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Eco-criticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment, just as feminist criticism examines language and literature from a gender-conscious perspective and Marxist criticism brings an awareness of modes of production and economic class to its reading of texts, eco-criticism takes an earth-centered approach to literary studies. The author of this thesis believes that the study of the wilderness in The Bear can further arouse people’s concern and awareness towards wilderness and environment with the theory of eco-criticism, and give some revelations to the research of ecological literature in China at the same time.
II. Ecological Embodiments of the “Wilderness” in The Bear
2.1 Destruction of Big Forest
Faulkner had seen that a timber company cut trees on a large scale in the areas of Mississippi River which was in the outskirts of Charleston and the northwest of Oxford, making that patch of the lush forest land suffer the largest ecological damage in the history. From that time, he realized that human beings destroy the original nature. The Bear is one of such works. In this article Faulkner not only describes the big and wildness forest, but also highlights that mankind plunder and destroy forest resources madly.
The forest disappears rapidly and soon railways are built into the forest. “They would hear it going out, loaded, not quite so fast now yet giving its frantic and toy like illusion of crawling speed.” (Faulkner 306) Trains are the symbol of industrial civilization in the novel; it also indicates that the forest is doomed to be destroyed. With the development of society, technological revolution continuously provokes people’s desire to conquer and possess nature, and people’s material needs are rapidly expanded. People take from nature continuously, but they don’t care about the balance of the ecological environment. The end of the novel, two years later Isaac returns to wilderness. But time changes everything! DeSpain sells the forest to a timber company, and the modern civilization replaces the primeval forest. When he looks around, he is surprised with sadness and astonishment, “a new planning-mill already half completed which would cover two or three acres and what looked like miles” (304). In fact, for a long time, human behavior and their way of thinking are dominated by the anthropocentrism, which is the reason for the isolation of man and nature as well as the brutal destruction. William Rueckert in Eco-criticism Reader points out that, “In ecology, man’s tragic flaw is his anthropocentric (as opposed to biometric) vision, and his compulsion to conquer, humanize, domesticate, violate, and exploit every nature things” (qtd. in Glotfelty 113).
In The Bear, the destruction of forests made by industrial civilization not only leaves a deep impression on Ike, but also implies that industrial civilization may bring disasters to human beings.
2.2 The Old Ben
The Bear is a story that talks about hunting .In this story Old Ben is a important role, and it is symbol of nature and wilderness. Faulkner always emphasize the Old Ben is huge bear and tremendous, “it left its crooked print, shaggy, tremendous, red-eyed, not malevolent but just big” (187). Old Ben is ambitious, but it is not evil. It lives in the wilderness and does not want to infringe human beings. In order to conquer the bear human beings go into forest with the symbol of civilization-knives and guns to destroy the ecological environment. “The long legend of com-cribs broken down and rifled, of shoats and grown pigs and even calves carried bodily into the woods and devoured and traps and deadfalls overthrown and dogs mangled and slain and shotgun 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.” (187)
The Old Ben is very clever and smart, when it first sees Ike it does not show up because it thinks Ike has no ability to compete with it, Ike just a novice. Old Ben is not only smart enough to resist the killing of mankind, it is also “the old bear, solitary, indomitable, and alone; widower childless and absolved of mortality” (188). Old Ben has many virtues such as bravery, sublimity, mystery, immortality and invincibility. Some legends about Old Ben make Ike full of curiosity before he goes into the wilderness. The Bear is a totem, loved and respected by hunters. In fact, North America’s ancient Indian people have been living as a symbol of the bear; Faulkner is likely to be in the North American continent by ancient myths and legends of enlightenment. However, when the ancient law of nature suffers from the modern industrial civilization, Old Ben which represents the epitome of the wild times can not escape the fate of being shot and becomes the victim of human’s greed and vanity. In the end, Old Ben is killed by the Boon, but it did not fall as collapse, Faulkner says that, “it did not collapse, crumple. It fell all of a piece, as a tree falls”(232). Old Ben falls down straight when it dies, because it never surrenders to mankind, even though it has to face the death. Although it is killed by hunters, it is not defeated. Because Old Ben’s failure does not mean that mankind obtain the victory ultimately. Rachel Carson tells us that, “Mankind has gone very far into an artificial world of his own creation. He has sought to insulate himself, in his cities of steel and concrete, from the realities of earth and water and the growing seed. Intoxicated with a sense of his own power, he seems to be going further and further into more experiments for the destruction of himself and his world.”(qtd. in Lear 221)