The Bear

by William Faulkner
List(s):"Racine Library List"
Category: "Fiction - General"
Pages:131
Year of Publication:1942
Date Added:08/12/2006
Date Read:04/06/2005
Notes:It was about a boy, Isaac McCaslin, who marks his growing up by his memories of various bear hunts.
My Rating: 5

Reviews for The Bear

Review - Bear, The

This was a strange book. It was about a boy, Isaac McCaslin who goes hunting with his cousin, his uncle (I think) and some other men every fall, beginning when he was 10. They travel to a camp in the large wilderness south of Memphis not long after the Civil War. The talk of the camp and the whole area is Old Ben, a legendary bear that has been shot many times but never taken. The last day of each year’s hunt is focused on Old Ben, but whenever one of the dogs gets too close, the bear kills it.

Ike is trained in woodcraft by Sam Fathers, an old halfbreed (half Black, half Indian). He quickly catches on and is able to make his way around the woods better than most of the men. He sets off on his own and finds the bear, but Sam tells him they won’t kill it until they find a dog that can stand up to it.

Then Sam finds Lion, a brutal dog who only always tries to kill. Sam starves it into submission, upon which time its care is taken over by Boon, who was half-witted and, I think, Black. Lion and Old Ben have some legendary chases. When Ike is 14, Lion finds the bear again. The bear grabs Lion and Boon jumps the bear and kills it with a knife. Lion is killed. When Ike and boon turn around, they find Sam, lying paralyzed on the ground. He also dies a few days later.

Then there’s a large portion of the book where I had very little idea of what was going on. It was written stream-of-consciousness and had something to do with Ike’s grandfather having a child with a slave girl and the importance of land and how the South fought the Civil War for the land and some old ledgers in Ike’s uncle’s and father’s handwriting.

At the end of the book, Ike at 16 goes back to the woods where the bear was killed. A lumber company is cutting down the woods and they’re fast disappearing. Ike decides he’s not going back again. He wanders to a clearing where he finds Boon sitting under a lone tree where he has treed a dozen or so squirrels. He’s frantically trying to reassemble his old shotgun and yells at Ike that all the squirrels are his to kill.

It was much better than The Sound and the Fury, but still there was that huge incomprehensible section that was just bad. If I wrote like that, I’d get fired.
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