Charles Hughes

Two of the greatest hunting stories in American Literature,Herman Melville's Moby Dick and William Faulkner's "TheBear," written not quite a hundred years apart, refl ect twodifferent stages in man's struggle against nature in the New World. InMelville's novel nature, incarnate in the shape of a great albino whale, isinvincible and believed to be immortal just as wild nature was believedto be inexhaustible in America at the middle of the nineteenth century.In Faulkner's story Old Ben, the legendary Mississippi black bear,also symbolizes nature, but, unlike Melville's white whale, the bearis mortal. What had seemed inconceivable to many at the middle ofthe nineteenth century had become all too clear by the middle of thetwentieth: Man with his increased numbers, insatiable appetites andtechnological power had gained the ability to destroy wild nature.These stories by two great American writers are fi ction, but theyconfront the reader with a tragic reality: From the moment Columbus'three small ships sighted the island of San Salvador in the Caribbeanwild nature in America was doomed. The mad captain Ahab's battlewith Moby Dick was only an episode in the epic struggle that followed;the death of Old Ben with the knife of a wild man in his heart was thefinale.

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