Tee Jack, the bartender, shows that he goes along with the racism in the South because it is the safest thing to do. Tee Jack shows the quality of following the leader so you won't get hurt. Snookum represents everything a real child has: curiosity, disobedience, and questioning. Janey has the quality of showing respect to people's names by putting a handle on it even though they are not around. Charlie shows two traits. The first one he shows is cowardice because he runs away after he shot Beau. The second one he shows is take your punishment like a man. Charlie comes back after running away with a brand new swagger, which allows him to be proud of what he's done.

This novel takes place in the late 1970's in Bayonne, Louisiana. This is setting is chosen because this story is most likely to take place here. In this part of Louisiana, you have your black community and your white community. The initial murder happens on the plantation grounds because that's the best place of understanding where a white man and a black man would be together. Also the Marshall plantation is where everyone has connections to one way or another. Even if it is as little as meeting Jack Marshall or just hearing the name.

The book "A Gathering of Old Men" has several narrators. All the narrators in this book are first person narrators. They all tell what's going on from their point of view. Each narrators is also a reflector narrators. Most of the time in the book we know no more than most of the narrators. We, as the readers sometimes get ahead in the book and know more than the other characters. Each narrator tells us something different about something. They tell why they are helping Mathu, going against the blacks or just on the sideline. The narrators who are on the sideline are a big part of the story because they tell what's going on without any bias.

Ernest J. Gaines also shows a display of literary elements in "A Gathering of Old Men." One literary element that he uses is foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is used when at the beginning of the book when Beau Baton is murdered and Candy expects Fix Baton to show up. Then at the end of the book, Luke Will and his gang shows up to take revenge against the black man who killed Beau. Another Literary element used in this book is tone. A different tone is used when a different person narrates the story. A southern black man uses slang when he is talking. A white or a Cajun person uses proper English.

The also connects to reality even though it is fictional. There are symbols the book use to show its connection to reality. One of those symbols is the tractor in front of Mathu's house. The tractor in the south cut the need of labor for plantations. Mostly African-Americans worked these plantations for the Cajuns. The tractor is a negative symbol because it drove African-Americans off the land. Another symbol is the sugar cane fields. The empty sugar cane fields symbolizes the blacks that were forced to move because their was no work.

Ernest J. Gaines put allot of effort in this book to let the reader know from all views what was going on in the story. The different narrators in this book gives it the extra edge it needed to excel in telling the story. The literary elements used in the book lets the reader know the background of who's telling the story. The symbols, such as the tractor and the sugar cane fields, were great additions to the story line. The way Gaines uses first-person with every character was a great way of describing the other characters in the book. All of these tools Gaines put in this book, makes it a must read for everybody, no matter what decent.