Term Paper on "Bear by William Faulkner"

Term Paper 4 pages (1268 words) Sources: 1

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Bear

The True Meaning of the Hunt

Man was dispossessed of Eden," (Faulkner 246), since the loss of the Civil War, the American South has always carried a sense of bitter nostalgia within everyday life and events. Southern authors, like William Faulkner, used this melancholy tone as a way both glorify the South as the American Shangri La, as well as show the bitterness of that cultural history as having no place in a modern world. "The Bear," a piece in Faulkner's Go Down, Moses, represents this ideology with the importance of the hunt to its participants. As long as the hunt continues, their tradition will not die. Once the bear was finally slain, the hunters succumbed to the same desperate state the rest of the South had fallen into.

Many are quick to assume that the background of the piece serves as just that, a background, for the larger conflict between man and nature. The story focuses on the character of Isaac and Old Ben, the seemingly immortal bear. Old Ben embodies the will of nature, and is seen by the hunters as an immortal creature, "the old bear, solitary, indomitable, and alone; widowered childless and absolved of mortality," (Faulkner 186). This image represents an image of nature as both powerful, but also depressing. It is an age old struggle, where man is pit against nature. Old Ben in powerful in strength and will; however, he is the sole animal to withstand the force of man. Therefore, there is no glory in his role without a very intimate bitterness. The more controlling man attempts to be over nature, the more nature will violently assert herself. Therefore, every new season the hunters gather for the hunt, but yet they can never slay the violent bear.

However, the background environment proves to much more important than most would think. Not only does it help play into the larger theme concerning man's struggle with nature, but it also incorporates its own subplot into the story. Despite their continual failure to kill Old Ben, the hunters still search for him "in the thick great gloom of ancient woods and the winter's dying afternoon," (Faulkner 192). Faulkner describes the hunt for Old Ben in a tone which seems more like an ancient epic. When Isaac succeeds more and more as a hunter, he is opened up to a very mystical world, "He had killed his buck and Sam Fathers had marked his face with the hot blood, and in the next November he killed a bear," (201). The hunt resembled myths and legends more than practical modern day hunts.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the American South fell into decline, both economically and emotionally. This time period thus produced much literature and fantasy focused around the myth of the South. Faulkner takes this myth and adds a bitter twist with the idea that this fantasy has absolutely no place in modern life. The killing of the bear was the end of the characters purpose; characters like Sam Fathers, Boon Hogganbeck, General Compson, and even the ferocious dog Lion were the subject of great legend without any practical use in the modern world after the death of Old Ben. As a child Isaac recognized that they were upholding an ancient tradition without the true intent of fulfilling it, "To him, they were not going out to hunt bear and deer but to keep a yearly rendezvous with the bear which they did not even intend to kill," (Faulkner 186). The hunt gave the characters a purpose in life, therefore avoiding the fate of obscurity and uselessness faced by many average Southern citizens at the time. They are chasing the dream which was the grandeur of the fallen South. The hunter's always waited "so that… READ MORE

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