Calling, Naming, and Coming of Age in Ernest Gaines's “A Gathering of Old Men”

Abstract

Abstract In his 1983 novel, A Gathering of old Men, Ernest Gaines deploys characters' names so as to point to their implications in a society in which social stratification based on color and race is the norm. He draws his readers' attention to the importance of names by the headings he uses for the novel's monological divisions. The gathering that this novel celebrates, a sign of the old men's maturing, features, among other indications of coming of age, their insistence on being called by their formal names.