CliffsNotes on Faulkner's Go Down, Moses

Cliff Notes

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• eBook ISBN: 9780544181731
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Study Aids
• Subtopic: Study Guides

“The Bear”

While “The Bear” is one of Faulkner’s most celebrated and most praised stories, it presents innumerable and possibly unsolvable problems. For example, while the story consists of five separate parts, there are actually only three large, central concerns in the story.

Parts 1–3 narrate one of the most magnificent hunting stories in all of literature—a story involving the initiation of a young boy into the rituals of hunting and manhood. The long Part 4 is a difficult philosophical discussion between Ike and his cousin Cass, concerning Ike’s decision to relinquish and repudiate the family plantation and his inheritance and try to come to terms with the sins of his ancestors. Then Part 5, perhaps the most enigmatic of all the sections, presents Ike’s elegiac meditations on the nature of the wilderness and its spiritual values, values which are suddenly intruded upon by the mad, hoarse, strangled threats of Boon Hogganbeck, which end the story on an ambiguous, uneasy note.

Essentially, this is the basic narrative structure of the story, but readers should be forewarned that they will probably find it difficult to discover how Part 4 is related to the other parts of the story. While reading “The Bear,” one should remember that Faulkner will intertwine many diverse themes and motifs, but the central concerns of the story will focus on Ike’s (or any young boy’s) maturation, or coming of age, and his initiation into the rituals of hunting, as well as into the mysteries of the wilderness. In the wilderness, Ike will discover the spiritual values to be discovered from a life lived in close, intimate contact with nature.

At times, Ike’s life will transcend the merely physical, and it will become metaphysical and even pantheistic. In the wilderness, he will learn to respect all life; he will learn how to live a life worthy enough to be allowed to kill noble game. Part 4, then, correlates the themes of Parts 1–3 and, using Ike’s ideas which he learned from the wilderness, Faulkner will apply them to such ethical and humanitarian concerns as (1) the nature of guilt and sin, (2) the nature of incest and miscegenation, (3) the nature of freedom and slavery, (4) of inheritance and repudiation, and (5) of learning to live a true and authentic life.

“The Bear” is a culmination of many themes and ideas that Faulkner has written about elsewhere, and often the same language is repeated to emphasize the same idea—for example, Sam’s dipping his hand into the hot, wet blood of the first deer that Ike kills and ritualistically baptising Ike into the wilderness: “Sam stooped and dipped his hands in the hot smoking blood and wiped them back and forth across the boy’s face.”

In the first three parts of the story, Old Ben the bear will become the symbol of the wilderness, the embodiment of the values associated with a life lived close to primitive nature. The narrative plot of these three parts presents an epic-like hunting story; that is, Part 1 recapitulates past events and leads us to Ike’s first full view of the great bear; Part 2 depicts the training of Lion, the great mastiff dog, strong enough to bay Old Ben; Lion will be the first to draw blood from the almost mythic-like bear beast. The third part of the story depicts the deaths of Old Ben, Lion, and Sam Fathers, Ike’s Indian mentor.

Part 1

The opening line of Part 1—“There was a man and a dog too this time”—sets the tone, but it quickly looks backward in time, as does Part 4, which returns to a much earlier time. But before the flashback, Faulkner establishes a present “time-frame”—when Ike is sixteen years old.

We learn that Ike has hunted yearly in the big wilderness for six years, hearing constantly about, and learning about, the big wilderness—the last land that is still “free.” During this time, Ike has constantly heard about Old Ben, the great bear who lives in, and “rules,” the wilderness. Old Ben has become a legendary figure, or totem symbol, of monstrous proportions: “The long legend of corn cribs broken down and rifled, of shoats and grown pigs and even calves carried bodily into the woods and devoured . . . dogs mangled and slain and shotguns and even rifle shots delivered at point-blank range, yet with no more effect than so many peas blown through a tube by a child.”

Old Ben becomes synonymous with the wilderness which Ike, almost intuitively, knows is rapidly becoming a “doomed wilderness whose edges were being constantly and punily gnawed at by men with plows and axes. . . .” Already in these opening pages of Part 1, some of the novel’s central concerns appear: for example, Ike’s initiation and participation in the “yearly rendezvous with the bear which they did not even intend to kill,” as well as the theme of the disappearance of the wilderness. This latter theme will later be correlated with the ownership of the land and with Ike’s ultimate repudiation of the land.

Ike recalls how long he had to wait until he was permitted to enter the wilderness. It happened when he was ten. Faulkner says that Ike “entered his novitiate to the true wilderness with Sam beside him as he had begun his apprenticeship in miniature to manhood.” Ike’s initiation into the rituals of the hunt becomes synonymous with his entrance into manhood: “It seemed to him that at the age of ten he was witnessing his own birth.”

Ike vividly remembers the camp experiences—two weeks of sour bread, wild strange meat, harsh sleeping arrangements, and, in addition, as the lowest of the plebians, Ike had to take the poorest hunting stands because, as a part of his initiation, he had to learn such things as humility and patience and endurance.

One morning while Ike is ten, he and Sam Fathers, his hunting mentor, are on their stand, waiting for Old Ben, when Sam calls Ike’s attention to the strange “moiling yapping” of the dogs, and he says quietly that Old Ben is close by. The old bear has “come to see who’s new” this year. He has come, Sam says, “because he’s the head bear. He’s the man.”

Later, back at camp, Sam shows Ike the old bear’s claw marks on one of the young, inexperienced hounds. And still later, Sam puts Ike up on the one-eyed wagon mule, the only animal that “did not mind the smell of blood” or the smell of wild animals, or even the smell of Old Ben, because it had known suffering and thus was not frightened of death.

Then Sam mounts another mule, and after three hours of riding, he shows Ike the old bear’s footprint—“the print of the living foot.” This is Ike’s first view of the old bear’s footprint, and it will be a long time before he sees Old Ben himself, but from now on, Ike will be able to distinguish Ben’s prints, anywhere in the wilderness.

While examining the footprints, ten-year-old Ike announces to Sam that, tomorrow, they will track down Old Ben. Sam, however, contends that “we aint got the dog yet,” a statement that anticipates the discovery of Lion in Part 2. Actually, six years will pass before Lion is found. But at the present time, even though Ike is only ten, he knows that because the bear has seen him, he will have to see the bear: “So I will have to see him. . . . I will have to look at him.”

In June of the next year—not during the regular November hunting ritual—Ike tries to track down Old Ben for three days, but he finds nothing. Sam advises Ike that “You aint looked right yet. . . . It’s the gun. . . . you will have to choose.”

Thus, Ike learns that he will never be able to come into contact with Old Ben until he divests himself of all his material ties with civilized society. Before he can carry a gun and confront Old Ben, he must, first, confront Old Ben without a gun. So Ike, Faulkner says, “left the gun; by his own will and relinquishment”; he left the gun—just as later, in Part 4, he will, “by his own will and relinquishment,” give up his inheritance.

Leaving his gun behind, Ike approaches the wooded, dappled milieu of the bear with trepidation, but all the time remembering Sam’s admonition: “Be scared. You cant help that. But dont be afraid. Aint nothing in the woods going to hurt you if you dont corner it or it dont smell that you are afraid.”

Ike travels farther “into the new and alien country” than ever before. He travels nine hours, and then he realizes that Sam didn’t tell him everything that he had to relinquish if his quest were to be honorable. It is then that Ike himself realizes that in addition to relinquishing the gun, he must also relinquish the watch and the compass—two instruments of civilization. They must also be discarded before Ike can relinquish himself completely to the wilderness.

“Then he relinquished completely to it. It was the watch and the compass. He was still tainted. He removed the linked chain of the one and the looped thong of the other from his overalls and hung them on a bush and leaned the stick beside them and entered it.”

When Faulkner says that Ike, after removing the tainted objects, “entered it,” he means that Ike entered the essence of the wilderness. Ike is already, physically, very deep in the wilderness, but here Faulkner means that Ike spiritually relinquishes his complete, untainted self to the “wilderness.” And ironically, and almost humorously, Ike discovers that he is completely lost.

He has followed all of Sam’s instructions, but he cannot find his way back to the watch and compass. It is at this time that Sam as tutor is replaced by Old Ben, who now becomes Ike’s mentor.

Ike is sitting on a log, by a little swamp, when he notices Old Ben’s footprints; he knows immediately that the old bear is imminent because the tracks are still filling up with water. Ignoring all possibility of danger and without any type of weapon, Ike follows the tracks, and by following them, he is led back to his compass and watch—in other words, back to civilization. Old Ben has become Ike’s leader, deliberately leading the lost youth back to his implements of civilization because he was brave enough to face the wilderness alone and become one with it. Ike voluntarily relinquished all trappings of civilization, and because of that, Old Ben restored civilization back to Ike.

Furthermore, because of Ike’s voluntary relinquishment, Old Ben allows himself to be viewed; “Then he [Ike] saw the bear. It did not emerge, appear: it was just there, immobile, fixed.” Then the bear moves away, slowly. He looks back over one shoulder and is gone. The bear disappears, and Part 1 ends. Ike has experienced his first full view of Old Ben.

The major emphasis in this section has been upon Ike’s preparation for the wilderness, his trip into the woods, his relinquishing the “taints” of civilization, his entering the woods, and, finally, his magnificent view of the legendary Old Ben himself.

Part 2

Part 2 of “The Bear” continues Ike’s process of learning all about the wilderness, and we see him learning more about it than any of the other hunters. This section also focuses on the courage of the small fyce dog, and the capturing and taming of Lion, the massive dog capable of baying Old Ben. It is here that Lion becomes, as it were, a “character” in this story; in fact, this section opens with the statement that Ike “should have hated and feared Lion.” Faulkner says this because, realistically, Lion will become the instrument of destruction for Old Ben, and he therefore represents the end of a splendid and noble era associated with the wilderness.

Ike and Sam, however, already recognize the forthcoming destruction of the wilderness and the parts which they must play in the ending of the wilderness. In fact, the final paragraph of this section repeats the opening sentence and clarifies Ike’s position: “It was like the last act on a set stage. It was the beginning of the end of something. . . . He would be humble and proud that he had been found worthy to be a part of it. . . .”

By the time that Ike is thirteen, he knows the wilderness as well as anyone; he knows game trails that even Sam Fathers doesn’t know about—and now, Ike also knows Old Ben’s crooked footprints perfectly. He can find Ben’s prints whenever he wishes to, but he knows that no one, including himself, can shoot Old Ben because no dog can hold him at bay.

One June day, Ike brings a young mongrel dog with him to the wilderness; the dog is often called a “fyce” in the South, probably because it is so small and feisty. And this one certainly is—dramatically so in the scene when Ike and Sam ambush Old Ben. The old male bear is so close that the little fyce charges and tries to attack him. At this point, Faulkner says that Ike “flung the gun down and ran. When he overtook and grasped the shrill, frantically pinwheeling little dog, it seemed to him that he was directly under the bear. He could smell it, strong and hot and rank. Sprawling, he looked up where it loomed and towered over him like a thunderclap.”

In this scene, Ike observes the young fyce, who possesses the will and the determination and the courage to bay Old Ben, but the dog is physically too small to be effective. He is so small, Faulkner says, that he can’t even “see his own shadow.” But note that Ike admires the dog’s spirit so much that he drops his gun in order to recover the dog from under the very paws of Old Ben. In fact, when Ike is asked later how close he was to Old Ben, Ike tells them that he saw a tick under Old Ben’s arm.

Significantly, the courage and the spirit of the little fyce and Ike’s admiration for the fyce is responsible for Ike’s second encounter with Old Ben. And it is during this encounter that Sam asks Ike one of the key questions in the story, why didn’t Ike shoot the bear? Sam insists: “This time you couldn’t have missed.” Ike returns the question to Sam: “You had a gun. Why didn’t you shoot him!” Neither answers the question because both acknowledge the ritualistic, the mythic, and totemic qualities of the hunt—“it was the pageant-rite of the old bear’s furious immortality.” The significant words here are “furious immortality.” Old Ben has an almost supernatural, raging determination not to be destroyed; seemingly, he will live forever.

Realistically, however, both Ike and Sam know that Old Ben will have to be killed someday, but “it won’t be until the last day. When even he don’t want it to last any longer.” The problem with killing Old Ben is that the “priests of the wilderness,” such hunters as Sam and Ike, and the “true hunters,” such men as Walter Ewell, Major de Spain, and General Compson, are the only ones who can track the old bear down, and they won’t kill him, and the lesser men, who would gladly kill the bear, haven’t the ability to track him down.

Returning to the narrative of the story, we learn that there are signs that suggest that Old Ben has “gone wild.” Seemingly, he has “broken the rules” by killing a colt, as well as a doe, and “running down a helpless fawn and [killing] it too.” Only Sam Fathers knows that these acts are not those of Old Ben. Sam knows that these are not Old Ben’s techniques because Old Ben kills only for necessity. These are gratuitous killings.

Sam and Ike examine the tracks of whatever is responsible for the killings, but they say nothing. General Compson and Major de Spain think that the tracks must be those of a panther, or a gigantic wolf. Therefore, they set the hounds to tracking down the unknown beast. But the dogs refuse to follow the scent because they know that the scent is that of another dog.

Using the newly killed colt as bait, Sam is finally able to trap the massive dog—“part mastiff . . . and better than thirty inches at the shoulders and weighing . . . ninety pounds.” The dog, Faulkner says, is the color of a gun barrel or a train engine with cold yellow eyes, and thus, from the very beginning, even the color of this animal suggests that it is something mechanical, steady, and impersonal, and Sam knows immediately that here at last is the dog “that’s gonter hold Old Ben.” While the other hunters totally despair of ever breaking or taming the dog, which they name Lion, Sam maintains that he doesn’t want Lion tamed.

He then begins the long, deliberate process of starving Lion and then feeding him until he learns obedience. Sam recognizes that Lion possesses all the qualities which he has been searching for in a dog—“a cold and grim indomitable determination.” Sam has been looking for a dog who has no concept of fear, who has a disdain for all other animals, including the other hounds. Faulkner says that “Lion neither slept nor ate with the other dogs.” He has a fierce pride, a cold and “almost impersonal malignance,” and endurance—the will and desire to endure beyond all imaginable limits, and most important, an “indomitable and unbroken spirit.”

After Sam trains Lion, it is only fitting that his plebian associate, Boon Hogganbeck, should take care of the dog, and even sleep with it. Ike understands this arrangement immediately because “Sam was the chief, the prince; Boon, the plebian, was his huntsman. Boon should have nursed the dogs.”

During the intervening two years, whenever Ike and Sam hunt for Old Ben—technically, the last day of the hunt is always reserved for this annual pageant-ritual—various trappers, farmers, or sharecroppers show up for the hunt. The second year, they jump Old Ben, and Lion holds him at bay, but Boon Hogganbeck, a notoriously bad shot, misses five times, and Old Ben kills a hound and escapes downriver.

Part 2 ends with a third repetition of the line “So he should have hated and feared Lion.” Lion symbolizes the end of the annual, traditional ritual hunt. But Ike does not hate, nor does he fear, Lion. Faulkner presents Ike as if he were a member of an audience watching the climax of a classical tragedy: “It was like the last act on a set stage. It was the beginning of the end of something.” And, as if we were viewing a classical tragedy, we too both deplore the ending, and yet look forward to it, feeling as Ike does, “humble and proud that he had been found worthy to be a part of it, too, or just to see it too.” Part 2 concludes, then, with a sense of Ike’s being present in a time when events of a great magnitude are about to occur, and Ike is proud to be a part of these events.

Part 3

This section recounts the last hunt, the hunt which culminates in the deaths of Old Ben, Lion, and Sam Fathers. It is December, a very cold December. The weather has turned bad, and the hunters have to stay in the woods past their regular time; they want to wait for fair weather so that they can take part in Old Ben and Lion’s “yearly race.” But they have run out of whiskey. At this point, Faulkner takes time out from his narrative and inserts a long digression, one which is interesting in itself, but it contributes little to the story of Old Ben and Lion....

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Life and Background of the Author
• Introduction to the Work
• List of Characters
• Critical Commentaries
• “Was”
• “The Fire and the Hearth”
• “Pantaloon in Black”
• “The Old People”
• “The Bear”
• “Delta Autumn”
• “Go Down, Moses”
• Study Help
• Essay Topics and Review Questions
• Selected Bibliography