preview

Theme Of In My Father's House By Ernest Gaines

Better Essays

Introduction
Throughout his public writing, Ernest Gaines has been consistently asked about the themes of his novels and short stories. Because of his desire to express Black manhood, interviewers and critics have recognized Gaines as a current fiction voice for
African American men. In a 1990 interview with Marcia Gaudet, Gaines addressed this trend, saying, .I think I know more about the black male because I am male myself. I know something about his dreams. I listened to them when I was a kid growing up, I.ve drunk with him, I.ve been in the army and athletics-I know what men dream about. All men dream about certain things. All men have hopes.. (43). Gaines’s decision to address the struggle of Black males begins in his own experience as a man and expands to include the dreams …show more content…

However, Gaines is quick to admit that the novel had been ..kicking my ass for ten years.. (Tooker 100).
As a child on the plantation and ancestor of slaves, Gaines experienced firsthand the struggles of fathers and sons because of slavery. This conflict, seen in In My Father’s
House, was a subject Gaines knew he had to approach. Eventually, Gaines decided to model his book after a Greek tragedy. Like the characters of Greek tragedies, Phillip
Martin is a great man who falls and must get himself back up. Although Gaines devoted much time to the novel, and approached a subject that has disturbed him, he still does not like to talk about or read from the novel. In an interview with Mary Doyle, Gaines says,
..That book is a hard one for me to talk about. I don’t ever read from it when I go to colleges and universities. It is a book that I had to write because I was haunted by the idea. It cost me more time and pain than any book I’ve written. (162). Gaines’s

audience’s reaction to the novel is similar to the pain Gaines experienced while creating the characters. The story reminds his audience that a man is more than a father. He is

Get Access