My Reading of The Sky is Gray

A detailed Summary of My Reading of The Sky is Gray

Ernest J. Gaines' "The Sky is Gray" in Madison Smartt Bell, Narrative Design:

Gaines is an established novelist, "The Sky is Gray" a story copyrighted in 1976.

The first thing I notice about this story, every time, are those numbered parts. Bell's

analysis of them on page 199 helps to explain why Gaines might number his sections.

This is a device more common in poetry. I think the numbers enhance the developmental

nature of the story. As James and his mother get closer and closer to that goal they never

quite reach before the story's over, the numbers increase from 1 to 13 (probably

symbolically significant of their overall bad luck). They suggest progress in a story in

which progress does not seem possible.

With James as its narrator, the story has to be told the way that James would talk. So it's

told in dialect. This is a very risky thing for a writer to do. Bell is right in his note (#7) on

page 200 when he says that altering the spelling too much makes dialect difficult to read.

Some nineteenth century stories that are written in dialect make difficult demands on

twentieth century readers. Dialect can also come across as classist and/or racist. (It is

especially dangerous for a middle-class white writer to

written in first-person plural, an experimental point of view that I took on both because I

has intercourse for the first time with a girl not much older than he. What spurs him to do

beginning of the action--defined by Bell as a quest to get James' tooth pulled. By the

suggests that the town was named after the man who owned the land, I think, the same

consider rewriting the story in third person.

was getting bored with conventional first person and because the subject matter of the

Notice how the beginning of the story establishes James' voice, the setting, the situation

however. What do you think? (I should say you-all. What do ya'lls think?)

Approximate Word count = 1098
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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