Jewish Couple in Ernest Gaines's Term Paper

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"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.

Within these examples of Christianity, Monsieur Bayonne reveals his narrow-minded conviction that the only prayers God answers are Catholic prayers, and the preacher reveals not only narrow-mindedness, but brutality as well, and, by association, how easily challenged his religious convictions truly are. The narrator, eight-year-old James, says nothing positive about either of these men, and their actions speak for themselves.

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However, James does say to himself, about the well-dressed student who challenges the preacher in the waiting room, "When I grow up I want to be just like him. I want clothes like that and I want keep a book with me too" (p. 1857).

Within this story, Gaines's characterizations of Monsieur Bayonne and the preacher point out that one can be both a believing Christian and either narrow-minded, a hypocrite, or.....

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