SOURCE: Carmean, Karen. “The Short Stories: Bloodline (1968).” In Ernest J. Gaines: A Critical Companion, pp. 137-55. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998.

In the following essay, the critic provides an overview of Bloodline, commenting on the different perspectives the stories provide on the subject of African American manhood and asserting that their effect is heightened when read as a whole.

Throughout his career, Ernest Gaines has said that he writes about “survival with sanity and love and sense of responsibility, and getting up and trying all over again not only for one's self but mankind” (Lowe, 96). Nowhere is his concern more forcefully evident than in his collected short stories, Bloodline. Each story offers an ever-widening perspective of the meaning of manhood, a term readers should understand as being more inclusive than gendered. To Gaines, manliness means “that moment when … dignity demands that you act,” not merely for one's own sake...