In the following essay, Washington gives a critical review of Gaines's novel, touching on the stereotypical modeling of the female characters.
Ernest J. Gaines's fifth novel, A Gathering of Old Men, is set in the black rural Louisiana parish where all his stories take place—in the cotton and cane fields northwest of Baton Rouge, near the bayous. It is the land where Gaines was born and where he spent the first fourteen years of his life. City people and Northerners may have a hard time understanding the codes of this place, for, in many ways, its inhabitants still live in the house slavery built. They work, usually as sharecroppers, on plantations; the "quarters," as they call the black housing area, look very much like a scene from slavery days—rows of rickety log cabins lined up on.....
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