The Bear...

"He seemed to see it entire with a child’s complete divination before he ever laid eyes on either—the doomed wilderness whose edges were being constantly and punily gnawed at by men with axes and plows who feared it because it was wilderness, men myriad and nameless even to one another in the land where the old bear had earned a name, through which ran not even a mortal animal but an anachronism, indomitable and invincible, out of an old dead time, a phantom, epitome and apotheosis of the old wild life at which the puny humans swarmed and hacked in a fury of abhorrence and fear, like pygmies about the ankles of a drowsing elephant: the old bear solitary, indomitable and alone, widowered, childless, and absolved of mortality—old Priam reft of his old wife and having outlived all his sons."

I think this passage really goes along with the theme of our recent discussions. In the allegory 'The Other Side of the Hedge,' there is a stark contrast between the road of progress and the garden of tranquility. Faulkner likewise contrasts the 'men with axes and plows who feared it because it was wilderness,' with the raw power and mystery of the bear. Though it almost sounds like Faulkner is a hippy at first glance, one can see that he is getting at the real beauty of the earth, the original intent of and power of wilderness. It's as if he is ok and is promoting the wilderness. Both Faulkner and Forster seem to have similar stances on progress, they perhaps have a different view of the alternative. Forster's garden is vastly different from the kind of forest Faulkner portrays.

So I would like to offer the difference between the road, the garden, and the forest; I call forest.

--Commented on Tori's, yo.