One of the most distinctive and immediately impressive things about Ernest Gaines's novel, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, is the way the author opens his story with the introduction of a collective of speakers, his cast of characters/ storytellers, so to speak. Gaines weaves his narrative through an interplay between the story's organizing consciousness, the story's central voice, and a sort of "choir" of community voices, which he allows to announce themselves in brief but immediately comprehensive ways. The respect Gaines shows for each of these collaborative narrators results in a kind of rhetorical coup, a story that moves between many disparate voices without ever losing itself. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Among these collaborators is a teacher who is described as humble and respectful towards Miss Jane but, at the same time, determined to preserve the precious resources of her experience and her person. These winning details are implicit in the book's introduction; therefore, the reader is immediately captivated by the teacher's point of view. Likewise, the spirit of Miss Jane herself has an immediate appeal, first in her lack of awareness of the value of her story - "she told me there was no story to tell" - and then in the humorous way in which she give up. to pressure from his potential interviewer, since “If I don't, he'll worry me to death” (v). Then there are the lovingly protective friends and neighbors, some mentioned by name and some not, who help fill in the gaps in Miss Jane's memories and who remind the reader from the start that this is the story of a people as well as a person. . Once the dramatis personae are established, they work together to focus and support the narrative. In this trial, Miss Jane's account of her life is portrayed as if it were a precious but often heavy burden; As indomitable as the older woman may seem, one notes that “others carried the story for her” and “someone else would always take up the narrative. Miss Jane would sit and listen until she was ready to speak again” (vii). Meanwhile, as an organizing consciousness, the teacher has his own burdens. Without complaint, he explains the difficulty of his task, that of following and trying to faithfully but interestingly record the essence of a tortuous narrative, full of interruptions in the continuity of voice and memory as well as frequent changes of direction. He longs, as any meticulous journalist would, to tie up what he sees as loose ends. However, as Mary, Miss Jane's friend, points out to the teacher, in narrative as in life, "all the loose ends are not always resolved." This warning can be seen as an appropriate warning to any writer who runs the risk, for whatever well-intentioned reason, of substituting his own voice for that of his character or of trying to impose his own sense of story logic at the expense of that of she. As Mary says, "if you have to change the way you tell it, you tell it yourself." Of course, this would mean sacrificing both richness and authenticity; rather than do so, Mary insists that the writer humbly listen and record what he hears: “Take what he says and be satisfied” (vii). And what Miss Jane says is ultimately satisfactory. Her telling satisfies not only because her story is dramatic and fascinating, but also because she is a natural storyteller, with a folksy oral style that is aesthetically pleasing and a wealth of remembered, entertaining,, 1971.