The Bear
Assigned by 2 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 1942
- Form
- Novel
- Language
- English
- Length
- Short · 110 ppunder 120 pages
- Difficulty
- Difficult4 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendGo Down, MosesVintage International, 1990The Bear should be read in the book Faulkner wrote it for; Part 4 depends on the surrounding stories.
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A novella of five parts from Go Down, Moses. Isaac McCaslin is initiated as a boy into the annual hunt for Old Ben, a huge bear in the Mississippi wilderness, under the tutelage of Sam Fathers, part Chickasaw and part Black. The bear is finally killed by the wild dog Lion and Boon Hogganbeck. In the long fourth section Ike, now twenty-one, reads the plantation ledgers, discovers his grandfather's incest and slavery, and renounces his inheritance. The last section returns to the vanishing woods.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns The Bear are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.
