William Faulkner. Delta Autumn/The Bear.

William Cuthbert Faulkner (born Falkner, September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer and nobel prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career.

Delta Autumn

Commentary

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 (who is described as self-engendering, despite all biological evidence). Nevertheless, 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.

Around this revelation, the story takes up the question of gender difference--not so much in political terms as in psychological terms and in terms of the regeneration of the species. The symbolism is a bit heavy-handed (the men are no longer allowed to kill does, only bucks; Carothers Edmonds says that history is never lacking in does and children), but it becomes more central to the novel's main concerns when we remember that Carothers Edmonds is the heir to the female branch of the McCaslin family tree, the Edmonds branch, just as Isaac is heir to the male, McCaslin, branch. 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.

The Bear

Summary

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 hunting Old 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, slitting his throat. 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 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 plantations 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 deducts 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, but he refuses even when she tries to convince him sexually. He administers the money left to the children of Tomey's Turl and Tennie, even traveling to Arkansas to give a thousand dollars to Sophonsiba, Lucas's sister, who moved their with a scholarly negro farmer who never seems to farm. He 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.

Commentary

"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, capable of overpowering virtually anything, and capable of wreaking havoc on human settlements and establishments. 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. (There is some thematic ambiguity in the fact that hunting has been portrayed as a noble and respectful act, but here it becomes, in part, a symbol of man's attempt to conquer nature, to which it has previously been contrasted.) Old Ben is a virtually mythic force, and only over the course of years are the men able to bring him down. Old Ben becomes a symbol both of untamed nature and of some principle of freedom and independence in the human spirit. But, like the wilderness in Isaac McCaslin's lifetime, he is brought down in the end. The death of Old Ben at the hands of Boon Hogganbeck is also somewhat ambiguous--it is a moving, devastating scene, but it seems unclear whether Old Ben's death is a right or a wrong in Faulkner's eyes or something more complex than either. There is something almost wild about Boon Hogganbeck, Old Ben's killer, himself; the image that closes the story, with Boon trying desperately to fix his gun so that he can shoot the squirrels and shouting at Isaac that they are his, is certainly an unsettling metaphor for the destructiveness and possessiveness of human civilization.

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