Wilderness And The White Man In William Faulkner's The Bear
The Themes of Wilderness and the White Man in William Faulkner 's The Bear
The Themes of Wilderness and the White Man in William Faulkner 's The Bear
William Faulkner 's The Bear is bilateral in subject and plot. The first half of the story looks at the wilderness and the virtues man can learn from it. The second half applies these virtues to civilization, exposing the white man 's corruption and misuse of the land. A careful look at the interaction of these two halves reveals a single unifying theme: man must learn virtue from nature. Faulkner believed humility, pride, courage, and liberty would be almost impossible for man to learn without the wilderness to teach him.
The first half of the story tells a bittersweet tale of a boy who wished to learn humility and pride in order to become skillful and worthy in the …show more content…
woods but found himself becoming so skillful so fast that he feared he would never become worthy because he had not learned humility and pride though he had tried, until one day an old man who could not have defined either led him as though by the hand to where an old bear and a little mongrel dog showed him that, by possessing one thing other, he would possess them both. (283)
The "old man" is Sam Fathers, "son of a Negro slave and an Indian king." While he "could not have defined either" pride or humility, he nevertheless understood them through his Indian and Negro heritage. The boy is Isaac, or Ike, McCaslin, the protagonist who learns virtue from the wilderness and repudiates his grandfather 's corrupt inheritance. The above passage describes the high point of the first half of the story in which Ike saves his little dog from the crush of the towering bear. Ike is so close to the bear he can see "that there [is] a big wood tick just inside his off hind leg." This act gives him courage, the "one thing other" he needs to "possess them both." Faulkner uses the theme of wilderness and the virtues man can learn from it to point at southern civilization, its treatment of Negroes, and its part in the Civil War.
Chapter four is centered on a long conversation between Ike (now 21) and his cousin, McCaslin. Ike explains his intention to repudiate his inheritance originating from his grandfather, Carothers McCaslin. Cleanth Brooks writes,
The course of his argument takes him into family history, the history of America, the history of the South and the meaning of its participation in the Civil War, the relation of the Negro to the white and of man to nature.
During this conversation, Faulkner inserts several flash-backs, including Ike 's memory of reading the McCaslin family ledgers which reveal his grandfather 's carnal sins against his slaves, and the boy 's lessons hunting in the woods which taught him the virtues his grandfather lacked.
Chapter four ends with Ike caving in to his wife, who wants to move into the house and land of his inheritance. Chronologically coming after the fifth chapter, Ike is removed from the wilderness. Chapter five tells of the hunting ground 's final decline. Without the support of the wilderness, Ike is unable at the end of chapter four to maintain the virtue needed to repudiate his inheritance in the world of man. Faulkner communicates in Ike 's single "Yes" to his wife that in destroying the wilderness, man loses the virtues he was once able to learn from the land.
The opposing forces of wilderness and the white man are represented in each half of the story by the martyrs of the two themes: Old Ben and Carothers McCaslin.
Each causes, in the scope of the story, everything that happens in their realm. Faulkner uses these two martyrs to further establish the virtues to be learned from the wilderness, and lacking in the white man 's civilization. Old Ben, "taintless and incorruptible," contrasts with old Carothers who raped his slaves, committed incest with and impregnated his illegitimate slave child, and began the cycle of destruction of the land which was not his to destroy. Old Ben is Carothers ' antitheses, showing humility, pride, liberty, and courage in his teasing of the hunters with his presence and showing himself to them only on his own accord. O 'Conner writes,
Obviously the bear almost begs to be treated as a symbol in stories dealing with man 's relationship with nature, especially those stories that present the physical world and the creatures in it as sacramental, as manifestations of a holy spirit suffusing all things and asking that man conduct himself in piety and with
reverence.
"Man 's relationship with nature" is expressed early in the story as, "that doomed wilderness whose edges were being constantly and punily gnawed at by men." The men are "nameless even to one another in the land where the old bear had earned a name."(188) Isaac learns the ways of the wilderness, but only after learning its virtues from Sam Fathers and Old Ben, and seeing man 's lack of virtues in his grandfather, Carothers. The wilderness theme is pointing at the slavery and civilization theme. Carothers represents the white men who do not "conduct [themselves] in piety and with reverence," and Old Ben is the wilderness about which "the little puny humans swarmed and hacked in a fury of abhorrence and fear like pygmies about the ankles of a drowsing elephant."(188) Ike respects the bear, who is given a man 's name, more than his grandfather, whose name is incriminated by ledgers documenting his treatment of slaves.
As Irving Howe writes, "what finally matters is not our ability to connect the two halves of the story by logical ties, but their dramatic relation within the story." Faulkner brings the "dramatic relation" between the virtues of the wilderness and the Southern man 's misuse of the land through slavery to a head in his transition between the two halves in Chapter four:
the land which old Carothers McCaslin his grandfather had bought with white man 's money from the wild men whose grandfathers without guns hunted it, and tamed and ordered or believed he had tamed and ordered it for the reason that the human beings he held in bondage and in the power of life and death had removed the forest from it and in their sweat scratched the surface of it to a depth of perhaps fourteen inches in order to grow something out of it which had not been there before and which could be translated back into the money he who believed he had bought it had had to pay to get it and hold it... (244)
Faulkner communicates in this passage the cycle created by the white man to systematically devalue and destroy the Negroes, Indians, and land. The "wild men whose grandfathers without guns hunted it" possess the courage and pride to tame the land without destroying it. The white men only believe they have tamed the land because of their domination of "the human beings...held in bondage" who possess the humility the white men do not. The white men do not live with the land, but live off it, destroying and ravaging it in an effort to maintain their false ownership of it.
What Faulkner might have left as two separate stories is melded into one. The themes of the two halves strengthen each other 's effect by pointing out the great contrast between them: the wilderness ' virtues of humility, pride, liberty and courage, and the white man 's lack of virtue. Faulkner believes that, in the abandonment of the wilderness and the wisdom to be gained from it, civilization is corrupt and has lost the basic virtues to be learned in the wild. The end of the wilderness, like the end of Ike 's childhood, happens as the reader is introduced into civilization, taking place simultaneously as chapter four is placed before chapter five. The men without pride and humility once had pride and humility in the wilderness, but abandoned it along with the wilderness. Faulkner illustrates these differences with the story 's two contrasting themes. Yet by melding the two parts into one and tying them inseparably together, he effectively communicates the duality of grief felt by the boy. Isaac loses the wilderness he so loved and respected, and in doing so, the heritage he otherwise might have.
Works Cited
Brooks, Cleanth. William Faulkner: Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978.
Evans, David H. "Taking the Place of Nature: 'The Bear ' and the Incarnation of America." Faulkner and the Natural World: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 1996. Ed. Donald M. Kartiganer and Ann J. Abadie. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1999.
Faulkner, William. “The Bear.” Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner. Vintage: 1997.
The Themes of Wilderness and the White Man in William Faulkner 's The Bear
William Faulkner 's The Bear is bilateral in subject and plot. The first half of the story looks at the wilderness and the virtues man can learn from it. The second half applies these virtues to civilization, exposing the white man 's corruption and misuse of the land. A careful look at the interaction of these two halves reveals a single unifying theme: man must learn virtue from nature. Faulkner believed humility, pride, courage, and liberty would be almost impossible for man to learn without the wilderness to teach him.
The first half of the story tells a bittersweet tale of a boy who wished to learn humility and pride in order to become skillful and worthy in the …show more content…
woods but found himself becoming so skillful so fast that he feared he would never become worthy because he had not learned humility and pride though he had tried, until one day an old man who could not have defined either led him as though by the hand to where an old bear and a little mongrel dog showed him that, by possessing one thing other, he would possess them both. (283)
The "old man" is Sam Fathers, "son of a Negro slave and an Indian king." While he "could not have defined either" pride or humility, he nevertheless understood them through his Indian and Negro heritage. The boy is Isaac, or Ike, McCaslin, the protagonist who learns virtue from the wilderness and repudiates his grandfather 's corrupt inheritance. The above passage describes the high point of the first half of the story in which Ike saves his little dog from the crush of the towering bear. Ike is so close to the bear he can see "that there [is] a big wood tick just inside his off hind leg." This act gives him courage, the "one thing other" he needs to "possess them both." Faulkner uses the theme of wilderness and the virtues man can learn from it to point at southern civilization, its treatment of Negroes, and its part in the Civil War.
Chapter four is centered on a long conversation between Ike (now 21) and his cousin, McCaslin. Ike explains his intention to repudiate his inheritance originating from his grandfather, Carothers McCaslin. Cleanth Brooks writes,
The course of his argument takes him into family history, the history of America, the history of the South and the meaning of its participation in the Civil War, the relation of the Negro to the white and of man to nature.
During this conversation, Faulkner inserts several flash-backs, including Ike 's memory of reading the McCaslin family ledgers which reveal his grandfather 's carnal sins against his slaves, and the boy 's lessons hunting in the woods which taught him the virtues his grandfather lacked.
Chapter four ends with Ike caving in to his wife, who wants to move into the house and land of his inheritance. Chronologically coming after the fifth chapter, Ike is removed from the wilderness. Chapter five tells of the hunting ground 's final decline. Without the support of the wilderness, Ike is unable at the end of chapter four to maintain the virtue needed to repudiate his inheritance in the world of man. Faulkner communicates in Ike 's single "Yes" to his wife that in destroying the wilderness, man loses the virtues he was once able to learn from the land.
The opposing forces of wilderness and the white man are represented in each half of the story by the martyrs of the two themes: Old Ben and Carothers McCaslin.
Each causes, in the scope of the story, everything that happens in their realm. Faulkner uses these two martyrs to further establish the virtues to be learned from the wilderness, and lacking in the white man 's civilization. Old Ben, "taintless and incorruptible," contrasts with old Carothers who raped his slaves, committed incest with and impregnated his illegitimate slave child, and began the cycle of destruction of the land which was not his to destroy. Old Ben is Carothers ' antitheses, showing humility, pride, liberty, and courage in his teasing of the hunters with his presence and showing himself to them only on his own accord. O 'Conner writes,
Obviously the bear almost begs to be treated as a symbol in stories dealing with man 's relationship with nature, especially those stories that present the physical world and the creatures in it as sacramental, as manifestations of a holy spirit suffusing all things and asking that man conduct himself in piety and with
reverence.
"Man 's relationship with nature" is expressed early in the story as, "that doomed wilderness whose edges were being constantly and punily gnawed at by men." The men are "nameless even to one another in the land where the old bear had earned a name."(188) Isaac learns the ways of the wilderness, but only after learning its virtues from Sam Fathers and Old Ben, and seeing man 's lack of virtues in his grandfather, Carothers. The wilderness theme is pointing at the slavery and civilization theme. Carothers represents the white men who do not "conduct [themselves] in piety and with reverence," and Old Ben is the wilderness about which "the little puny humans swarmed and hacked in a fury of abhorrence and fear like pygmies about the ankles of a drowsing elephant."(188) Ike respects the bear, who is given a man 's name, more than his grandfather, whose name is incriminated by ledgers documenting his treatment of slaves.
As Irving Howe writes, "what finally matters is not our ability to connect the two halves of the story by logical ties, but their dramatic relation within the story." Faulkner brings the "dramatic relation" between the virtues of the wilderness and the Southern man 's misuse of the land through slavery to a head in his transition between the two halves in Chapter four:
the land which old Carothers McCaslin his grandfather had bought with white man 's money from the wild men whose grandfathers without guns hunted it, and tamed and ordered or believed he had tamed and ordered it for the reason that the human beings he held in bondage and in the power of life and death had removed the forest from it and in their sweat scratched the surface of it to a depth of perhaps fourteen inches in order to grow something out of it which had not been there before and which could be translated back into the money he who believed he had bought it had had to pay to get it and hold it... (244)
Faulkner communicates in this passage the cycle created by the white man to systematically devalue and destroy the Negroes, Indians, and land. The "wild men whose grandfathers without guns hunted it" possess the courage and pride to tame the land without destroying it. The white men only believe they have tamed the land because of their domination of "the human beings...held in bondage" who possess the humility the white men do not. The white men do not live with the land, but live off it, destroying and ravaging it in an effort to maintain their false ownership of it.
What Faulkner might have left as two separate stories is melded into one. The themes of the two halves strengthen each other 's effect by pointing out the great contrast between them: the wilderness ' virtues of humility, pride, liberty and courage, and the white man 's lack of virtue. Faulkner believes that, in the abandonment of the wilderness and the wisdom to be gained from it, civilization is corrupt and has lost the basic virtues to be learned in the wild. The end of the wilderness, like the end of Ike 's childhood, happens as the reader is introduced into civilization, taking place simultaneously as chapter four is placed before chapter five. The men without pride and humility once had pride and humility in the wilderness, but abandoned it along with the wilderness. Faulkner illustrates these differences with the story 's two contrasting themes. Yet by melding the two parts into one and tying them inseparably together, he effectively communicates the duality of grief felt by the boy. Isaac loses the wilderness he so loved and respected, and in doing so, the heritage he otherwise might have.
Works Cited
Brooks, Cleanth. William Faulkner: Toward Yoknapatawpha and Beyond. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978.
Evans, David H. "Taking the Place of Nature: 'The Bear ' and the Incarnation of America." Faulkner and the Natural World: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 1996. Ed. Donald M. Kartiganer and Ann J. Abadie. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1999.
Faulkner, William. “The Bear.” Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner. Vintage: 1997.