Criticism > Short Story Criticism > The Bear William Faulkner - W. R. Moses (essay date 1953)
The Bear William Faulkner - W. R. Moses (essay date 1953)
W. R. Moses (essay date 1953)
SOURCE: "Where History Crosses Myth: Another Reading of The Bear'," in Accent, Vol. XIII, No. 1, Winter, 1953, pp. 21-33.
[Below, Moses describes the conflict between the mythic patterns and historical realities of "The Bear" in terms of the character development of Isaac McCaslin]
This reading is made in terms of the following simple propositions: Myth does not rationally "explain" anything and perhaps does not even justify anything, but it does dramatize the human situation, appealing to and flattering the various non-rational interests that principally make us men. People live by it, or may do so. History—the brute sequence of events—lacks dramatic structure; study of it may permit explanation or justification, but appeals principally if not entirely only to the predilections of rationality, and is likely to be irrelevant to the making of a useable pattern of individual life. Automatically people live...
[The entire page is 6033 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
- Introduction
-
Criticism
- John Lydenberg (essay date 1952)
- W. R. Moses (essay date 1953)
- William Van O'Connor (essay date 1953)
- Blaise Hettich (essay date 1955)
- Lynn Altenbernd (essay date 1960)
- Melvin Backman (essay date 1961)
- H. H. Bell, Jr. (essay date 1962)
- Richard E. Fisher (essay date 1963)
- Leonard Gilley (essay date 1965)
- Richard Lehan (essay date 1965)
- M. E. Bradford (essay date 1967)
- Joyce W. Warren (essay date 1968)
- Gloria R. Dussinger (essay date 1969)
- Daniel Hoffman (essay date 1969)
- Sanford Pinsker (essay date 1972)
- Gorman Beauchamp (essay date 1972)
- T. H. Adamowski (essay date 1973)
- Malcolm Cowley (lecture date 1978)
- Marian Scholtmeijer (essay date 1993)
- Further Reading
- Copyright
