Joseph Bruchac's The Bear Boy

In Those Winter Sundays, Eating Alone, and My Papa’s Waltz, the speakers all experience some form of isolation, while recalling their childhood relationship with fathers. This isolation causes loneliness, which then takes a variety of forms such as emotional, physical, or both. The fact that these authors brought to our attention these specific poems, shows that children inherit certain values from their emotional connection with their fathers in childhood, and take those values with them into adulthood, and into their own families.

His mother treats him like a slave, giving him daily chores and unbelievably ruthless punishments. He has become inhuman to her as she refers to him as “It.” The only hope of survival relies on his dad, in God, or in a miracle. His story promotes the courageous human spirit and the determinate to survive.

William Faulkner’s novella “The Bear” from his collection of works, Go Down Moses, is a symbolic exploration of the relationship between man and nature in the eyes of a young boy. The heart of the issue, the warped idea of the ownership of land, is revealed thought the clash of man and nature in a wild chase that ends only in blood and death. The prey is nature itself, represented by a bear, while the hunters are men, full of greed and destructive possessiveness, pursuing that which they do not understand. Ike’s idea of the bear, presented in section 1 of the novella, expresses the idea of symbolism in relation to the bear and to the hunters and what the battle between the two represents.

While traveling to the arroyo, his own “personal Mississippi,” the boy learns he has control over his own actions (453-454). His mother cannot stifle him, and “tell us we couldn’t” go (454). Now understanding that mother does not know and see all, he feels free to make his own choices. A subsequent example of his autonomy is characterized when he begins his quest into the hills. Not believing his mother that the hills hold no adventure, he is certain she “was keeping something from us” (456). Adept at handling all that nature has to offer, he journey’s further up the hill because his “mother could still see us” (456). This lack of trust and the independence that comes from not being under his mother’s watchful eye fuels his budding autonomy. The boy’s innocence further dwindles as he rebels, and gains independence from his mother. (199)

Both the poem, “Walking at Night With my Son, James,” by Joe Bruchac, and the excerpt we read from the novel, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, by Anne Tyler, despite having vast differences, shared a common theme. This theme was that everyone must come to a time in their life where everything changes. This can be scary, but it can allow for people to see the world in a whole new way, and do things that they had never before thought possible. The tone of the poem is nostalgic, as a young boy is coming to the end of his childhood, and becoming an adult. His father watches proudly, but sadly, as he knows that soon his son will be living independently. However, for the time being, the father and son are just spending a nice afternoon together,

(P1) In Aria Beth Sloss’ short story, “North, the narrative is told from the perspective of a child as he/she talks about his/her parents. The narrator opens the piece by telling the reader that his/her father, Thomas, was an explorer who left for an expedition and “was never heard from again” (Sloss 2). The narrative then continues into a description of the relationship between the father and mother. The mother, Mary, was considered a “wild woman” (Sloss 5) growing up. Her family had concerns that she was unsuitable for any man. Upon meeting each other, the narrator’s mother and father found common ground in that they both loved adventure and had “a habit of disappearing” (Sloss 5). As the story progresses into the couple’s married life, the father is described to be a man “in love” (Sloss 7) with the wilderness like a “schoolboy” (Sloss 7). He cannot be home from expeditions long without getting restless.  As days pass, the father spends his time planning his next adventure, a hot air balloon ride to the Arctic, something that he claims will “write his name beside Darwin’s in the history books” (Sloss 13). The father does not tell Mary of his plans and she does not tell him of the loneliness that has struck her “sudden as a storm” (Sloss 13) from his lack of presence. One day though, Mary and Thomas have sex and Mary feels as though “something dangerous is running through her” (Sloss 21). Days later, she learns she is pregnant, but does not get to tell her husband as he

When they are leaving, the boy’s mother waves but the boy “like Lars, simply [lifts] his hand” (1). He follows Lars’s actions and suppresses his fear indicated by his fidgets. At the same time, the boy understands his father’s urge to create an exciting hunting experience for him, but “when they [turn] back for camp, the boy [feels] only relief” (16) because he does not need to pretend anymore. This means that he suppresses his real emotions when his father feels the frustration of finding no prey in order to meet his father’s expectations of a good hunter. Therefore, he conforms to the expectations of the adults by concealing his feelings and faking his

Trumbo shifts the tone from tense to reflective through effectively selecting details which portray the impact of the encounter between the father and son. Opening the passage Trumbo asserts the significance of the tradition by carefully depicting the campsite, in a way which he conveys an atmosphere of nostalgia. Describing how his memories included the “pine needles…falling” on their tent, sitting “staring into the fire,” fishing, and hearing the “streams which connected the lakes” throughout the night. Reveling an appreciation of company is present in the boy’s childhood which lays the foundation for his anxiety to inform his father of his wants, as the two were once connected like the streams and

Love exists in the short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” by Alice Munro and in the short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” by Raymond Carver. in Munro’s short story the plot is that of a mentally ill wife, Fiona, who falls in love with another patient while her husband still tries to hang on to their old love. Her husband eventually wants to have an affair with the wife of the man his wife is having an affair with. Their love changed because of their circumstances due to ill health. Carver’s story discusses the different definitions of love due to the type and quality of relationships; everyone has a different definition. Love also exists all over the world within different environments and cultures. The concept of love depends upon the environment in which it inhabits. Love is dependent on the life of the people in love and it also depends on their current environment. Nature and nurture are also huge factors into the development and process of love. What nature and nurture mean is whether it is due to how the person lives and acts along with their personality compared to whether it’s all in their genetics beforehand. Love is more on the nurture side instead of the nature side of human experience.

“The Bear,” by Tom Lombardi, is about of a husband and wife. While reading the story you start to understand that Gary, the husband, doesn’t seem to care to much about his wife, Lois. Gary doesn’t seem to even care about Lois. Gary was very unsensitive when it comes to things. In the story, while they are in the woods, Gary tells Lois to pay attention to bears, if she sees a bear, she should not be scared, but don’t be stupid. While Lois went to use the restroom one time, she encountered a bear. However, during this time, she felt that the bear was communicating with her. In the story, Lois talked about the bears puppy-like eyes and that the bear rolled over and showed his belly. In a way, this made Lois trust the bear and not to fear the bear. The bear tells Lois that he has seen Lois and Gary together making love and he

The image of a “bearhug” in today's society often represents a warm, enveloping, and protective hug; however, through juxtapositioning images of "death", "blood", and "bones", a sense of a predator-prey dynamic emerges. Rather than the picturesque parent-child dynamic that it is thought of to be, the author alludes to the relationship being instead parasitic. Parents hold too much power as compared to children, who are completely incompetent and reliant on their parents for survival. Because of this vast difference in power, parents may sometimes overlook how much their children value about them, leading to situations such as this poem. Furthermore, when the author asks himself why he gives the gentle, loving hug between a father and son “that dark squeeze of death,” the father may be figuratively asking he is misusing the total power he has over his son by not giving him the compassion and love that his son needs.

Jean Auel was born in Chicago, Illinois, and according to Encyclopedia Britanica, she was born on February 18, 1936 and named Jean Marie Untinen. Auel was raised and graduated high school in Chicago. She married Ray Auel shortly after high school, the Auel’s then moved to Oregon, where they had five childen. Jean raised the children while working and continuing her education. In 1976, Jean received a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the University of Portland. In 1977, she decided to write a short story. Once she started this venture, she soon realized she had entirely too much material to cover in one book. The story turned into a six book series at this point. The series was titled “Earth’s

After the Civil War, the American Southerners had a strong trauma that could not be forgotten. Considering that William Faulkner was also one of these Southerners, approaching to his texts through a psychoanalytic lens would be a meaningful work. In fact, Faulkner is one of the rare writers who faced Southern racial ‘taboo’: the miscegenation. In addition, a Southern Renaissance that what Faulkner does with the South through his novels are very similar with what Freud did with the European civilization after the World War I in his work about ‘psychoanalytic mourning’ (Lee 229). Actually, Faulkner went through the World War I just like Freud did and he is one of the “Lost Generations”: a group of writers who were strongly affected by the inhumanity of war. Thus, this essay will focus on analyzing Faulkner’s “The Bear” in psychoanalytical view.

realized that he had become a part of nature. In the story, Ike had brought a

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