Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Thu, 2016-05-12 07:06
The railroad from Hoke's into the woods is a branch or "spur-line" (306), "thirty miles" long, built to allow the company that is logging the Big Woods to carry the timber out from "the cutting" area to the saw mill (303). Ike and Boon use it to travel from the camp to the main rail line to Memphis.
Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Thu, 2016-05-12 07:02
Just as the theme of environmental destruction becomes more prominent in Faulkner's hunting fictions between "A Bear Hunt" and Go Down, Moses, so does the textual presence of the railroad train that runs through the big woods. "A Bear Hunt" refers to it as a "log train" (187). In "Lion" Quentin calls it "the dummy line" (69). In Moses it's called a "spur-line" (306). But by any name this is a temporary set of railroad tracks which the timber company lays down through the woods to make it easier to haul the cut trees out of the woods and to the sawmill.
Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Thu, 2016-05-12 06:51
A "landmark tree" is a tree used for navigation. This specific tree is "nine hours" (196) from De Spain's camp, in "a little glade" (198) deep within the interior of the Big Bottom; it is where Ike "relinquishes completely" to the woods, leaving his watch and compass behind in his quest to see Old Ben (197). When he realizes he is lost, the bear leads him back to the tree.
Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Thu, 2016-05-12 06:31
Sam Fathers does not live in Major de Spain's hunting camp, but builds himself "a little hut something like Joe Baker's, only stouter, tighter, on the bayou" (202) a quarter of a mile from the camp. In his log crib he stores some corn for the young pigs he raises each year.
Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Thu, 2016-05-12 06:28
When Sam Fathers moves to the big woods in Go Down, Moses he builds himself "a little hut something like Joe Baker's, only stouter, tighter, on the bayou" (202); it is a quarter of a mile from Major de Spain's hunting camp. In his log crib he stores some corn for the young pigs he raises each year. Later he builds the pen to hold and train Lion at this site.
Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Thu, 2016-05-12 06:22
This is the spot where Isaac McCaslin sees the bear for the second time. A dictionary defines "blowdown" as "a tree or trees that have been blown down by the wind"; Faulkner's narrative describes the spot as a "corridor of down timber where a tornado had passed" consisting of a "tangle of trunks and branches" (199).
Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Thu, 2016-05-12 06:13
There is a "down log" (i.e. a fallen tree) next to a "little swamp" some distance from the main hunting grounds beside which Ike sees the bear’s "crooked print" (197) as he sits down.
Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Thu, 2016-05-12 06:02
A deer-hunting 'stand' can be a structure, a platform attached to a tree that allows the hunter to wait a dozen or so feet above the ground for his prey to walk past - or the term 'stand' can simply mean a specific place on the ground, usually against a tree, where the hunter waits. In the Yoknapatawpha fictions it usually is the second kind of 'stand' that is meant. In either case, it's a safety precaution: when a group is hunting together, as is also the usual case in Faulkner's fictions, by staying at their 'stands' the hunters know where the other hunters are.
Submitted by ben.robbins@fu-... on Thu, 2016-05-12 06:00
Some distance beyond the overturned log with the bear's "print of a crooked foot" stands a "big gum tree" beside which flows a "little bayou whose black still water crept without motion out of a cane-brake, across a small clearing and into the cane again" (191). The bayou serves as a demarcation point between the Big Bottom hunting grounds and the "new and alien country" (196) of wilderness that lies beyond these grounds.
