The Best Blog Post This Side of the Mississippi

Something that really caught my eye in the most recent chapter of "The Bear" were the metaphors/analogies made between animals and men. There were a couple blunt references, like when General Compson speaks at Lion's funeral "as he would have spoken over a man" (236), or when Old Ben "took two or three steps toward the woods on its hind feet as a man would have" (228). That got me thinking, why would Faulkner compare these two ferocious animals, Lion and Old Ben, to men? It's obvious to me that Faulkner did this on purpose, so why? Well, I found my answer earlier on in the chapter when Lion is staring at Issac and Issac "knew it was not looking at him and never had been" (225). Who else is described to be looking toward Isaac but not AT Isaac? Why, that's Sam Fathers on page 174. I had seen parallels between Lion, Old Ben, and Sam Fathers before this chapter, but I think this ties it all together (with a nice little bow). The fact that they all die at the same time is just icing on the cake for me. In your response, you can do one of two things: you can either disagree with me, and prove why there is no substantial link between Old Ben, Sam, and Lion, or you can ponder WHY Faulkner has decided to include such a link. I think since Sam doesn't really have much of a family, Faulkner is giving him a connection to the natural world to show that humans aren't the only important things in a person's lineage. We have seen that Sam is sort of "one" with nature, so could this be a way of linking Sam to the theme of ancestry and bloodlines? Does it tie into any other of the themes or motifs we have seen so far? Let me know what you think.

The Bear (Part 3)

After reading Parts 1 and 2 of The Bear, I was thoroughly involved in the story. The years in the story passed quickly, and I could tell that the time for Lion to confront Old Ben was fast approaching. Yet Part 3 began with a different facet of the story: Boon Hogganbeck. We learned in previous chapters that Boon's status amongst the men at Big Bottom is low; like Sam Fathers, he has some Chickasaw blood in him, but "Sam was the chief, the prince; Boon, the plebeian, was his huntsman. Boon should [be nursing] the dogs" (210). Yet the image Faulkner gives of Boon is not only as a drunkard and lousy shot, but as a man faithful to what he holds to be important. This is especially evident when Lion finally confronts the bear. The dog leaps for Old Ben, but the bear "caught the dog in both arms, almost loverlike, and they both went down. ...Then, rising and rising as though it would never stop, stand erect again and begin to rake at Lion's belly with its forepaws" (228). Boon leaps onto the bear's back and uses his knife to kill the bear, which I find to be extraordinary because thus far Old Ben has been somewhat untouchable and immortal, sort of on a different plane. For Boon, only fit to care for a chief's dogs, to be the downfall of such a creature proves what he is capable of doing for someone he is devoted to. Then Faulkner ends the chapter with Boon defending Sam Fathers's grave on page 240, saying "This is the way he wanted it. He told us. He told us exactly how to do it. And by God you aint going to move him," and Isaac sides with Boon against his cousin McCaslin and Major de Spain. This ending, I think, is Faulkner's way of showing that while Isaac hugely looks up to and respects his cousin, he still does what he believes is right, and like Boon, holds faithful to the ones he is devoted to.

Dark Comedy of Faulkner

In Pantaloon in Black we get to experience a new facet of Faulkner's writing - his humorous side. Like many of the other students, I at first missed the comedy by being caught up in the tragic story of Rider. We follow a man "better than six feet and weighed better than two hundred pounds"(129) who is grief stricken after the death of his wife Mannie. He throws a log into the river, drinks himself into a stupor, plays a game of dice at the mill then cuts Birdsongs throat after accusing him of cheating. Rider is put in jail but manages to rip out only to be lynched. The story itself seems tragic, but also has many points of comic relief. "Soon he had one of the shovels himself, which in his hands resembled the toy shovel a child plays with at the store, its half cubic foot of flung dirt no more than the light gout of sand a child's shovel would have flung" (129) The image of a very large man using a child sized shovel while franticly digging is very silly given that this grieving man is digging the grave of his wife. "wolfing it -- pease again, alo gelid and cold, a fragment of yesterday's Sunday fried chicken, a few rough chunks of this morning's fried sidemeat, a biscuit the size of a child's cap -- indiscriminate, tasteless." (136-137). Here he's eating like an animal to what seems like garbage, a funny scene although he's eating to cope with the pain of his loss. What does the use of dark humor and slapstick comedy play as a role in the story? Also why do you think this chapter is important in progress Go Down, Moses as a whole?

The Old People

The title of this chapter at first seemed to suggest that it was referring to the older McCaslins: old Carothers, Uncle Buck, and Uncle Buddy, but as the chapter progressed it became apparent that Faulkner was referring to the Native Americans. Sam Fathers, "the son of that Chickasaw chief" (161), seems to have a special connection with the Chickasaw and their past. He shares this with Isaac McCaslin through mentoring him in hunting. When "Sam marked [Isaac's] face with the hot blood which he had spilled" after shooting his first deer, Isaac shares in the ritual passed through generations and "he ceased to be a child and became a hunter and a man" (169). On page 178 we see that Cass also shared in this ritual. The smearing of the blood across his face is very symbolic of his new connection with the land and the past. The buck Isaac sees also portrays the older generation, which is seen when Sam refers to the buck as "Chief" and "Grandfather" (175). The buck is calm and unscathed even after the shot fired by Walter, who never misses, but even he misses the big buck only to kill a smaller one not worth killing. Isaac has accomplished a rite of passage and is now a man, a hunter, and is connected to the past and land.

Time Sequence

From what we have read, it is clear that Faulkner never really makes the setting of a story clear. The place where the story takes place is discovered along the way, but figuring out the time of the story takes very careful reading. Looking at the book as a whole, each story within the book comes from a different time period, but even within these stories, there is variation in time. For example, there is a section in "The Fire and the Hearth", pages 40-57, which is entirely a flashback that Lucas has of attempting to kill Zack Edmonds. I only understood that it was in the past after going back and reading the passage a second time. The constant ambiguity concerning time forces the reader to read some passages multiple times before truly understanding when the event is taking place. However, playing with something like time sequence, which is usually so definite in most books, could distract the reader from any underlying messages that Faulkner intended to portray. Why do you think Faulkner makes it so unclear when he is changing time periods? Obviously, Faulkner is an incredible writer, but by doing this do you think he enhances the stories or takes away from them?

Two by William Faulkner

Ironically, two things struck me most by this story. The first was the vivid language Faulkner used in his descriptions. "The salesman was asleep on the wet ground now, drawn into a ball against the dawn's wet chill, unshaven, the dashing city hat crumpled beneath his cheek, his necktie wrenched sideways in the collar of his soiled white shirt, his muddy trousers rolled to his knees, the brightly-polished shoes of yesterday now two shapeless lumps of caked mud" (86). Faulkner's writing, though often ambiguous and confusing, tells a story in an interesting perspective with beautiful descriptive language, which can throw the reader for a loop. The second thing I noticed was the theme of racial segregation. This theme, as we noted in class, is very common throughout Faulkner's stories. On the first page of the story, the salesman is described as "young, not yet thirty, with the assurance, the slightly soiled snap and dash, of his calling, and a white man" (76). However, during the negotiation on page 91, they "faced one another in the darkness, two shadows, faceless," which levels the playing field. Though one of the men may be white and the other black, in the dark there are no faces, no upper hands based on race.

Both "The Sahara of the Bozart" and "I'll Take my Stand" glorify the 'Old' South and criticize the direction the 'New' South is taking. In going over the 'Bozart' article as a class, we agreed that Mencken's arguments were both untrue and racist. However he expressed the same indignancy at the loss of the "old south' as did the Twelve Southerners. I felt that in reading the opinions of the Twelve Southerners they failed to take into consideration the compliancy of the southern citizens in the rise of industrialism. They seemed to be saying that the industrialists were completely to blame and the south, as a whole, was a victim. Oppositionally, Mencken believed the fall of the south was of internal design, brought about by the poor white southerners. In many places in the text these two publications mirror each other, even though essentially they argue different sides. Compare and contrast the two articles. What do you find to be the most effective points for either one? Use specific text references.

I'll Take My Stand - The Twelve Southerners

Twelve Southerners collaborated to write this Introduction to "I'll Take My Stand". This piece of writing not only focuses on the South, but it focuses on America as a whole. This writing was in response to the "Sahara of the Bozart". The Twelve Southerners actually agreed on the basics of what was said in the "Sahara of the Bozart", but what angered them was the attacks on southern culture and traditions that they strongly valued such as Agrarian philosophy. In this piece, they blame the loss of the "Old South" on industrialization. They say, "The younger Southerners , who are being converted frequently to the industrial gospel, must come back to support of the Southern Tradition." They talks about Industrialization as a naive answer to all problems, when in truth in wont solve anything. He says that industrialization will depress religion, the arts and simple amenities of life such as "conversation, hospitality, sympathy, and family life". I thought it was interesting to read of piece from that time period and to see how relevant the same issue is now. Industry has take over the world today, and maybe if they had stopped it from spreading earlier, the old traditions and interest in the natural would be more prevalent today.