Jewish Couple in Ernest Gaines\'s

¶ … Jewish Couple in Ernest Gaines's Short Story "The Sky is Gray"

Ernest Gaines's short story "The Sky is Gray," narrated in the voice of James, an eight-year-old Bayonne, Louisiana boy with a toothache, is replete with references to religious beliefs and practices, both implicit and explicit. However, the only religious beliefs and practices not overtly challenged within the story, or shown to be hypocritical, are those of the Jewish couple, the grocers Helena and Alnest, who pretend to need their garbage cans moved out front in the cold, and to be unable to do so themselves (the garbage cans, as it turns out, are empty) in order to get James and his mother to come into their store in the freezing cold, eat a meal there, get warm, and give Helena time to arrange an appointment with a dentist she knows, Dr. Bassett, for James's toothache. The significance of this Jewish couple, and their kindhearted treatment of James and his mother, especially within a story filled other references to either ineffective (like Monsieur Bayonne) or hypocritical (like the preacher inside the dentist's office) Christians, is that those who live their religion instead of merely speaking about it are truly good, and that good actions have more power, and carry more influence, through example, than do empty faith or empty words (like the preacher's who professes his belief in Jesus, and than violently assaults a young man waiting in the dentist's office who dares to disagree with him).

Examples of other explicit references to religion within the story are Monsieur Bayonne's prayerful efforts to end James' toothache, which must be Catholic prayers, Monsieur Bayonne insists, in order for them to work:

"What kind of prayers you praying, boy?"

"Baptist, " I say.

"Well, I'll be. No wonder that tooth still killing him. I going one way and he pulling the other. Boy,

don't you know any Catholic prayers?

"I know 'Hail Mary,'" I say.

"Then you better start saying it" (p. 1849).

Besides Monsieur Bayonne, the other clearly-identified Christian character in the story is the preacher James and his mother observe inside the dentist's waiting room. When an educated-looking young man challenges the preacher's blind faith, encouraging him instead to "Question everything. Every star, every stripe, every word ever spoken. Everything'" (p. 1855), soon afterward, the preacher becomes so uncontrollably angry at the young man that he walks over and hits the young man in the face, to which the non-believing young man says, ironically "You forgot the other cheek" (p. 1856). The preacher, clearly missing the irony, then hits the young man on the other side of his face, and then stomps out of the room.