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"THE BEAR" (WILLIAM FAULKNER).   Term Paper ID:25751 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Short novel's plot, themes, characters, focusing on clash between civilization & wilderness.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Short novel's plot, themes, characters, focusing on clash between civilization & wilderness. Paper Introduction: William Faulkner's short novel The Bear is a very complex work for all its lack of length. One of the aspects of great importance is brought out through the contrast between the wilderness and the land, the land being that portion that has been cultivated and tamed by man. It may not be as civilized as the town or the city, but it is representative of civilization in the story and is civilized when compared to the wilderness. The land has come to symbolize a great deal to the people of the South and to Ike McCaslin during the course of this story. Ike is being inculcated into the ways of his people, but he comes to see where the people have strayed from the true path as embodied in the wilderness and in the majestic figure of the bear in particular. Ultimately, Ike repudiates the land, which means he repudiates the history of his people and the way they took the Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. In civilization, the men of all types are ranked accordingto their birth, their holdings, and similar characteristics, includingespecially their racial make-up. It is thisrealization along with his awareness of the sin of slavery and otherdepredations committed by his ancestors that leads him to repudiate hisbirthright and his inheritance. it forms an Eden co-existing with society but never mistaken for society by those who come to it for purification and refreshment (Howe 92). especially in thoserealizations which fixed [Ike's] judgments and intentions and supported himin his severe consistencies" (Beck 384). The indefinable and elusive present is helpless before it; it is full of holes through which past things, fixed, motionless, and silent, invade it (Tuck xiv).However, Irving Howe finds that the past as used in "The Bear" differs fromFaulkner's usual concerns: Like so many of Faulkner's novels and stories, "The Bear" turns to the past, but for once not a past of historical actuality or a mere legendary history. His is a religious experience transcending the immediateevents and tying Ike to the world of myth, to a world bigger than life andembodying universal truths understood by the Indians and forgotten by thecivilized men who cultivated the land, and this religious experience isembodied in a variety of symbolism, from the whiskey which the huntersdrink as a religious libation to the blood spilled as an evocation of theblood of Christ (Levin 79-8 ). He is a Christ figure in the story, sacrificinghimself for the good of mankind, expiating the sins of others and takingthe guilt on himself. William Faulkner. However, Ike is never free from the guilt that his knowledge both ofhis ancestors' sins and of the reality of the wilderness gives him. He feels the need to repudiateeverything in civilization and society and to apologize for all that hasbeen perverted by society. yetthis time it was as though the train. Isaac is ready now to discover that the land cannot be owned, that man's proper role is defined in the concept of what the church calls "stewardship" (Waggoner 2 6).This is examined and explained in Part IV, a section that goes beyond thenarrative to make explicit social comment about the drama of Old Ben: It consists of a long and complicated account of the McCaslin family, white and mulatto, and a series of pronunciamentos by Ike upon the South, the land, truth, man's frailties and God's will. Go Down, Moses. Ultimately, Ike repudiates theland, which means he repudiates the history of his people and the way theytook the land from the Indians and used slave labor to cultivate it. Ike in thisstory returns to the woods when he is in his late teens. University of Kentucky Press, 1959.----------------------- 1 Ike is able to touch thisspiritual realm as the others cannot. had brought with it into thedoomed wilderness even before the actual axe the shadow and portent of thenew mill. 191-192). Ike does learn from the experience, and over a period ofyears his learning becomes solidified until he repudiates his inheritance.He is between the two worlds for most of that time. Ike comes to see that the land is never really possessed by anyone.The land is free, and it is clear that it is free in the wilderness. They retain their tie with the wilderness even as thewilderness disappears around them. When civilized man is separatedfrom his artificial existence and sent back into the wilderness, as thesemen are, they are "ordered and compelled by and within the wilderness inthe ancient and unremitting contest according to the ancient andunmitigable rules which voided all regrets and brooked no quarter"(Faulkner: pp. Ike at firstsees this world of his ancestors as quite apart from the natural worldwhere men are judged by their abilities, but he comes to see "that he mustsomehow make restitution, for the meaning of his initiation in the huntingwould otherwise be made to seem futile" (Hoffman 97). The illusion of civilized man that he could own theland extended in the South to the belief that he could own other men,namely the slaves which Ike learns his grandfather treated as possessions,even his own daughter because she had Negro blood. . He will atone for the crimes of hisfathers. Thereal strength of Sam Fathers comes from the fact that he can see thistruth, understands it, and lives by it. William Faulkner. Civilization can destroy portions of the naturalworld for a time, but nature will eventually return and encroach oncivilization, taking back what has been taken from it. The distinctionnever rises to their consciousness to provide them with the lesson that islurking there. They died away from society, andthey remain away from society. Faulkner infuses the story with a politicaland social structure related to the slave-owning past of the South andshowing the effect of that past on the present. The wilderness represents the eternal, including the eternal truths,and Ike has touched those truths and will never be the same as a result.Sam and the bear have shown him the real values in life and have helped himfind the answers to his own dilemma. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1976.Lydenberg, John. Civilized man has forgotten thistruth and has placed a great deal of social structure and artificialbehaviors between himself and the truth. Ike learns in his encounter withthe wilderness a profound lesson about life and about his own relationshipto the land. Faulkner's Heroic Design. There is a good deal ofritual observance in the actions of these hunters as they act out of adesire to pay tribute to their ancestors and to the primitive instinctsthey believe still live within themselves. . Ike is being inculcatedinto the ways of his people, but he comes to see where the people havestrayed from the true path as embodied in the wilderness and in themajestic figure of the bear in particular. The same sort of artificial order hasbeen imposed by man on the land, and it is only in the wilderness that Ikeis able to see past these elements to the reality that lies beneath. When he sees the train early in the story, it is seen asharmless, almost like a toy. 321). It may notbe as civilized as the town or the city, but it is representative ofcivilization in the story and is civilized when compared to the wilderness. The heavy hand of the past has a hold on the present in Faulkner'sstories, including The Bear, a story in which traditions and contemporarylife intermix during the hunt. The wilderness is seen as natural, while society is presented ashaving artificial elements overlaid on the primitive instincts in man.Skills count in the wilderness because skills are real and adequate ways tojudge men, to judge them by what they can do rather than by what they are.The criteria used in society are artificial, based on inventions of societyrather than on any innate qualities. For Faulkner, thesin of slavery hangs over the South like a permanent cloud, a sin for whichthe people of each generation must atone. . ." (p. The other men do notsense the difference except at the most elemental level. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1975.Levin, Lynn Gartrell. . William Faulkner's short novel The Bear is a very complex work forall its lack of length. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976.Faulkner, William. Works CitedBeck, Warren. The land has come to symbolize a great deal to the people of the South andto Ike McCaslin during the course of this story. In the present,though, civilization is winning the fight and acting as a destructiveforce. In the wilderness, however, the men areranked quite differently, forming a hierarchy according to their skills andtheir innate abilities as hunters and as men of the woods. As events unfold, Ike becomes thehunter closest to Sam Fathers in ability and understanding. Ike is also a product of civilization, but in addition he has withinhim the wilderness. Jean-Paul Sartre noted theway Faulkner treated past and present and states, The past here gains a surrealistic quality; its outline is hard, clear, and immutable. The contrast betweenthe wilderness and the land becomes very real for Ike. Sam Fathers helps him find that wilderness within, andit is when Ike discards the last trappings of civilization that he comesface to face with the symbol of the wilderness, the bear, described as thebiggest and strongest of all bears. "'The Bear' as a Nature Myth." In Readings on William Faulkner, Bruno Leone (ed.), 84-93. He goes beyondthe capabilities of the other civilized men, and his closeness isemphasized by the fact that he sees the bear up close. Thesetrips are thought by the participants to be returns to an earlier way oflife and thinking--the men cut themselves off from civilization and venturedeep into the wilderness in search of their prey. Nature is seen in this story as something eternal and beyond thereach of civilization. Such a role does not confer freedom; quite thecontrary, it makes Ike more bound by the land and by the social order thanany of those who live within it unaware of their error. Ike comes to recognize what other men incivilization have forgotten--he sees his own role in nature, and it is nota role as a destroyer. "The Bear." In William Faulkner, Harold Bloom (ed.), 49- 53.Tuck, Dorothy. By this time, both Old Ben and Sam Fathers havedied and have been buried in the only plot of ground not overtaken by theaxe of the loggers. In the later pages of the story, though, Ikehas a very different view of the train: "It was the same train. Indeed, he commitsincest with the girl, causing her mother to commit suicide. Theland gives the illusion of possession in civilized society, but Ike comesto see that man is only a temporary possessor of the land. He alwayslives with the knowledge and the guilt. . In this story, the traditional way ofthinking is seen in the logging industry which is cutting down the woodsand carting the wood away by train. New York: Twayne, 1966.Howe, Irving. . San Diego, California: Greenhaven Press, 1998.Poirier, Richard. Ike has trouble applying the lessons of the wilderness to his societyin the early stages, for there is a severe disjunction between the world ofthe wilderness and the world of the cultivated land. Thisis cited by Richard Poirier as an example of "the displacement of many ofthe reader's assumptions about reality," a process called "relinquishment,"and this word "also describes Isaac's rejection of his inheritance and hisvisionary possession of the wilderness" (Poirier 5 ). For Ike, the bearbecomes a religious symbol, a spiritual being that embodies all that isgood about the wilderness and that has an eternal quality which separatesit from the fleeting world of civilized men. One of theselessons involves the discovery of evil which makes a rite of purificationnecessary: We become aware of a paradox: the ancient evil is the reason why there had to be a purification rite, but the rite itself was a precondition of the discovery of evil. . New York: Random House, 1955.Hoffman, Frederick J. Ike sees the train differently afterhis experience in the wilderness and after his religious experience withthe bear. The retreat to the wilderness which forms this remembers past is set in a recognizable moment of the late nineteenth century . Ike is a young man who is being initiated by the adults into theirtwice-a-year hunting trips under the leadership of Major DeSpain. . One of the aspects of great importance is broughtout through the contrast between the wilderness and the land, the landbeing that portion that has been cultivated and tamed by man. New York: Thomas Y, Crowell, 1964.Waggoner, Hyatt H. It is in effect Ike's spiritual autobiography given as an explanation of his reasons for relinquishing and repudiating, for refusing to own land or participate actively in the life of the South (Lydenberg 85).The story is told in a way that links different times in Ike's life as wellas in the history of the land, and the story is told through time shiftswhich may seem disconcerting at first, though "the steady, strong thrustbeneath such variations is supportive . The relationship between the land and the wilderness is seen in thefigure of Sam Fathers, a man of mixed blood whose position in the socialgroup changes according to whether the group is in the wilderness or incivilization. Ike is still between the two worlds, buthe has learned so much from the wilderness that he sees the crime beingcommitted against it by the loggers and by man in general. Faulkner. Faulkner here turns the usual thinking around, since man talks ofhis battles with the elements as a triumph in which unruly nature is tamedform the benefit of mankind. William Faulkner. . He helps teach Ike, and Ike learns much more than how tohunt by observing Sam Fathers and the changed way he is treated on thehunt. He has not yetrepudiated his inheritance--he does that when he reaches the age of 21--andhe visits the graves of Old Ben and Sam. Crowell's Handbook of William Faulkner. Sam Fathers is soclosely tied to the wilderness that when Old Ben, the symbol of thewilderness, dies, Sam Fathers collapses and dies as well. Herepudiates his inheritance, but this does not free him, either. The trips tothe woods elevate Sam Fathers because he knows the woods and the hunt as noone else does. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.