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Jun 5, 2014 · The story is in some ways a tall tale, but notably, Faulkner makes reference to a real-life curiosity on the Mississippi landscape: Indian mounds, mysterious uprisings of earth whose building, archaeologists have determined, predated the rise of the later Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes.
A summary of The Bear in William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses. Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of Go Down, Moses and what it means. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans.
The Bear, novelette by William Faulkner, early versions of which first appeared as “Lion” in Harper’s Magazine of December 1935 and as “The Bear” in The Saturday Evening Post in 1942 before it was published that same year as one of the seven chapters in the novel Go Down, Moses.
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Hunting in the South
Prior to and after the Civil War, hunting was a popular activity throughout the South, whether enjoyed as a pastime or employed for survival. Many Southern hunters used dogs to aid them in their search for prey and rode through the woods on horseback. They hunted to both obtain food and enjoy strictly masculine company since women as a rule were excluded. Faulkner himself joined a group of hunters every autumn to snare deer in the Mississippi Delta and partake of the sometimes drunken masculi...
Southern folktales
Tall tales abounded throughout the rural South in the nineteenth century. The origins of the Southern folktale can be traced back to sources from West Africa, France, Ireland, and England, to name just a few. But local scenery and personality types also came to exert a major influence; the South developed its own store of anecdotes and tales that people spun about the characters and deeds of their kinfolk, friends, and neighbors. The 1830s to 1850s was a golden period for the great folklore t...
Mixed-race offspring
In the pre-Civil WarSouth, mixed-race offspring were often the product of sexual unions between a slaveholder and one of his slaves. There are different mixtures of races in Faulkner’s story. The character Sam Fathers is the offspring of a union between a Chickasaw chief and his black female slave. This same female slave, purchased from the chief by a white planter (Ike’s grandfather), later bears a few of the planter’s children in a union that mixes the black and white bloodlines. Such sexua...
The plot
One of a series of seven stories in the book Go Down Moses, “The Bear” exists in its long form as published in the volume but appeared in a shorter form in The Saturday Evening Post. Only the book version includes a lengthy Section IV, summarized below. All seven stories in Go Down Mosesconcern the descendants of the fictional white planter Lucius Quintus Carothers McCaslin (known as Carothers), who moved into northern Mississippi in the early 1800s. He purchased land as well as a part-black...
Isaac McCaslin’s coming-of-age
“The Bear” tells a coming-of-age story that incorporates issues particularly applicable to the South at that time. Isaac goes through an initiation into manhood that is distinctly Southern in several ways. Firstly, his initiation centers around the rite of the hunt. Next, Faulkner gives Isaac a mentor whose ethnic mix reflects the population of the South as well as the egalitarianism among the hunting party. The partblack, part-Chickasaw Indian character, Sam Fathers, introduces Isaac to the...
Sources
In addition to the general influence of Southern folktales and American Indian beliefs and rituals, a great deal of “The Bear” comes from Faulkner’s recollections of his own childhood experiences in the forest: Although Faulkner disclaims any basis in fact for the bear’s being killed by a dog and a knife, it should be noted that these two elements can be found in the previously mentioned folktale, “The Big Bear of Arkansas,” which the writer may have encountered at some point in his life. Reg...
Jim Crow laws and World War II
Although they do not apply to “The Bear” directly, Jim Crow laws and World War IIare tied to issues that recur throughout the story: white guilt over the legacy of slavery, and the misuse of the environment. The Jim Crow statutes, or so-called “separate but equal” laws, were coming under fire increasingly in the years approaching World War II. As a result, the legacy of slavery was as much in the public eye in 1942 as it had been in 1882. The continuing industrialization of the South, coupled...
Reviews
Two days after The Saturday Evening Post published the shortened version of his story, “The Bear” appeared in its long form in the newly released Go Down, Moses and Other Stories. (The volume was renamed simply Go Down, Moses at Faulkner’s request; he wanted the work to be read as a novel, rather than as a collection of short stories.) Faulkner’s whole repertoire of writings garnered little critical attention until 1945, when Malcolm Cowley published The Portable Faulkner—in response, as Cowl...
Faulkner, William. “The Bear.” In The Portable Faulkner. Edited by Malcolm Cowley. New York: Penguin, 1977. Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. Within the Plantation Household, Black and White Women of the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North CarolinaPress, 1988. Godhes, Clarence, ed. Hunting in the Old South: Original Narratives of the Hunters. Baton ...
Aug 21, 2024 · Old Ben, the bear, plays a crucial role in Isaac's education. Over the years, Isaac learns about the bear through tracking him and various encounters. For three years, he directly participates...
“The Bear” is Faulkner’s best-known and most highly regarded story; it takes its place among his wilderness narratives, such as Old Man (one of the two novellas that make up The Wild Palms),...
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Aug 21, 2024 · Dive deep into William Faulkner's The Bear with extended analysis, commentary, and discussion
