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Grace Johnson
Period 3
December 17, 2004
All Ye Need to Know
“He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible
voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and
endurance,”—William Faulkner, Nobel Prize Speech. In society today, people are still
trying to figure out how to attain these things. Compassion, sacrifice, and endurance:
three things a human being longs to achieve and understand; as well as the truths behind
them. In Faulkner’s short story “The Bear,” we are introduced to a young boy who,
through recurring encounters with the bear, begins to understand that the truths held close
to the heart are what make one’s soul beautiful and immortal. The boy learns many
things from his father and from Sam Fathers, as well as from the bear, and compassion,
sacrifice, and endurance prove to be the most valuable characteristics of the immortal
spirit.
In the boy’s first encounter with the bear, he makes no connection with it. He
hasn’t learned, yet, that by being afraid he is pushing himself farther and farther away
from the bear. However, on his second encounter a few years later, he experiences that
long awaited connection, and even compassion for the bear.
“They had emerged from the wilderness old as earth, synchronized to the instant
by something more than the blood that moved the flesh and bones which bore
them, and touched, pledged something, affirmed something more lasting than the
frail web of bones and flesh which any accident could obliterate,” (pg. 512).
He feels the compassion for the bear because he is now connected to it on a different
level: he is a part of the wilderness that the bear belongs to. The boy learns that the bear
is a representation of the wilderness that he has so long tried to conquer with his guns and
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Grace Johnson
Period 3
December 17, 2004
his compasses. Because he now holds that immortal connection with the bear he also
holds a connection with the wilderness, and he is very compassionate about this. His
father told him “what the heart holds to becomes truth, as far as we know the truth,” and
because the boy is holding that compassion in his heart, he learns that it is one of the
many truths of nature. His connection is immortal because his spirit, and not just his
bones and flesh, connects with the wilderness.
The only way the boy could experience what he had was through sacrifice. “The
gun, the boy thought. ‘You will have to choose,’ Sam said,” (pg. 510). He learns from
Sam that in order to show the bear that he was not afraid, and therefore come closer to the
bear, he has to sacrifice more than his gun. He has to abandon his worldly possessions
(his stick, compass, and watch) and therefore leave behind any signs that he was afraid of
the bear. His possessions would show the bear that he was afraid because they would set
him apart from the wilderness that he was now connected to. Although he is scared of the
bear, he cannot let the bear know that he is afraid because the bear would be scared of a
coward (pg. 510), and a coward’s actions are unpredictable. The boy also has to sacrifice
what his main goal is: killing the bear. He will lose something if he chooses to kill the
bear; he would never hold that glorious feeling of being almost there that John Keats
emphasizes as being beautiful in his poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” He will diminish his
connection with nature that Faulkner clearly emphasizes as being strongly important to
one’s character throughout “The Bear.” The father makes a reference to “Ode on a
Grecian Urn” and says, “she cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, for ever wilt
thou love, and she be fair!” The beauty of the girl on the urn will never fade, just as truth
will not fade. Because the boy makes the sacrifice to not kill the bear, his father taught
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Grace Johnson
Period 3
December 17, 2004
him that he is also holding tight the truths of the heart, which his father says are “honor
and pride and pity and justice and courage and love.”
Because the boy is a better woodsman at the age of fourteen than most of the
grown hunters with more experience, he has acquired a great deal of courage. He has
faced the “anachronism, indomitable and invincible” (pg. 505) and left behind his
compass, stick, and watch, and he didn’t choose to shoot the bear even when he had the
chance to. He has to endure the fact that he is scared and not let the bear know that he
was afraid. The boys learns from experience that being afraid is an emotion, something
that can come and go based upon the circumstances and something that he can control.
Being scared, however is more than an emotion; it is more of a perspective, a way of
looking at life. He ends up directly beneath the bear and he is able to endure it because he
has the connection with the bear that he doesn’t understand until he later talked to his
father. He holds his courage close to his heart and it became true to him when it is time to
endure the presence of the bear. Although the bear is not beautiful in appearance but
rather “shaggy, huge, and red-eyed” (pg. 505), he endures it because its truth makes it
beautiful; it doesn’t change and the connection the boy makes with it will not change.
The boy learns how to endure the things that nature throws at him, even if they don’t
have a beautiful surface, by holding the truths of the heart close to him.
The importance of compassion, sacrifice, and endurance. The boy understands
that he will never reach his initial goal of killing the bear, however the lessons he learns
from it will far outlast the short-lived fame of killing an animal. The urn in John Keats’s
poem represents the eternal moment of beauty, and therefore truth, that the boy
experiences. He now holds with him that eternal moment of the connection he made with
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Grace Johnson
Period 3
December 17, 2004
the bear. They don’t come together only as bones and flesh, but they come together with
something that lasts; some sort of a spirit that the bear has managed to give him. “Beauty
is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,” (Keats).
The boy learns that he will never lose the truths of compassion, sacrifice, and endurance
as long as he holds that bear’s spirit, and therefore nature’s spirit, close to his heart. He
learns that the truths of the heart are beautiful because they will never change or fade; his
connection is immortal.
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