The Bear

By
It took me a while to figure out what I was reading when I sat down with this, but after catching onto the story, I instantly saw a funny parallel. One of the shows I watched as a kid just HAD to be based off of this. The direct parallels of the bear itself, the hunt for the bear, the boy and his dog hunting the bear, the man and the dog who both die at the hands of the bear, the dog's starvation training, and so on. The association immediately made me take to this story. 
Regarding the actual text, I find it fascinating how Old Ben becomes a type of legend in the start. Everyone strives to be able to hunt him and take him down, but yet, no one ever can (until later). They also have a respectful fear of him.
"Be scared. You can't help that. But don't be afraid." is also a super powerful quote. Being scared? A good thing?? You bet. It would mean being cautious and (again) respectfully fearing what Old Ben is capable of. But being afraid is an entirely different matter, one that will get you killed.

PS: I commented on Will and Brenna's posts.

Comments

  1. Noah PalframanJanuary 22, 2018 at 10:24 PM

    Fearing a beast that has not only had stories told about his ferocious nature, but also been named out of his renown for being "unkillable"?...it makes sense from a storytelling perspective to create tension. Don't get me wrong, I love this trope in a story; the hero overcomes a challenge feared by every man to know of a legend. Honestly, had they not given Old Ben his name in the story, I feel the stakes for the characters would be much lower. Giving a bear a name, or anything that is normally unnamed, is done to solidify fear into people. Imagine if the loch ness monster were real, or the chupacabra; there would be fear instilled in everyone in their local vicinities because of the legends they formed. No animal gets a name in a movie or book if it hasn't been an anomaly or a threat to the locals.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Honest Reaction to Reading "Honest to God"

By
Originally I said in my last blog post that I liked this book, but I have sort of changed my mind. It is not that I hate it or anything, it is just weird and I don’t really agree with what John Robinson is saying most of the time. I appreciate that he is trying to write something different and new, but my problem is that some of the ideas are just a little too radical for my taste, and I disagree with him a lot. In the seventh and last chapter of the book, Robinson himself acknowledges his radicalness and writes about how he knows that this type of thought on religion is controversial. He goes on to write how all great thinkers were seen as controversial when they first started and says, “Every new religious truth comes as the destroyer of some other god”. To further prove this point, he uses the example of how Socrates was condemned as an atheist for not believing in multiple gods, and while it is true that Socrates was a great philosopher who was not seen as so when he was alive, I ...
Read more

Raphael and a man walk into Eden...

By
I'll just start off by saying Raphael is one of the three named archangels in Scripture we hear the least about, and I thoroughly enjoy just reading and seeing his name pop up. Regardless, I want to touch on Adam's recounting of his own..."birth". Take that with a grain of salt as Adam was not physically born, but rather he simply became. In truth, we should all be able to give a similar account to their first memory of consciousness and fully aware. Adam was created, but he realized he could walk, talk, and speak without first learning. Imagine being able to think clear thoughts in your native language and be a functioning individual right out of the womb. It's an incredible thought, and Adam can give a recall of this like it were yesterday...which it might have been, who knows? Aside from that, Adam could even give an account to Eve's creation. The Bible says nothing pertaining to this matter so this is where Milton does a bit of adlibbing and writes around ...
Read more

Extra blog

By
OK so, honors project! Honestly I really loved it as a whole. I said this already in the video, but I feel like I personally could've done better. I just feel like I didn't have enough time to completely process some questions and be able to give my best responses. I really enjoyed reading the O'Connor piece, which I think was everyone's favorite anyway. I love narrative stories like that, but honestly I'm glad I got to be in the Russell group. I feel like that group was the easiest to argue and answer from, honestly. As a whole, I would love to do a project like this again in later semesters. It was a lot of fun and time FLEW by.
Read more