Presentation of the Sugar Cane in "A Gathering of Old Men" by Ernest Gaines.

The setting for the novel "A Gathering of Old Men" by Ernest Gaines was a 1970's small Louisiana plantation were there is a lot of sugar cane all over the countryside. Many of the Blacks in this area are very old in their 70's and 80's and they had helped to cultivate the sugar as their parents and grandparents before them. Many of those who helped cultivate these lands were gone but they were still …

…of the land that they helped to cultivate, helped to establish as a home, and a place that was losing its battle with time. As the times changed the cultivation of the cane changed, and so did the landscape. As I said before the cane was a symbol of how things were in the times when these men where young adults. It symbolized slavery, sharecropping, and the pains that came with being in that predicament.