Milo Knowles

Faulkner Honors
Period 5
Mr. Alessandri
September 16, 2014
So He Should Have Hated and Feared the Gyre
We all hold some deep, uneasy inkling that as Charles Smithson lies in the sweetest
possession of his life, as the Dutch sailors stare in incomparable wonder at the New World, as
Sisyphus triumphantly pushes his burden to the summit, these moments of radiant perfection will
soon be extinguished. We can be sure that such moments of perfection will arise, but through
their own transience, are doomed. In the aftermath of World War I, William Butler Yeats
formulated his theory of gyres to describe this cyclical nature of perfection and destruction on
a broader, historic scale. Two decades later, as William Faulkner witnessed the rapid
industrialization of the United States, he realized that the perfection he saw in the wilderness of
the South would soon be gone. Faulkners despair over the pernicious advance of industry in
The Bear is paralleled by similar sentiments of distress in Yeats The Second Coming;
Yeats theory of gyres illuminates the natural cycle that sets the hunters in enmity with Old Ben,
creates the fearsome character, Lion, and destines the destruction of Old Ben.
Yeats description of an expanding gyre in The Second Coming illustrates the unseen
force in The Bear that transforms the hunters ritual worship of the Bear into a savage hunt for
it. In Section 1, the hunters were going not to hunt bear and deer but to keep yearly rendezvous
with the bear which they did not even intend to kill (Faulkner, 179). The hunt affirms their deep
respect for Old Ben, who holds suzerainty over the forest. Despite this reverence for the bear,
Major de Spain vows to kill Ben over the mere presumption that Ben killed his stallion: now he

has come into my house and destroyed my property, out of season too. He broke the rules (195).
It is clear that whatever ancient and immitigable rules (177), which once constituted the hunt,
hold less value now, as the loss of property is a sufficient reason for Major de Spain to void the
peaceful covenant that was established with Old Ben. The moment when the hunters set out to
kill Old Ben they have completely lost connection with the original purpose of the hunt - they
reach the critical point when the gyre becomes so wide and unstable that it collapses in on itself.
As Yeats writes, Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the
falconer (lines 1-2), illustrating how the hunters have strayed from their long established
hunting traditions, just as the falcon departs from the familiar call of the falconer. The hunters
seem to have become corrupted by the materialistic culture that corrupted Ikkemotubbe in A
Justice, and as a result, Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon
the world / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed (lines 3-5). The ceremony of innocence (line 6)
is lost, and the hunters become the antagonists of their own God.
Just as the instability and eventual collapse of the gyre in The Second Coming
illustrates the corruption of the hunt, the genesis of a sinister new gyre parallels the entrance of
the character Lion in The Bear. As Yeats sees anarchy loosed on the world, he hopes that the
Second Coming is at hand / The Second Coming! (lines 9-11), believing that God is about to
make a divine revelation. Like the proponents of the rapid industrialization in the early twentieth
century, Yeats seems to naively believe that the immense change he sees must lead towards an
unknown positive outcome. However, out of the old gyre comes a new and opposite one,
providing Yeats with premonitions of a different sort of revelation:
Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun. (11-14)
The Spiritus Mundi, or collective soul of the universe, does not foreshadow another
Christ, but instead a dark, fearsome beast. As soon as the hunters in The Bear turn their hunt
against Old Ben, a creature identical to the one Yeats describes arrives - the dog with a cold and
grim indomitable determination, with cold yellow eyes and a cold and almost impersonal
malignance like some natural force (198). The wicked force present in the new gyre, the new
industrial age, is incarnate in Lion, who is a cold, merciless beast, more mechanical than natural.
If the Bear is the apotheosis of the old, then Lion is his antichrist, the rough beast, its hour
come round at last / [that] Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born (Yeats, 21-22). Around this
beast wind shadows of the indignant desert birds, (17), the vulture-like men with plows and
axes (Faulkner, 179), who are too afraid to venture into the forest and punily gnaw at its
remains instead. It is immediately clear that Lion is a beast capable of killing Old Ben. When
Lion draws blood from Old Ben, Ike realizes that there was a fatality in it. It seemed to him that
something, he didnt know what, was beginning; had already begun (204). Like Sam Fathers,
Ike perceives that Lion represents beginning of a profoundly new era, one that reflects the cold,
pitiless, and indomitable advance of industry.
Intuitively, the reader knows that the two indomitable characters, Lion and Ben, cannot
exist in the same forest for long. Just as the image of a rough beast symbolizes the end of the
previous gyre to Yeats, the arrival of Lion foreshadows the inevitable death of Old Ben. The fact

that Old Ben is an anachronism... out of an old, dead time (179), tells the reader that although
he is elevated to the status of a deity within the woods, his fall from this status is long overdue.
Just as Yeats envisions a rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem to take control from its
predecessor, Sam predicts that Somebody is going to [kill Ben], some day (194). Although Old
Ben seems infallible to the hunters guns, it is clear that he cannot survive slow destruction of the
forest, much less the annihilator, Lion. Even a God of nature is helpless against the cosmic force
of a new gyre taking control. The perfect, almost etherial past that Old Ben represents will
undoubtedly fade, just as The twenty centuries of stony sleep / Were vexed to
nightmare (Yeats, 19-20). The reader might expect Ike, who is innately connected to nature, to
abhor Lion for his killing of Old Ben and the way of life he represents. He should have hated
and feared Lion. Yet he did not (Faulkner 204). He knows that hating Lion would be as foolish
as hating any other carnivore for following its natural instinct to kill. When Ike realizes that Old
Ben is fated to die, he would not grieve. He would be humble and proud that he had been found
worthy to be a part of it (204). The characters who truly understand nature - Sam and Ike - do
not try to tame or prevent Lion from killing Ben. Instead they allow nature to run its course.
Even the Bear seems to embrace his own destruction: [Ben] didnt strike him down. [He] caught
the dog in both arms, almost loverlike (216). While Faulkner expresses his sorrow over the
destruction of the Old, he simultaneously recognizes that death is an inherent part of the natural
cycle of nature.
Yeats theory of gyres in The Second Coming illuminates the greater significance
Faulkner suggests in The Bear: that the transmogrification of the hunt into a slaughter, the
creation of Lion, and death of Old Ben are part of a profound and universal cycle. Through the

narrative of The Bear, Faulkner attempts to make the reader see further than the death of a
bear and the dying of a dog (219), and realize the greater implications these deaths have. As
Lion, the new gyre, is born, the innocence and perfection of past ideals meet their doom.
However, it is equally critical to realize that after this tragic death the story is only halfway done,
both proverbially and through the physical pagination of the The Bear. While the death of Old
Ben seems to be an irretrievable loss, the narrative continues seamlessly into a new episode, a
new gyre. Old Bens death is not to be mourned, but to be appreciated as a perfect testament to
the wilderness and its ancient and immitigable rules which voided all regrets and brooked no
quarter (177). The raw, natural beauty of Old Bens death is best captured by Hopkins
description of the windhover as it plummets to its death: AND the fire that breaks from thee
then, a billion / Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier! (Hopkins, 10-11).

Works Cited
Hopkins, Gerard Manley. The Windhover. Bartleby. Web. 15 Sept. 2014.
<http://www.bartleby.com/122/12.html>
Yeats, William Butler. The Second Coming. Poetry Foundation. Web. 15 Sept. 2014.
<http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172062>