"You think a man can't kneel and stand?": Ernest J. Gaines's Reassessment of Religion as Positive Communal Influence in A Lesson Before Dying
2001; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 24; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/cal.2001.0050
ISSN1080-6512
Autores Tópico(s)Race, History, and American Society
ResumoIn the bayou country of Ernest J. Gaines's fiction, everyone has an opinion about the church. Indeed, although professional religious figures rarely play prominent roles in Gaines's stories, none of his works overlook the issue of religion and its impact on the African-American community. 1 Throughout most of his corpus, that impact is primarily negative, largely because of the consistent weakness of the preachers who minister to the communities Gaines portrays. From Reverend Armstrong in Catherine Carmier (1964) to Reverend Jameson in A Gathering of Old Men (1983), Gaines's ministers preach an adherence to Christ and a concomitant social passivity that ultimately proves unacceptable.
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