Delta Autumn. The Bear

William Cuthbert Faulkner (born Falkner, September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer and nobel prize laureate fromOxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career. He is primarily known and acclaimed for his novels and short stories, many of which are set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, a setting Faulkner created based on Lafayette County, where he spent most of his childhood.

Faulkner is considered one of the most important writers of the Southern literature of the United States.

From the early 1920s to the outbreak of World War II, when Faulkner left for California, he published 13 novels and numerous short stories. This body of work formed the basis of his reputation and led to him being awarded the Nobel Prize at age 52.

Go Down, Moses is a collection of seven related pieces of short fiction by American author William Faulkner, sometimes considered a novel. The most prominent character and unifying voice is that of Isaac McCaslin, "Uncle Ike", who will live to be an old man; "uncle to half a county and father to no one." Though originally considered (by the public) a collection of short stories, Faulkner insisted in his later years that the book was truly a novel.

The Bear. As Isaac grows older, he becomes an expert hunter and woodsman, and continues going with the hunting parties every year. The group becomes increasingly preoccupied with huntingOld Ben, a monstrous, almost immortal bear that wreaks havoc throughout the forest. Old Ben's foot was maimed in a trap, and he seems impervious to bullets. Isaac learns to track Old Ben, but it is useless to hunt him because all the hounds are afraid of him. Sam Fathers, who teaches Isaac Old Ben's ways, says that it will take an extraordinary dog to bring Old Ben down. Isaac sees Old Ben several times. Once, they send a tiny fyce-dog with no sense of danger after him, and Isaac even has a shot at the huge bear. But instead of taking it, he runs after the fyce and dives to save him from the bear. He looks up at Old Ben looming over him and remembers the image from his dreams about the bear.

At last they find the dog capable of bringing Old Ben to bay: Lion, a huge, wild Airedale mix with extraordinary courage and savagery. Sam makes Lion semi-tame by starving him until he will allow himself to be touched; soon, Boon Hogganbeck has devoted himself to Lion and even shares a bed with him. Using Lion, they nearly catch Old Ben, but Boon Hogganbeck misses five point-blank shots. General Compson hits the bear and draws blood, but Old Ben escapes into the forest. Isaac and Boon go into Memphis to buy whisky for the men, and the next day, they go after the bear again. General Compson declares that he wants Isaac to ride Kate, the only mule who is not afraid of wild animals and, therefore, the best chance any of the men have to get close enough to the bear to kill him.

In the deep woods, near the river, Lion leaps at Old Ben and takes hold of his throat. Old Ben seizes Lion and begins shredding his stomach with his claws. Boon Hogganbeck draws his knife and throws himself on top of the bear, stabbing it in its back. Old Ben dies, and a few days later, Lion dies as well. Sam Fathers collapses after the fight and dies not long after Lion. Lion and Sam are buried in the same clearing.

Isaac returns to the farm near Jefferson, to the old McCaslin plantation. Time passes; eventually he is 21, and it is time for him to assume control of the plantation, which is his by inheritance. But he renounces it in favor of his cousin (once-removed) McCaslin Edmonds, who is practically his father. Isaac has a long argument with McCaslin in which he declares his belief that the land cannot be owned, that the curse of God's Earth is man's attempt to own the land, and that that curse has led to slavery and the destruction of the South. McCaslin tries to argue with him, but Isaac remembers looking through the old ledger books of Uncle Buck and Uncle Buddy and piecing together the story of the plantation's slaves, and he refuses the inheritance. (One of Isaac's inferences is particularly appalling: Tomey, the slave who Carothers McCaslin took as a lover and the mother of Turl, may also have been Carothers McCaslin's daughter by another slave, Eunice. Eunice committed suicide shortly before Turl's birth, and from this and other factors, Isaac deduces that she must also have been Carothers McCaslin's lover.)

So, Isaac refuses the inheritance, moves to town, and becomes a carpenter, eschewing material possessions. He marries a woman who urges him to take back the plantation and eventually gives in when she tries to convince him sexually. He tries to administer the money left to the children of Tomey's Turl and Tennie, even traveling to Arkansas to give a thousand dollars to Fonsiba, Lucas's sister, who moved there with a scholarly negro farmer who never seems to farm, but she refuses his offering. Isaac continues to hunt and to spend all the time he can in the woods.

Once, he goes back to the hunting camp where they stalked Old Ben for so many years. Major de Spain has sold it to a logging company and the trains come closer and louder than before. Soon, it will be whittled away by the loggers. Isaac goes to the graves of Lion and Sam Fathers, then goes to find Boon Hogganbeck. Boon is in a clearing full of squirrels, trying to fix his gun. As Isaac enters, Boon shouts at him not to touch any of the squirrels: "They're mine!" he cries.

"The Bear" is the centerpiece of Go Down, Moses, just as Isaac McCaslin is the book's central character. It is the longest story in the book, and it is Faulkner's most intense, focused, and symbolic exploration of the relationship of man and nature. Old Ben, the legendary bear, is a symbol of the power and inscrutability of nature--he is nearly immortal, nearly invulnerable.

The men, who put their minds to work on the single purpose of hunting him, are in some way representative of man's drive to control nature.

Isaac, whose feelings form the thematic center of the novel, had earlier believed that killing the buck required him to make his life worthy of what he had taken from the animal he hunted; now the spiritual internalization of Old Ben enables him to make his life worthy of the great bear's indomitable will and of his death.

Delta Autumn. This story serves as a sort of sequel or coda to "The Bear". Ike McCaslin and Roth Edmonds are in a car with some friends, headed for what Ike suspects will be the last of his annualhunting expeditions. The wilderness has receded in recent years, and it is now a long trip by automobile. Along the way they discuss the worsening situation in Europe, with Roth taking the cynic’s view against Ike’s idealism. At one point Roth slams on the brakes, as if he saw someone or something standing along the road. He seems preoccupied and out of sorts.

The men eventually arrive at their campsite and set it up under Ike’s direction. During the night, the old man thinks about his bygone life, and about how he and the wilderness are dying together.

The next morning the rest of the party set out to hunt while Ike chooses to sleep in. Roth gives him an envelope full of cash and mentions that a messenger might show up during the day. Ike is to hand over the money and “tell her I said ‘No.’” Later that morning a boat arrives. It carries a dark-eyed young woman with a baby wrapped in a blanket. Ike, ashamed of acting as a go-between in such a sordid matter, informs her that Roth has left and tries to thrust the money on her. She refuses to take it immediately, and remarks that Roth has abandoned her. Ike contemptuously asks how she could have expected anything different from him.

As the conversation goes on, it becomes clear that the young woman knows a great deal about Ike’s family and his own life, more than Roth would probably have told her. For she is part of the family herself, a distant Beauchamp cousin. Ike is dismayed at the miscegenation, even though he imagines that the human race might one day be ready for interracial alliances. He tells the woman to marry a man “of her own race” and go far away. She replies that he is hardly qualified to advise anyone about love and leaves with the money.

Ike is still pondering this disturbing incident when one of his hunting companions runs in, frantically looking for a knife. The old hunter deduces that Roth has killed a doe and is trying to hide the evidence; another family sin that must be covered up.

"Delta Autumn" was published in Story the May/June 1942 issue.

The hugely significant event in this story, set again in Isaac's advanced old age, is the reunification of the "black" branch of the McCaslin family tree with the "white" branch. Carothers Edmonds is Carothers McCaslin's great-great-great-grandson and the heir of the white branch; his lover is McCaslin's great-great-granddaughter and the heir of the black branch. Their child stems from both sources and from the single ultimate source, Carothers McCaslin.

When Carothers Edmonds kills the doe at the end of the story, it is a kind of act of self-obliteration.

The killing of the doe is also illegal and references the argument Edmonds has with Isaac over the nature of human moral behavior. Isaac, taking a more optimistic tone from his youthful obsession with historical shame and the curse of ownership, argues that people are essentially good but are held down by their circumstances. Edmonds argues that people behave because they are afraid of the police, afraid of punishment. By killing the doe, Carothers Edmonds steps outside that fear but without proving himself any better than his circumstances.

Isaac is upset by the revelation; he believes that history is not yet ready for the union of the branches and of the races. But Faulkner suggests that history marches on despite human opinion of it; the child of Carothers Edmonds and Tennie's Jim's granddaughter will carry the McCaslin family forward into the future.

Carothers McCaslin - The patriarch of the McCaslin family and the founder of the McCaslin plantation.

Isaac McCaslin - Carothers McCaslin's grandson, the son of Buck McCaslin

Lucas Beauchamp - The part-negro grandson of Carothers McCaslin, the son of Tennie and Tomey's Turl.

McCaslin Edmonds - The great-grandson of Carothers McCaslin, descended from Carothers's daughter. Raised by his Uncle Buck and Uncle Buddy, he, in turn, raises Buck's son, Isaac McCaslin. Inherits the plantation at the age of 37, when 21-year-old Isaac refuses to take it as his own inheritance.

Boon Hogganbeck - The ugly, alcoholic hunter who is fiercely loyal to Major de Spain and McCaslin Edmonds. Tends to the dog Lion and eventually kills the bear Old Ben with his hunting knife.

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