The Power of Myth & The Bear

Obviously there's a lot of myth in southern writing, especially Faulkner's, and I feel like whenever animals are present, the "mythical nature" is heavily present as well. We have now read two stories where a person encounters a snake and says: "Grandfather," and I think this should be explored.

What is it about snakes? What is it about grandfathers? What is it about always personifying animals? Does it make them mean more to us? Can we understand them better this way? Do certain animals represent parts of us, or parts of our world? Have they always?

I believe that Faulkner's use of "grandfather" particularly in The Bear, but also in Red Leaves, is an act of respect and reverence toward nature in general. A snake can bite and kill a human. It's "sneaky," it's fast, it's mysterious, and it's all over stories of myth and legends of mankind (ie: Bible). ALSO it's probably the most un-human of the animal kingdom. There is no "shared moment" when one looks into the eyes of a snake. They snake recognizes a human as an entirely different species, and the odds of living or dying rely completely on the snake's agenda. This makes humans nervous. We have no "control" over the snake, we don't even know how to fight them. They don't have a "call" like ducks, you can't hear them coming like deer. They put us on edge.

The reason I'm explaining all of this, is because I think that Faulkner parallels the snake to nature. For all the reasons that we are scared of nature, we are scared of snakes. Faulkner wants to show how the reason people feel like they need to take control over nature (build roads, cut trees, make factories, etc) is because they don't fully understand it, and that scares them. The innate human drive for destroying what has created them, essentially, is the simple fact that they can't comprehend it, but feel like they should be able to.

The characters that give themselves up to these snakes, and call them "grandfather" enforces a certain amount of respect that Faulkner does not believe the masses of the world have obtained yet. A grandfather is a very relatable, human thing, but is also held to a great respect, unlike "brother" which would imply nature is right on the level with man, or even "father" which implies some great respect, but is still too close to man in age and wisdom. GRANDFATHER implies wisdom obtained through many many years. Grandfather implies a very much loved, yet somehow distant source of stories and knowledge. This is the snake. The snake is the grandfather. Grandfather is nature. The characters who refer to all three things simultaneously in these lines, give themselves over to the trust they've had for nature, disregarding all other facets.

Faulkner dismembers some of the snake myths and makes his own, here, which is interesting. Perhaps he still wants the snake to represent original sin, but Faulkner interprets the original sin differently than the Bible. His take on it is more concerned with the wisdom gained from biting the fruit, not the fear of being cast out of the garden naked. His symbols are loaded and complex, but the best way to think about the snake, I believe, is a symbol for everything man cannot comprehend or prevent that occurs in nature. The choice: respect it, or spend an entire life trying to deny it's great existence.