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The Wilderness and the Negro in Faulkner's “The Bear”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Melvin Backman
Melvin Backman*
Affiliation:
Clarkson College of Technology, Potsdam, N. Y.
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Extract

The heart of Go Down, Moses (1942) is “The Bear.” The most widely acclaimed story of the seven in the volume, “The Bear” has received a variety of interpretations. One critic has emphasized its New Testament spirit, others its romantic and transcendental character, and still others its primitivism and myth. The variety of critical response testifies to the story's density of meaning. It is a rich, original story treating of a universal issue; nevertheless, it is distinctly American. Lionel Trilling has placed it in the romantic, transcendental tradition of Cooper, Thoreau, and Melville, while Malcolm Cowley has associated it with the work of Mark Twain. In its pastoral spirit “The Bear” does seem related to Huck Finn; and, in its development of the wilderness theme, to Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. Yet because of the story's tendency to split into two parts—one part concerned with the wilderness, the other with the Negro—the structure of the story has seemed faulty and its meaning ambiguous. If “The Bear” is examined within the context of the other related stories of the Go Down, Moses volume, its meaning may be clarified.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 76 , Issue 5 , December 1961 , pp. 595 - 600
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1961

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References

Note 1 in page 595 See R. W. B. Lewis, “The Hero in the New World: William Faulkner's ‘The Bear’,” Kenyon Review, xin (Autumn 1951), 641–660; Lionel Trilling, “The McCaslins of Mississippi,” The Nation, CLIV (30 May 1942), 632–633; Irving D. Blum, “The Parallel Philosophy of Emerson's ‘Nature’ and Faulkner's ‘The Bear’,” Emerson Society Quarterly, No. 13 (4th Quart., 1958), 22–25; Malcolm Cowley, “Go Down to Faulkner's Land,” The New Republic, cvi (29 June 1942), 900; Harry Modean Campbell and Ruel E. Foster, William Faulkner: A Critical Appraisal (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1951), pp. 146–158; Kenneth LaBudde, “Cultural Primitivism in William Faulkner's ‘The Bear’,” American Quarterly, II (Winter 1950), 322–328; William Van O'Connor, “The Wilderness Theme in Faulkner's ‘The Bear’,” Accent, xm (Winter 1953), 12–20; W. R. Moses, “Where History Crosses Myth: Another Reading of ‘The Bear’,” Accent, xm (Winter 1953), 21–33; and Otis B. Wheeler, “Faulkner's Wilderness,” American Literature, xxxi (May 1959), 127–136; Herbert A. Perluck, “ ‘The Heart's Driving Complexity’: An Unromantic Reading of Faulkner's ‘The Bear’, ” Accent, XX (Winter 1960), 23–46.

Note 2 in page 595 Ursula Brumm has commented on the relationship between Cooper and Faulkner, particularly in regard to the wilderness theme and the affinity between Sam Fathers and Natty Bumpo. See Ursula Brumm, “Wilderness and Civilization: A Note on William Faulkner,” Partisan Review, XXII (Summer 1955), 340–350.

Note 3 in page 595 Go Down, Moses (New York: Modern Library, 1955); page references are to this edition.

Note 4 in page 597 Despite the relationship of this philosophy to the Indian and frontier point of view, the philosophy may stem from Rousseau's “Discourse on Inequality.” Rousseau wrote: “The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, ‘This is mine,’ and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, how many wars, how many murders, how many misfortunes and horrors, would that man have saved the human species, who pulling up the stakes or filling up the ditches should have cried to his fellows: Be sure not to listen to this imposter; you are lost, if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong equally to us all, and the earth itself to nobody!” Compare Faulkner's remark in Absalom, Absoloml (Modern Library, p. 221): “Where he [the boy Thomas Sutpen] lived the land belonged to anybody and everybody and so the man who would go to the trouble and work to fence off a piece of it and say ‘This is mine’ was crazy.”

Note 5 in page 599 Throughout the story, “Delta Autumn,” Uncle Ike is frequently (eight times) described as peaceful and untroubled. Three times he is described with his hands crossed over his breast, three times compared to a gentle child.