The Bear Went Over the Mountain Summary
William Kotzwinkle

The Bear Went Over the Mountain Summary

Although Kotzwinkle is working in a comic mode, with a positive outcome almost guaranteed for the more appealing characters and no permanent harm occurring to even the most ridiculous ones, The Bear Went Over the Mountain is a serious book, similar to the work of the classical satirists whose strategies Kotzwinkle is echoing. His concern for the "dangerous split between us and our animal nature" is his central theme, and it is set up by making Hal Jam and Arthur Bramhall the secret sharers of each other's psychic realm. Along a continuum stretching from what might be called the fully human to the entirely animal, Jam and Bramhall move in opposite directions, but as significant as their apparent contrary motion is their amalgam of attributes. Each creature, part man and part beast, is always a mixture of elements, with a particular facet of the psyche emerging or dominating...

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