The Bear William Faulkner | Lynn Altenbernd (essay date 1960)
Lynn Altenbernd (essay date 1960)
SOURCE: "A Suspended Moment: The Irony of History in William Faulkner's 'The Bear'," in Modern Language Notes, Vol. LXXV, No. 7, November, 1960, pp. 572-82.
[In the essay below, Altenbernd discusses the thematic significance and the historical implications of section IV of "The Bear" in relation to the hunting story.]
Explications of William Faulkner's "The Bear," by now fairly numerous, have made clear that the novelette is a kind of parable of the American experience, and that, while it is in no sense intended as literal history, it does mythically reconstruct history and comment upon it. Yet the precise nature of Faulkner's comment on history has not been established, nor has the rationale of the novelette's structure been demonstrated as fully as it should be. Section 4, the long digression in the form of a debate between Ike McCaslin and his second cousin and surrogate father, McCaslin Edmonds, has...
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