The Sky Is Gray

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1963

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Summary

Story Analysis

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Quiz

Literary Devices

Dialect

One of the ways in which Gaines evokes the story’s Louisianan setting is through the speech of his characters. Members of the Black community freely use common slang, such as “ain’t,” as well as that which is more particular to the South, such as the tendency to drop the first syllables off of words like “reject,” “about,” and “beside.” Additionally, they also drop the “to” from infinitives, as when Octavia asks James, “You want eat and walk back” (105), and fail to conjugate irregular verbs, thus, the past tense of “know” is “knowed” instead of “knew.” This loose command of grammar reveals the levels of education among certain characters. When the dialect disappears, as it does when the young man with the book and the dentist’s nurse speak, the reader becomes aware of how language can become a marker of education, class, and even race.

Repetition

James, the boy who narrates the story, frequently repeats himself. Though Gaines uses the character to tell a story in the first-person omniscient voice, the character repeats words and statements to himself, as though they were mantras, to reinforce certain habits and behaviors. Gaines uses James’s narration to illustrate the many ways Black people adjusted their behavior to survive in the Jim Crow South. James uses the colloquial phrase “make ‘tend,” or “to pretend,” to signal all the ways he and others hide their true feelings. His mother repeats the phrase “[t]hat rag” to remind James to wipe his runny nose so that he’ll always be presentable, especially when they go into Bayonne, where White people are present. Her constant nudging is a surreptitious reminder of all the ways Black people had to present their best selves when going before White people, to dispel contrived notions of being slovenly and unclean. When James returns to the area near the Bayonne stop after the failed visit to the dentist, he quietly remarks on “[s]ame old trees, same old walk, same old weeds, same old cracked pave—same old everything” in his own community (104). Here, the repetition, reinforces the continuity of traditions in the community, and throughout the South, which subordinate Black people. The phrase “same old” suggests the fear that nothing will change; that this is how things are. James’s muffled frustration correlates with that of the young, educated man in the dentist’s office.

Colloquialisms

Like dialect, colloquialisms are vocabulary within everyday speech, with no adherence to formality or proper usage. In “The Sky Is Gray,” Gaines employs colloquialisms that are particular to the South, such as “make ‘tend” for “to pretend,” as well as those that are more particular to Louisiana, such as “pool-doos.” The term that James invents based on what he has heard comes from the Creole pouldeau, which is a variation on the French poule d’eau. The term refers to a bird that is prevalent in Louisiana year around—the American coot. James’s mention of “pool-doos” is both symbolic in the context of the story, as the sight of the birds triggers a memory within him, but it also broadens the awareness of the story’s setting.

Contrast

When observing the preacher and the well-dressed boy with the book, James decides that he wants to become the educated boy. This choice suggests a step outside of his mother’s expectations and her fears of the world, which she views as one filled with potentially hostile White people. The preacher represents the elder generation, more steeped in religion, old traditions, and perhaps even complacence with Jim Crow. The young man represents the emerging generation, which is less dependent on religion and convention and increasingly impatient for social change and equal opportunity. Gaines uses their exchange to represent the changes occurring within the Black community.

Another point of contrast in the story is represented by Monsieur Bayonne. Bayonne is a Creole witch doctor. He uses folk medicine to cure members of the Black sharecropping community who cannot afford to go to the dentist. His presence contrasts with those of Drs. Bassett and Robinette who are practitioners of standard Western medicine, which has traditionally been both elusive to Black communities, due to cost, and predatory toward them. Black people have notoriously been human guinea pigs for members of the scientific community. Monsieur Bayonne is also representative of the influence of French culture within Black Louisianan communities, while James’s family was assimilated into English Protestantism. The reader knows this when Bayonne identifies James as a Baptist. In this instance, the contrasts in culture and religion are not points of demarcation because, ultimately, both Bayonne and James are a part of the same Black community.