20thcentury (Lowe, 2005). The plot is built on the murder of Beau Boutan; the boss in Marshall’s plantation. The owner of the plantation, Candy Marshall is the one who finds Boutan’s remains and she suspects that the black man is responsible which puts her in a dilemma as she is fond of Boutan because he offers him protection from harm. The author recurrently switches narration to establish different points of view to present extreme aspects of racism, discrimination, and violence and reconstructing idea of masculinity among black people and how the white people took advantage these black people. The story uses a narrative structure to address contemporary issues in the society such as masculinity, justice, and racial inequalities. This paper is an analysis of the narrative structure and its relevance to the development of the plot and themes in the story. The story is set in the South in the 1970s. Most likely, the story is set in Bayonne, Louisiana specifically aBayonne, Louisiana at the Marshall’s plantation.Many black people had
migrated from the south during the slavery period and the years after emancipation due to the discrimination and violence visited upon those who broke the oppressive Jim crow laws. Up until the 1970s, the south was still a corrupt society keeping black people in indentured servitude and explicitly discriminating against people of color (Galenson, 1984). It is at this period that Earnest sets the story; the black man responsible for Beau Boutan is a sharecropper many years after emancipation and the rise of civil rights movements.
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