The Bear: Wilderness

Faulkner’s, The Bear, is replete with ideas and experiences of “the wilderness,” yet this term, “wilderness,” is more ambiguous than I once thought.  In this novel, Faulkner creates a wilderness setting that is both physical and personal.  One can easily see the physical characteristics of the wilderness described in such things as the ruggedness of the landscape or hunting.  However, Faulkner also inspires a sense of wilderness in the individual, one that it somewhat indefinable.  As I see it, this type of wilderness seems to be different for each individual.  Someone suggested in class today that perhaps wilderness is just as much society and large cities for some people as the rugged woods and vast expanses of nature are for others, and I completely agree with this.  In this sense, of the many definitions that could apply to wilderness, one notion is wilderness as simply what is unknown to an individual, in the larger sense of society, habitat, or culture.  For example, while Ike is said to go into the wilderness and have a sense of freedom, maybe this only suggests the opposite, that the physical wilderness of the woods, nature, etc. are actually his home and where he feels most comfortable at, while his more cultivated home and life are truly his individual wilderness because he does not feel as at rest there.  One example from the novel that really emboldened this idea for me was how Ike had been waiting and anticipating his first hunting trip and journey into nature up until he was 10 years old.  Furthermore, when he was able to go, the whole situation seemed very natural to him.  Faulkner even writes, "It seemed to him that at the age of ten he was witnessing his own birth. It was not even strange to him. He had experienced it all before, and not merely in dreams" (Faulkner 189-190).