Ernest Gaines Accomplished African-American Author...

Ernest Gaines: Accomplished African-American Author Every person has challenges and different backgrounds that make him unique. These things effect how people think, speak, and act in different situations. Various experiences from an author’s life will influence his works and help them create their stories. A character or the story’s plot may resemble people and events that were present in an author’s life. Ernest Gaines became an accomplished author and the person he is today because of his life experiences during his childhood, his education, and his writing career. During Ernest Gainess childhood, many factors molded him into an accomplished author, the most important being the environment in which he lived. Gaines was born on a†¦show more content†¦While in college, Gaines received the Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship to attend Stanford University’s graduate program. Even after writing successful novels, Gaines continued to expand h is knowledge and writing skills by becoming a writer in residence at Denison University, the University of South Western Louisiana, and the University of Southern Illinois. Ernest Gaines went from a boy working on a plantation with no access to a decent, formal education to becoming an accomplished writer, attending a prestigious graduate writing program at Stanford University (Walker). After many years of writing, Gaines received many awards for his best novels and works. One of the first awards he won was the Joseph Henry Jackson Award in 1959 for his story Comeback, which Gaines wrote while still attending college. After writing The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, he was nominated into the Black Academy of Arts and Letters in 1972 and received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1970. The Guggenheim Fellowship allowed him work at Denison University as a writer in residence. In 1983, Gaines won the San Francisco Art Commission award in the literature category, and, in 1987, he was honored with the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters award. Not only is Gaines an accredited author in the United States, but he was also awarded with the Chevalier de LOrdre des Artes et des Lettres in France. The amount of awards and honors Ernest GainesShow MoreRelatedA Lesson Before Dying By Ernest J. Gaines1293 Words   |  6 PagesJefferson took the jaundiced communit y and made their mark on the static populace. Everyone deserves the right to grasp certain basic lessons, even if it is not encouraged in your society. As the title implies, in A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest J. Gaines, Grant and Jefferson acted as both the teacher and student in order to show each other how to break the vicious cycle and discover how their roles play and affect the unjust community of Bayonne. They had to take on these roles themselves or elseRead MoreA Lesson While Living by Ernest Gaines1639 Words   |  7 Pagesinstead of continually thinking of themselves. Given these obligations, there results both a need and a desire to complete certain tasks for other individuals, for a community, or even for a higher power. In his novel, A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest Gaines quite successfully portrays the theme of the importance of obligation and commitment through presenting an effective setting and community, constructing strong relationships between characters, and pro viding characters that learn ultimately to acceptRead MoreDignity and Sacrifice Depicted in Gaines A Lesson Before Dying677 Words   |  3 PagesIn Ernest J. Gaines novel A Lesson Before Dying, a young African-American man named Jefferson is caught in the middle of a liquor shootout, and, as the only survivor, is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. During Jefferson’s trial, the defense attorney had called him an uneducated hog as an effort to have him released, but the jury ignored this and sentenced him to death by electrocution anyways. Appalled by this, Jefferson’s godmother, Miss Emma, asks the sheriff if visitations by her andRead MoreA Lack Of Dignity By Ernest J. Gaines1173 Words   |  5 Pagestime period there was an abundance of racial segregation between african american people and a strong bias towards white people. This shouldn’t be an excuse or reason of why there was very little dignity throughout the novel. Furthermore, Ernest J. Gaine s gives us plenty of examples of how these characters showed this lack of dignity among themselves and others. Grant Wiggins, a school teacher, is the most educated man in the community. He s been to the university and came back home to teach atRead More Critical Analysis of the Story The Sky is Gray by Ernest Gaines1127 Words   |  5 PagesCritical Analysis of the Story The Sky is Gray by Ernest Gaines The title of the story â€Å"The Sky is Gray† by Ernest Gaines is ironic. It suggests at first the bleak mood of the story but also hints at hope in the future. Just as the clouds clear after a storm, James finds out on his trip to Bayonne that the stormy clouds that are his life are parting to let some sunshine through. Throughout the whole story, a very bleak mood is portrayed. The setting contributes to this gloominess. ForRead More A Lesson before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines Essay1992 Words   |  8 Pages A Lesson before Dying, one of Ernest J. Gaines later works, was written in 1993. Some of his earlier works include A Gathering of Old Men and In My Father’s House. The novel covers a time period when blacks were still treated unfairly and looked down upon. Jefferson, a main character, has been wrongly accused of a crime and awaits his execution in jail. Grant, the story’s main protagonist must find it within himself to help Jefferson see that he is a man, which will allow him to walk bravely toRead More Mr. Wiggins in A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines Essay971 Words   |  4 PagesMr. Wiggins in A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In A Lesson Before Dying, Mr. Grant Wiggins life crises were the center of the story. Although he was supposed to make Jefferson into a man, he himself became more of one as a result. Not to say that Jefferson was not in any way transformed from the hog he was into an actual man, but I believe this story was really written about Mr. Wiggins.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Mr. Wiggins improved as a person greatly in this book, and that helped his relationshipsRead More The Evolution of Grant in Ernest J. Gaines A Lesson Before Dying2726 Words   |  11 PagesAfter the Civil War ended, many blacks and whites, especially in the South, continued living as if nothing had changed with regards to the oppression and poor treatment of African Americans. Narrator Grant Wiggins, of Ernest J. Gaines A Lesson Before Dying, possesses a similar attitude toward race relations. Through his experiences with a young man wrongly accused of murder, Grant transforms from a pessimistic, hopeless, and insensitive man into a more selfless and compassionate human being whoRead MoreThe Butler By Cecil Gaines1376 Words   |  6 PagesPeople begin to develop their own sense of self identity through external social, community, and racial factors as seen in the movie The Butler. Throughout the movie The Butler, Cecil Gaines begins developing his self identity from an extremely young age through external social, community, and racial experiences. Cecil Gaines begins life pretty rough through watching the Thomas Westfall plantation owner shoot his father dead straight in front of him after his mother being completely traumatized by theRead MoreA Lesson Before Dying By Ernest Gaines961 Words   |  4 PagesA Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines implicitly expresses the ideas of racial injustice, dehumanization, and false stereotyping through Ernest Gaines’s use of simple diction. Gaines’s writing style is plainly-descriptive and simple. For example, â€Å"The bag burst open, and there was fried chicken and biscuits and sweet potatoes all over the place.† Clearly, his use of descriptive words are bland and elementary-like. This, however, is intentional because it contrasts with the character of the black