The Bear Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 52 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Bear.

The Bear Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 52 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Bear.
This section contains 2,141 words
(approx. 6 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Bear Study Guide

In the following excerpt, Perluck explains that he does not believe that Isaac McCaslin acted honorably in rejecting his inheritance. Rather, he believes that McCaslin failed to accept responsibility.

The usual reading of "The Bear" makes of Isaac McCaslin a kind of saint who, by repudiating his inheritance—the desecrated land upon which a whole people has been violated— performs an act of expiation and atonement which is a model for those acts that must follow before the curse upon the land is lifted Bee's repudiation of the land, at twenty-one, with which the tortuous inner section of "The Bear" opens, and over which he and his cousin, McCaslin Edmonds, debate in the commissary, is seen in terms of what the reader understands Ike to have learned and attained under the influence of Sam Fathers in the untainted Wilderness, the "freedom and humility and pride." The story...

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This section contains 2,141 words
(approx. 6 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Bear Study Guide
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The Bear from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.