The Bear William Faulkner | H. H. Bell, Jr. (essay date 1962)
H. H. Bell, Jr. (essay date 1962)
SOURCE: "A Footnote to Faulkner's 'The Bear'," in College English, Vol. 24, No. 3, December, 1962, pp. 179-83.
[In the following essay, Bell clarifies several genealogical, chronological, and interpretive enigmas of Faulkner's story.]
Faulkner's story "The Bear," in its various forms and under its various titles, has been alternately patted and mauled by critics since it first appeared in Harper's magazine for December 1935, under the title of "Lion." It has been widely studied in college classrooms and has proved puzzling to students and instructors alike. Because its details are so tangled, it is easy to make honest mistakes when speaking or writing about the story, and several such mistakes have already been published. For instance, one source states that Ike shot his first buck at the age of nine. Here it must be remembered that Ike didn't make his first trip into the wilderness until he was...
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