Download The Eternal Truths of the Heart

Ben Gretch
6/27/2017
The Eternal Truths of the Heart
The final line of John Keats’ poem, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” reads: “‘Beauty is truth,
truth beauty,’ -that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Keats says this because he
knows that truth is the only beauty that lasts. He also knows, however, that every person must
understand this unalterable beauty on his own. This theory is especially evident in William
Faulkner’s short story, “The Bear.” In this story, the boy’s quest for the Bear helps him discover
the eternal truths of the heart.
From an early age, the boy dreamt about the Bear. “It ran in his knowledge before he
ever saw it. It looked and towered in his dreams before he even saw the unaxed woods where it
left its crooked print.” The boy always knew that it was his destiny to one day meet the Bear.
What he did not know, however, is that he would need to develop courage, honor, and pride in
order to do so.
On one of the boy’s first hunting journeys, Sam Fathers explained to the boy that he had
to be courageous if he ever wanted to see the Bear. “Be scared. You can’t help that. But don’t be
afraid. Ain’t nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are
afraid.” After hearing this, the boy decided to pursue the Bear without his gun. The gun, he
realized, showed the Bear fear, and made him a coward in the eyes of the Bear. Faulkner
summarized the boy’s struggle in his Noble Prize acceptance speech in 1950 by saying, “He must
teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it
forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the
heart.” Faulkner speaks about a writer and his workshop, but the writer’s search to write
something of meaning is equivalent to any person’s rite of passage. The boy, and his quest for
Ben Gretch
6/27/2017
the bear, is no different.
The next morning, before daylight, the boy set off on a quest to find the bear. After nine
hours of searching, however, he had found nothing, and did not know why. Finally, the boy
understood why he was having so much trouble in the wilderness. “It was the watch, the
compass, the stick - the three lifeless mechanicals with which for nine hours he had fended the
wilderness off.” Because nature is one of the most distinguished of all truths, these three
mechanicals were keeping the boy from becoming a part of it. He decided to leave behind these
symbols of civilization in an effort to be natural. He continued on his journey and a few hours
later he achieved his goal: a face-to-face confrontation with the Bear he had dreamt about. This
encounter proved that the boy had learned the first set of eternal truths of the heart.
As the boy grew older, however, he grew a desire to kill the Bear. In an effort to do so,
the boy became an expert woodsman and “There was no territory within thirty miles of the camp
that he did not know.” The problem was, he struggled to find the Bear. He remembered,
however, something Sam Fathers had told him a few years prior: to catch the Bear, the boy
needed the right dog. It did not take long for him to find what he believe was the right dog. “It
was his own, a mongrel of the sort called by Negroes a fyce.” In April of his fourteenth year, the
boy set off on a trip determined to find the Bear once and for all.
It didn’t take long for the boy, his fyce, Sam, and two hounds to track down the bear. “It
was not a stalk; it was an ambush.” The group cornered the bear, but as the courageous fyce
charged towards the Bear, the boy had an epiphany. Somewhere deep in the boy’s heart was pity
and compassion for the helpless Bear. He could not shoot the Bear because it represented
everything he had become. The Bear was courageous, honorable, and prideful. He was wild and
Ben Gretch
6/27/2017
free, and a part of the wilderness that the boy had come to love. If the boy had killed the Bear, he
would have killed a part of himself.
However, the Bear represented another thing as well. It represented a goal that he had
dreamt about and focused the last four years of his life around. A goal he could never achieve,
because the closer he worked towards it, the more he realized it was not a quest for the Bear’s
head or fur that he was on, it was a quest for the eternal truths of the heart. The boy had learned
all of this deep in his heart, but his brain still did not understand why he could not shoot the Bear.
It was his father’s job to show him.
After the boy returned home from this hunting trip, he told his father about his encounter
and how he was unable to shoot the Bear. His father went to the bookshelf and got an old book
and read to the boy John Keats’ aforementioned poem, “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” After reading it,
he reread just the second stanza, focusing on this excerpt:
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal--yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Although it sounded as though Keats was talking about a girl, the boy’s father explained to him
that Keats’ was really reaffirming what the boy had already learned deep in his heart. Keats was
saying that the boy’s quest for the bear was a quest he was never meant to finish. He was instead
supposed to learn of the eternal truths of the heart. “He was talking about truth. Truth doesn’t
change. Truth is one thing. It covers all things which touch the heart - honor and pride and pity
and justice and courage and love.” After his father told him this, the boy started to realize why
he did not shoot the Bear. He was not quite at terms with it yet, until the father said “Courage,
and honor, and pride, and pity, and love of justice and of liberty. They all touch the heart, and
Ben Gretch
6/27/2017
what the heart holds to becomes truth, as far as we know the truth.” The boy had finally learned
why he did not shoot the Bear, and thus finally learned all of the eternal truths of the heart.
In Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he also said, “[Man] is immortal... because
he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.” Faulkner explained
his own story with this statement. Despite not knowing it, the boy spent the entire story on a
journey to learn the eternal truths of the heart. At the end of the story, the boy’s father explained
to him everything that he learned: “Courage, and honor, and pride, and pity, and love of justice
and of liberty.” The passing down of this undying lesson is what Faulkner is speaking about.
Man is immortal because these truths can live on through generations. Not just the boy, but
everyone, must learn this.