CHAPTER IV 

Evaluating A Barthesian/Xebran Reading of "The Bear"

In this chapter, the discussion turns to the presentation of a step-by-step evaluation of the Barthesian/Xebran system. The evaluation is structured in relation to the eight basic facts and types of facts, referred to here as "criterion," that Walter Davis, in his The Act of Interpretation,¹ suggests be considered as fundamentally necessary to any interpretive act regarding the text, William Faulkner's "The Bear." The goal of the evaluation is to demonstrate how a Barthesian/Xebran reading of this text does, indeed, support the discovery of Davis' eight facts and fact types with regard to "The Bear."

In order to quantify the results of the evaluation being undertaken here, a numerical rating scale relating the level of performance of the Barthesian/Xebran reading with regard to the criteria has been devised. The rating with regard to the system's performance relative to each criterion is given first at the end of each criterion evaluation section, then the ratings are all brought together at the end of the chapter as a means of displaying the overall results of the evaluation of the Barthesian/Xebran system.

The rating scale itself ranges from "-3" to "+3", with "-3" meaning a strong negative correlation between a criterion and the reading, "0" being a totally neutral relationship, and "+3" being a very strong positive correlation. The other ratings, "-2," and "-1", on the one hand, and "+1," and "+2," on the other, represent varying degrees of negative and positive correlation, respectively. Thus a "-1" rating represents a weak negative correlation and "-2" represents a negative correlation, while a "+1" rating represents a weak positive and a "+2" represents a positive correlation.

Regarding the evaluations themselves, please note that all references in each discussion to specific lexias and their labels are in relation to the Manual Lexia and Label Databases, unless stated otherwise. Using only one of the three sets of databases (manual, punctuation, and noun phrase) is made possible by the finding discussed in CHAPTER III concerning the signifier property wherein it was shown that all the signifiers that exist in one cutting of the text, such as the manual, also exist in the other two.

¹Walter A. Davis, The Act of Interpretation: A Critique of Literary Reason, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 1-181.

Evaluating Xebra: Criterion One

Criterion one is Faulkner's use of conventions, such as: the tall tale, the hunting sketch, bildungsroman, and myth of initiation. As noted above, "use of" in this case must be strictly limited to evidence of the signifiers having been identified, and thus, presentable to any user of the database. Further, there is an assumption that such a subsequent user of the databases built for this evaluation would be responsible for recognizing the larger structure of which these semantic units are a part.

This assumption, in terms of criterion one, is a reasonable one. Literary critics, as part of their general working tool kit, are presumed to know all the previously identified, named, and defined literary conventions, reaching as far back in time and space as those which theorists, such as Plato and Aristotle, discuss with regard to the Greek dramas and poetry of their time and before. Having reached that level of knowledge, they are further presumed to be capable of recognizing these artifices when they exist in a given text.

Authors, however, who may or may not formally know, or even be vaguely aware of, these conventions, as such, are not generally obliging about leaving explicit markers in their texts tracing the conventions used. Hence, the need for a systematic approach, such as a Barthesian/Xebran reading, for uncovering the facts of a text.

However, if a critic, either using Xebra or through manual effort, produced a Barthesian reading upon which to base later criticisms of a text, there is a question of who should know what. The critic producing the later criticism and the critic producing the Barthesian reading are both held to be responsible scholars, but what each should necessarily bring to their own part of the process, that is the question. An example should clarify this.

Tall tales, according to Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia, are "A folklore genre, originating on the American frontier, in which the physical attributes, capabilities, and exploits of characters are wildly exaggerated for comic effect."² The question, then, is: if a Barthesian reader sees the following lexia:

--the long legend of corncribs broken down and rifled, of shoats and grown pigs and even calves carried bodily into the woods and devoured, and traps and deadfalls overthrown and dogs mangled and slain, and shotgun and even rifle shots delivered at point-blank range yet with no more effect than so many peas blown through a tube by a child--a corridor of wreckage and destruction beginning back before the boy was born, through which sped, not fast but rather with the ruthless and irresistible deliberation of a locomotive, the shaggy tremendous shape . . .³

should a label be produced such as "REF, Tall Tale Style, Use of descriptive language, subject material, similar to that commonly found in tall tales"?

²Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia, 3rd ed., s.v. "Tall tale."

³William Faulkner, "The Bear." in The Portable Faulkner, ed. Malcom Cowley, rev. and exp. ed. (New York: Viking Press, 1974), 198-199.

In this Barthesian/Xebran reading, the labeling of "The Bear" at no time included the creation of such a label, neither on the above lexia example, or on any of the others that could have been so labeled. The primary basis for this non-labeling lies in Barthes' stipulation (as discussed in CHAPTER II) that only two kinds of labels, those for antithetical symbolic structures and extended action sequences, should take into account structures that are larger than single atomic semantic units. Since signifiers of the type described partake in neither one of these kinds of extended structures, but, instead, are part of a different kind of extended structure, it would be inappropriate to label an entity as partaking in such.

This distinction between what is an individual atomic semantic unit and what is a molecule formed of such units is important to defining what is meant by the facts of a text from Barthes' standpoint. One could argue that the lexia quoted above, indeed, contains phrasing and semantic content that are similar to that commonly found in tall tales. However, this is a fact at the molecular, not the atomic, level of semantic units.

Certainly, Barthes himself never drew this distinction, as such. However, his practice in his reading of Sarrasine shows that, when faced with molecular versus atomic structures, he chose atomic, except when a classic rhetorical code appeared. For instance, Barthes labeled the use of the rhetorical code of prosopography in Sarrasine.⁴ There is an obvious similarity between pointing out the use of a rhetorical device, such as "drawing of a portrait," and of a convention, such as "tall tale," but even in this he was inconsistent. It was only when there was a semic value, that is, when the rhetorical code aided in conveying a sense of person or personality, that he noted it.

Semes, among other things, are used to create the impression of personality, according to Barthes. They "appear to float freely, to form a galaxy of trifling data,"⁵ but they "make sense only by coalescing ... thus creating a character's 'personality'."⁶ It is in this manner that Balzac uses the rhetorical code of portraiture as one way to create the impression of personality for characters. Barthes, then, notes both the actual seme, such as "SEM. Beauty (past)"⁷ or "SEM. Emptiness,"⁸ that is implied by the portrait drawn, as well as, the use of the portrait rhetorical code. However, he did not always do so.

⁴Roland Barthes, S/Z. trans. Richard Miller, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), 56.

⁵Ibid., 22.

⁶Ibid., 22.

⁷Ibid., 56.

⁸Ibid., 58.

In order to maintain a consistent approach, the reading here was performed in such a way as to not specifically point out uses of language at the level of molecules (such as the conventions Walter Davis enumerates). But labels for the semes that, when properly coalesced show the outline of the molecule, were generated that would allow a critic to see the convention. Below, in Table 22, is an example of such a coalescing of semes for the tall tale convention.

An interesting point about Table 22, one that a user of the Xebra databases of "The Bear" should note, is just whose "personality" is being sketched here. Ostensibly, the lexias are about either Old Ben or Lion or both, but the descriptions are being filtered through the mind of Isaac. It is Isaac's language, Isaac's view of Old Ben and Lion that the reader is encountering here.

Thus, it is Isaac who is being presented by Faulkner as seeing the world through tall tale conventions (exaggerated, supra natural ability) while it is Faulkner who is engaged in portraiture, of Old Ben and Lion, directly on the surface of the writing, and Isaac indirectly underneath the writing. Given that the reader is viewing these characters as filtered through Isaac, one of the insights into personality that one achieves concerns Isaac. The reader does not necessarily receive a reliable view of Lion and Old Ben, then, but does, however, receive a view of Isaac that is consistent throughout the text of "The Bear".

Isaac is given to hyperbole, to seeing the world as an apocalyptic, us against them, good guys versus bad guys, heroically antagonistic environment, where actions count, moral duty counts. It is a black and white world that Isaac lives in, a world drawn in large proportions, in fact, drawn larger than life--it is a world of ideal statues, all as tall and as imposing as the Statue of Liberty itself. There is no sense that his use of tall tale-like language to draw his portraits of Old Ben and Lion are meant by him (or Faulkner, for that matter) to be taken in a humorous vein, the hallmark of true tall tales. It is not funny, rather, it is serious character drawing.

This, then, would appear to mean that the reader is meant to note the irony of the language, to see the lack of mature viewpoint that Isaac has taken of the world. As Davis points out, William Faulkner, himself, at least on one occasion, noted that one needs to question the maturity, the realistic capability, of Isaac.

⁹Davis, 160.

The above discussion involves viewing the Lexia Database through the filter of the Label Database, as exemplified in Table 22, below. This is a use of the analytical aspect of the Xebra tool. Strictly speaking, it is not, itself, part of a Barthesian reading, as defined in S/Z, but is, instead, a process that is made possible by having a Barthesian reading to use as input to the analytical process. The conclusion to be drawn, then, is that there are, in fact, two processes that occur before the act of interpretation (the entering of the hermeneutic circle) for any given text.

First, there is the discovery, identification, or naming process. This is the essence of what one does when one breaks the text into lexias, then combs the lexias for the atoms of semantic content, the signifiers that form the nodes of the text's galaxy of meanings. More specifically, it is what one does when one builds the Lexia Database and the Label Database using Xebra.

Second, there is the process of hooking signifiers to signifieds. This is the analytical phase, where one repeatedly combs the contents of the Label Database for labels to be used as keys into the Lexia Database to retrieve those lexias that relate to the signifieds one is interested in pursuing. This is not an entirely determinant process, depending, as it does, on the ability of the Barthesian reader to have been precise, consistent, and complete in the reading, and on the subsequent critic's ability to explore labels that lead to fruitful results. Indeed, this process of pattern discovery through iteratively reviewing the list of codes, selecting prospective codes, then, finally, using these to retrieve lexias and all their associated labels, could be thought of as serendipitous in its outcomes, if only casually observed. However, pattern discovery is always involves noticing a repetition of elements in a series of data. In order to notice the repetition, one must be paying attention to the flow of data. Xebra's design allows for easy access to such flows of data, but the user must keep a watch for the signs of significant patterns; Xebra cannot do that for the user.

It would be possible to code a computer program to generate sets of lexias that were related by multiple labels, however, the user of such a program would have to decide which sets had significance. While Xebra at this time does not automatically generate such sets, it is a relatively simple process to create them using its database querying capability. To emulate such a query manually, as Barthes would have had to do in his implementation, would be a difficult clerical task on a small text such as Sarrasine and a very difficult one on larger, more complex texts like "The Bear." This is precisely the strength of a computer-based implementation, that is, the handling of repetitive, clerical, time-consuming tasks which consume too much of a critic's intellectual effort.

Table 22 is an example of the results of such a process of query formation and execution. It shows that two SEM labels, "Indomitable" and "Irresistible," along with one SYM label, "Untamed Nature," reveal a pattern of lexias that participates in the conventional use of tall tale language and subject material. Any critic viewing this table could clearly make the assertion that Faulkner's tale abounds in the use of tall tale conventions. Further, such a critic could then go further by fitting in this use with an overarching interpretation of the text.

The data for Table 22 were generated from the Lexia and Label Databases by using the two SEM labels and the SYM label as keys for several queries into the Label Database to find the numbers of those lexias that which were labeled by at least two of the key labels. These lexia numbers were then used to retrieve the lexias themselves from the Lexia Database. Finally, a report was generated through the database engine that presented the lexias and their labels.

TABLE 22

TALL TALE LEXIA EXAMPLE

^aFaulkner, 220.

^bIbid., 199.

^cIbid., 220.

^dIbid., 220.

^eIbid., 238.

The next three conventions that Davis mentions, hunting sketch, bildungsroman, and myth of initiation, do not have to be discovered via semes. Instead, there are REF codes that, while not directly corresponding to the three conventions, certainly serve as reasonable analogs. Once one has retrieved the appropriate lexias via the REF codes, then pattern discovery can begin.

This process, similar to those already discussed, begins with the analyst/critic noting the other codes that are associated with the retrieved lexias. The next step is to build queries from this list of codes that will return tables containing lexias that are also labeled with these other codes. Next one would scan these tables for patterns. One such pattern might be that certain lexias with one of the initial REF codes discusses hunting in the context of initiation of a young Isaac. While tables are the default form for data representation in the database engine, patterns often are more readily apparent through other data representations such as graphs, so one might also consider building graphs of the results to look for visual clues.

The patterns using the hunting sketch conventions are generally discernable in the evaluation databases by querying the Label Database for the REF labels, "Code of Hunting" and "Code of Hunters." Such a query results in ninety-three lexia numbers being retrieved out of the six-hundred-thirty lexias found in the Manual Label Database, or roughly one-sixth of the total. The sheer number of references to hunting establishes the possible link between "The Bear" and the use of the hunting sketch conventions.

It is, of course, still only a "possible link" at this point since the numbers alone do not, in and of themselves, prove that Faulkner's prose in any way reflects such conventions. It is possible he wrote on hunting in a unique, Faulknerian mode, though not likely, given Western writing tradition. Examination of the retrieved lexias leaves no doubt in the matter.

There are scenes of hunters around the camp fire, discussing the lore of hunting and scenes of senior hunters training novices; there are numerous references to the mores of hunting, as well as, references to the call of the pure, unadulterated wilderness versus the terrible ruinations of domesticated life; and finally, there are several scenes of actual hunting sequences. These all are part and parcel of a hunting sketch.

Bildungsroman is formally defined in Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia as "a type of novel, common in German literature, which treats the personal development of a single individual, usually in youth."¹⁰ There are thirty-six separate lexia numbers referenced in the Manual Label Database by the REF label, "Code of Ages of Manhood Attainment." Using that as a starting point, one can quickly retrieve, not just those thirty-six lexias, but also many others that are concerned directly with Isaac's development, from his birth in the year 1867 A.D., through to his death eighty years later.

Scanning the lexias, one finds that the vast majority are confined to the time period between Isaac's tenth birthday in 1877, and his twenty-first birthday in 1888; the crucial growing up years. So, there is ample evidence to be garnered via the Label Database for Faulkner's use of the bildungsroman convention.

Similarly, there is evidence of Faulkner's use of the myth of initiation, which is actually a sub-theme of the material contained in the previous two conventions--the hunting sketch and the bildungsroman. This relationship of the use of initiation myth to the others is discoverable by comparing the set of lexia numbers retrieved regarding the first two uses of convention with those retrieved through the REF codes "Code of Rites of Passage" and "Code of Rites and Rituals." The lexia number sets intersect, with these REF codes coinciding frequently with those related to hunting sketch and Bildungsroman conventions.

Table 23, below, contains lexias that illustrate this intersection. They were retrieved using the two REF codes shown, but, in fact, they were also labeled in terms of their signification of hunting and Isaac's age, where appropriate. A critic viewing these should quickly see all three conventions (hunting sketch, Bildungsroman, and myth of initiation) at work, as well as, the fact that initiation myth is interwoven with the other two.

¹⁰Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia, 3rd ed. s.v. "Bildungsroman." 

TABLE 23

MYTH OF INITIATION EXAMPLE

^aFaulkner, 213.

^bIbid., 296.

^cIbid., 297.

^dIbid., 313.

It should be noted that other pertinent lexias can be retrieved via the REF label, "Code of Fatherhood," because this label was used to mark those points where Sam Fathers initiates Isaac into various aspects of manhood. This is an example of the difficulty of attaining consistent and complete labeling. Despite all the aid currently provided by Xebra, it is still possible to forget marking a particular lexia with all appropriate labels. CHAPTER V will address a variety of enhancements to Xebra, including a possible approach to lowering this particular risk.

In summary, then, it is clear that the use of these conventions can be discovered and traced via the Lexia and Label databases created in the Barthesian/Xebran reading undertaken for this evaluation of the system. To do so involves relatively sophisticated manipulation of the basic data points in the databases, both the labels and the lexias, including retrieving, ordering, and scanning of the results, either in tabular or graphic form.

While it is true that these actions are not directly done by Xebra, as such, requiring as they do intellectual effort beyond current computer science knowledge, they are significantly supported by the tool. Not having the tool would make the discovery of the trace of these conventions much more difficult and thus making it more problematic as to proving their existence.

On the rating scale described in the beginning this chapter, a score of "+2" seems reasonable. The information is there in the databases, but the analyst/critic must do some good analysis work in order to discover it. The reading does not automatically tell the critic that these conventions are, in fact, in use in the text. However, the system does support such analysis very strongly.

Evaluating Xebra: Criterion Two

Criterion two, names and their significance, when properly met, results in giving the critic undertaking the act of interpretation upon "The Bear," not only an intellectually interesting, but, also, a necessary insight into the workings of the text. A trace through the labels, with their accompanying notes, shows why this is true.

Starting with Lexia Two, there are labels related to the names of the characters. Boon Hogganbeck, Lion, and Old Ben, are all introduced in this lexia, if not directly by name (for the reader is not told Lion's name for many pages yet), then, at least by attribute: man or beast, plebeian or royalty, tainted or taintless, corruptible or incorruptible, of great value or only of some value. As it turns out, their names all relate to their attributes, a fact that, as it happens in this instance, is traced most fully in the notes field in the Label Database.

Boon Hogganbeck (thus, a caller of hogs, as well as, a blessing) is noted to be a member of plebeian humankind, but related to the royal. As such, he is corruptible, he is a man, he is not without taint, and he has some value or worth. The name Boon, while directly calling up a seme of worth or value, also has a different connotation, coming from its participation in the decidedly plebeian term "boondoggle," which refers to a wasted enterprise. This aspect of Boon's name brings to the foreground the fact that he is a tainted, corruptible, plebeian blessing, at best.

All of these attributes of the name "Boon" are related to why, at least, in part, the SEM, "Worth," the REF, "Code of Class Hierarchy," the SYM, "Domesticated Nature," the SYM, "Antithesis: Ideal/Non-Ideal," the SYM, "Antithesis: Wilderness Land and Beasts/Hunters," and the SYM, "Mother of God," are applied to Lexia 2 in the Manual Label Database. The notes on these labels make this clear, though no label, specifically, is addressed to "Boon," as name.

First, the reader knows Boon has some worth, for that is stated, thus the SEM, "Worth." Second, the reader knows, since it is stated, that Boon, as signified by "Hogganbeck" (caller of hogs), is of a plebeian strain of blood, a strain that can fail, can do wrong, can participate in "boondoggles", thus, the REF, "Code of Class Hierarchy." Third, as one connotation of "caller of hogs" implies, Boon has, at least, one foot firmly planted on the domestic side of nature, the tame side, thus, the SYM, "Domesticated Nature." Fourth, because he is a blessing, a good thing of some value, a holder of some royal blood, but also a plebeian, a tainted and corrupted man, he participates as a mediation point for both antitheses. Fifth, and last, because of what is learned later about his role as "mother" to Lion, as well as, the connotations of his name as a blessing, a person of value, the SYM, "Mother of God" applies. He is a "Mary," or "Mother of God," to Lion's role as "Son of God."

The dog in Lexia 2 has the name Lion (learned much later in the text), and is, thus, a citation, a seme for royalty, as well as, for Christ, who has been often associated with the Lion, as well as, the Lamb. Lion, the reader is told, is a beast. He is of that same royal strain of blood which runs in both Old Ben and Sam Fathers. Thus, like them, he is taintless and incorruptible. His name, as well as, the narrative's own insistence, contribute to the REF, "Code of Class Hierarchy," applying to Lexia 2. It also contributes to the REF, "Code of Godliness." for the same reasons.

Throughout the text, Lion is Sam Father's son, Sam is God, Father of All, Boon is the mere plebeian who is allowed the "boon" of being the Mother of God. Wherever it was appropriate, labels such as, "Code of the Bible" and "Code of Godliness," were applied when Lion's name was mentioned. "Appropriate" in this context is when Lion was acting in a godly or biblical way, or when he was acting as the son of Sam, who was acting in a godly, biblical way.

Old Ben (royal, immortal, taintless, and incorruptible beast) has one of the best names of all, a name that Faulkner surely spent time researching. "Ben," in Scotland, refers to the second room or interior room, of a two room cottage. It is the private room for the family; its spiritual center. Given the Scottish and Protestant nature of many of the settlers of Mississippi, this is particularly appropriate. Add to this the Christian Biblicalness of the name "Benjamin" (and all of the Bible's tales of same), then the spiritual, holy nature of Old Ben is clearer still. Further, "Old" confers a sense of Ben as being holy, ancient, wise, and spiritual, as well.

The two names, along with actions and capabilities reported of Old Ben, lead to the SYM, "Holy Spirit Hidden Within," being applied wherever he was obviously behaving in a manner of such a being. However, whenever the name, "Old Ben," is used, it is not inappropriate to think it connotes such a symbol. As for the other labels, Old Ben's royal blood adds to the REF, "Code of Class Hierarchy," while his participation in godliness adds to the REF, "Code of Godliness," and to the antithetical structures of the text.

Finally, there is Sam Fathers. The references this name participates in are numerous, with the biblical sources appearing predominant. For one, there is Samson, a character right out of a tall tale in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, a character of gigantic, heroic stature, who is taller, more powerful than any mortal. For another, there is Samuel the prophet, another character from the same source. These are two references that take the reader back to the Bible, and, thus, causing the reader to think in spiritual, godly terms when the name "Sam Fathers" is used, and they are both from the first name. The last name is just as fruitful in Barthesian pluralness.

"Fathers," as an anglicized Native American name, refers immediately to all of the Native American lore concerning spiritualness, to the role of Native American fathers in bringing spiritual, supernatural knowledge to their sons. Yet also it adheres to the designation of "God as Father" in the Christian Bible, a God who is father to many, hence, a plural father. Given all these godly connotations of "Sam Fathers" as a name, the REFs, "Code of Godliness" and "Code of Class Hierarchy," and the SYM, "One Father of All (God)," are necessarily attached to Lexia 2.

Lexia 3, in the Manual Lexia Database, introduces Isaac as a sixteen year-old, "man's" hunter. There are no labels that are name-based for "Isaac" at this point, though some appear later in the Label Database, when there are obvious activities, references, symbols, semes, and hermeneutics that are directly, or indirectly, illuminated by the fact of his name. The first such reference, and nearly the last, is coded for Lexia 397 in the Manual Lexia Database:

and McCaslin 'Ah:' and he 'Yes. If He could see Father and Uncle Buddy in Grandfather He must have seen me too. --an Isaac born into a later life than Abraham's and repudiating immolation: fatherless and therefore safe declining the altar because maybe this time the exasperated Hand might not supply the kid--' and McCaslin 'Escape:' and he 'All right. Escape.¹¹

The text makes the reference obvious; the REF, "Code of the Bible," is inescapable. However, it would be remiss for any analyst/critic using these databases to not realize that, wherever the name "Isaac," or any anaphoric reference to Isaac is made, then there is also an implicit reference to the Biblical code of "Isaac." In Barthes' example in S/Z, he does not always use the label "SEM. Femininity," wherever the name "Sarrasine" occurs. But certainly, a critic who is performing an act of interpretation for Sarrasine using Barthes' label set must keep in mind Barthes' pointing out the relationship as he did in Lexia 1.

Clearly, then, as signifiers, the names of the prime characters in "The Bear" are caught in the Label Database, and, thus, are useable as such by a critic interpreting "The Bear" with this database as a repository of the basic facts of the text. Davis' second assertion regarding the need for knowing the meanings of these names is, thus, fully met by this Barthesian/Xebran reading.

In rating the system in regard to this criterion, a "+3" is appropriate, because the facts concerning the names as signifiers are, indeed, directly visible in the databases due to the Barthesian/Xebran reading. This is as strong a positive correlation as is possible. All an analyst/critic must do is read the reading.

¹¹Ibid., 277-278.

Evaluating Xebra: Criterion Three

Analyzing various use of language and image patterns, as Davis requires, is quite possible using the databases built during a Barthesian/Xebran reading and the analysis tools of the database and spreadsheet engines of Xebra, assuming the Barthesian reader has labeled all the appropriate atomic nodes. The task here is to show that this is, indeed, the case for this Barthesian/Xebran reading of "The Bear."

Figure 2, below, shows one such set of nodes, an image in "The Bear," captured in the SEM, "Destructive Force," plotted against the five sections of the narrative. Figure 3, below, is another example, the use of language to convey the sense, if not the exact image, of blindness, also plotted against the five sections.

FIGURE 2: USE OF LANGUAGE: "Destructive Force" IMAGE

FIGURE 3: USE OF LANGUAGE: SENSE OF "Blindness" IMAGE

The first graph, Figure 2, clearly shows that there are numerous usages of the "destructive force" image, usages which are rather evenly distributed across the sections. An analyst, viewing this graph, reading the associated lexias, and noting the other labels given to each of them, would probably note, immediately, that "destructive force" is an important theme within "The Bear." Further examination would reveal that the theme of "fools" is also closely allied to it, being either a label on the same lexias as "destructive force," or on ones directly on either side of it. An interpretation of "The Bear" that did not take into account the obvious statement being made here of the relationship of destructive force to foolery, whether wielded by the hands of self-styled aristocrats, such as the Southern Generals of the Civil War, or mere plebeians, such as Boon Hogganbeck, would certainly be remiss.

The second graph, Figure 3, shows that language conveying a sense of blindness is distributed across all five sections, but not evenly at all. Section III has from four to thirty times as many references as the other four sections. In addition, there is the classic rise through to the middle section, than a falling off. An analyst, looking at this distribution, and reading the actual lexias involved, should ask questions such as: "Who is being blind here, one or more of the characters and/or the reader?" or "Does anyone ever regain their sight?" For instance, in Lexia 245 of the Manual Lexia Database, there is a distinct seme of blindness:

motionless, his eyes open but no longer looking at any of them, while the doctor examined him and drew the blankets up and put the stethoscope back into his bag and snapped the ag and only the boy knew that Sam too was going to die.¹²

The seme works in, at least, two ways. First, Sam has his eyes open, but he is not looking at anyone in the room. But the implication (from Isaac's view, as the reader is given the report) is that he is looking at and seeing some person or some object somewhere, probably, supernaturally. Sam is, thus, not blind, though the people around him might rightly assume that he no longer is seeing in the normal human sense. Second, Isaac "sees" that Sam is going to die, but nobody else sees or knows this, apparently, including even Sam ("...only the boy knew ..."¹³).

¹²Ibid., 245.

¹³Ibid., 245.

An interesting question of epistemology comes into play here. Does Isaac know that Sam is going to die due to some supernatural, spiritual connection, or does he see that Sam is going to die because Isaac, in his own mind, has decided that it is only fitting that Sam do so, to complete the symbolism, the myth, that Isaac seems to be living within? In other words, is Isaac really the blind person here? Is he incapable of seeing any reality other than the which one he has constructed out of mythic terms or figures?

An analyst/critic would have to probe this question and come to some conclusion. But the point to be made here, in terms of this Barthesian/Xebran reading, is that a careful reading of the lexia, guided by the labeling attached to it, leads the analyst to ask deep questions (important and correct questions, it is hoped).

A note on definition: image and use of language are distinguished here by categorizing "use of language" as the general term, and "image" as the specific term. More definitively, "imagery" is a particular "use of language to represent descriptively things, actions, or even abstract ideas."¹⁴ That is, image is defined to be an extended, graphically oriented description, often with direct reference to that which is being portrayed, while a use of language is anything that one can do with language. Among other things, it is a citing of a theme by the use of merely a few key words, without a direct reference to what they sketch, only an implication.

For example, Lexia 206 in the Manual Lexia Database is labeled with SEM, "Destructive Force," and SEM, "Fools":

And the first day on stand this year, the first morning in camp, the buck ran right over Boon; he heard Boon's old pump gun go whow. whow. whow. whow. whow. and then his voice: "God damn, here he comes! Head him! Head him!" and when he got there the buck's tracks and the five exploded shells were not twenty paces apart.¹⁵

¹⁴Literary Terms, rev. and enlrgd. ed. (1975), s.v. "imagery".

¹⁵Faulkner, 236.

It is clear that there is a picture being painted here of attempted, but foolishly failed, destructive force in action. The image is of a buck heading right at Boon, close enough so that "any fool could hit him" as the old saying goes, but not this fool. Boon rapidly expends five cartridges on the buck coming directly at him without drawing blood. Semic citing of Boon in terms of foolery and destructive force is common in "The Bear." He is described, for instance, as attempting to shoot a former slave, but hitting, instead, everything but the object of his wrath. Finally, "The Bear" ends with this image from the last few sentences, the last words of the narrative:

Then he saw Boon, sitting, his back against the trunk, his head bent, hammering furiously at something on his lap. What he hammered with was the barrel of his dismembered gun, what he hammered at was the breech of it. The rest of the gun lay scattered about him in a half-dozen pieces while he bent over the piece on his lap his scarlet and streaming walnut face, hammering the disjointed barrel against the gun-breech with the frantic abandon of a madman. He didn't even look up to see who it was. Still hammering, he merely shouted back at the boy in a hoarse strangled voice: "Get out of here! Don't touch them! Don't touch a one of them! They're mine!"¹⁶

Fools, wielding destructive force in the tall tale conventions and the hunting sketch conventions, are typically not effective at reaching their goals, of completing any meaningful quest. "The Bear" certainly plays out these conventions in full in terms of Boon.

Just as clearly, the following lexia from the Manual Lexia Database, illustrates the technique of using but a few key words to convey a sense of blindness:

He ranged the summer woods now, green with gloom, if anything actually dimmer than they had been in November's gray dissolution, where even at noon the sun fell only in windless dappling upon the earth which never completely dried and which crawled with snakes--moccasins and water-snakes and rattlers, themselves the color of the dappled gloom so that he would not always see them until they moved . . . .¹⁷

The image painted here is, ostensibly, the look and feel of the wilderness woods in summer as opposed to the fall. However, the implication is that both seasons result in a certain blindness for the traveler, making seeing difficult in both seasons. In fact, it is even stated that it is harder to see in the summer than it is in the late fall.

If one were to relate this back to an analogy often drawn between the seasons of the year with that of the "seasons" of a person's life, than what is being said here is that a person in their "summer" is blind, perhaps involuntarily, to what is reality; they are not as cognizant of hazards ("snakes--moccasins and water-snakes and rattlers"¹⁸) as they ought to be. At another level, the snake, in Christian mythology, is linked to Satan and to the Fall (Original Sin). Thus, in the summer of one's life, one is prone to blindness in terms of the ultimate realities: the hazards that will condemn one's soul to Hell.

¹⁶Ibid.,319-320.

¹⁷Ibid., 209-210.

¹⁸Ibid., 209-210.

What should be clear, given the above, is that an analyst, having access to a completely, consistently, and precisely labeled set of lexias and possessing an appropriate set of analysis tools, has a reasonable expectation of tracing the use of language and images in a text. This is, of course, precisely the position a critic is meant to occupy once a Barthesian reading is complete.

Taking into account the above qualifications, the rating of the system in regard to this criterion should be a strong "+1" or weak "+2." The system does not return to the analyst/critic the information desired coded directly in the database, however, through relatively sophisticated analysis, the information can be discovered using the analysis tools built into Xebra.

Evaluating Xebra: Criterion Four

Criterion four requires that the user of Xebra be able to engage in a process of comparing, contrasting, and generally relating sequences of events (such as the patterns of questing, relinquishing, and bequesting) across the five sections, including their ironical attributes, through the use of the databases and the analysis tools that go with them. Again, it must be noted that the successful carrying out of this task is first dependent upon a complete, precise, and consistent labeling of the text. Given this, then an analyst can, indeed, do the required pattern recognition and interpretation, as the data reveals.

For instance, the following graph, Figure 4, shows acts of questing, relinquishment, and bequesting in relation to each other, quantitatively, across the five sections. The questing action is shown in four ways: questing, as such, and then in three sub-actions: "Man/Bear Confrontation," "To Travel," and "To Earn." The questing is divided largely as an artifact of the what and how of the labeling process.

What was being labeled were action sequences; how these were being labeled was in terms of signification at the most general level. Thus, while it is true that Isaac quested in his two trips to discover the heirs of his Grandfather's will, these action sequences were labeled as "To Travel," not "To Quest." The choice of label term is obviously an important one, since the object is to communicate findings of fact, with the choice of label term possibly becoming a hindrance, rather than a help. The problem lies in choosing the most appropriate term for conveying the essences of the various significations of the signifier.

There are, however, possible solutions to this. CHAPTER V explores future enhancements to the Barthesian/Xebran process which address problems that became apparent through the current execution and evaluation of the system.

As for the evaluation, the three action sequences of "To Travel," "Man/Bear Confrontation," and "To Earn," all fit under the general rubric of "quest." This fact was neither accident nor coincidence. As the primary hypothesis behind the Barthesian methodology asserts, these sequences are real (realizable, notable, citable, nameable) entities or signifiers that do not move or disappear between readings. They are concretely there. It is only in the possible enumerations of signification that problems can arise. Thus, a critic, carefully analyzing the list of ACTs generated in this reading, should be able to meet Walter Davis' conditions for the pre-interpretative act concerning action sequences in "The Bear."

In order to make the following discussion clearer, another possibly disruptive relationship needs to be made explicit. The term "inheritance" is used interchangeably with Davis' term, "bequest." This, like "quest," above, is an artifact of how the actions were labeled. There is a denotative and a connotative similarity between the two terms, but, as in all such similarities among mere words of a language, the match is inexact. In this instance, "inheritance" is a more general term than "bequest."

Further complicating the analysis at this stage is the fact that "bequesting" was not labeled as an ACT, per se. However, as an example of the flexibility of the Barthesian system, the REF label, "Code of Inheritance," does, in fact, coincide with what is the action of bequesting in "The Bear." This problem, then, is an excellent example of both the flexible power of the Barthesian system and the complications that arise through incomplete, imprecise, and inconsistent labeling practices. As noted previously, CHAPTER V introduces further enhancements to Xebra that might alleviate these complications even more thoroughly than the current system is capable of managing.

As to the proof that the Label Databases do, indeed, capture the essence of Davis' requirement of having the facts of the actions of Quest, Bequest, and Relinquishment established prior to the act of interpretation, Figure 4, "Quest, Bequest, Relinquishment," starts the process. Figure 4 contains a graph presenting, at an abstract, quantitative level, the degree of participation in each Section of each action sequence Davis mentions.

FIGURE 4: QUEST, BEQUEST, RELINQUISHMENT

Figure 4 presents strong evidence that Section I sets up all three action types, with questing taking the predominant role, fifty-six references to ten for inheritance, and three for relinquishment. The three sub-quest types also are all represented, with the "Man/Bear Confrontation" predominating, thirty-five references to eleven for "To Travel," and ten for "To Earn."

In Section II, the relative status of the six categories of action (three main, three sub-types) stays the same. Three either disappear or nearly so, with the focus being primarily "Man/Bear Confrontation" and "Inheritance," though, the former predominates over the latter, two to one.

Section III is practically all "Man/Bear Confrontation" action, though the other two main actions, "Inheritance" and "Relinquishment" are still present.

Section IV essentially ignores five of the action sequences, concentrating heavily on "Inheritance," with much smaller, but nearly equal amounts, of "Questing" and "Relinquishment." The "Man/Bear Confrontation" drops out.

Section V returns to the pattern of "Questing" predominating over the other two major actions, with the "Man/Bear Confrontation" barely nudging out "To Earn" as the major sub-action within the "Quest" action.

From a critical analysis point of view, there are a great many questions raised by the graph in Figure 4, such as the order of the actions or who was doing or involved in each. The graph gives an overview sight into the quantitative relationship within and across the sections, without revealing any deeper relationships. Such questions as these would have to be answered either by graphing the same data differently, such as by lexia number sequence for each action type, or by actually reading the lexias or perusing the other labels associated with each lexia.

However, Figure 4 alone does present strong evidence of the overwhelming aspect of "Quest" as an action, and, in particular, the "Man/Bear Confrontation." This would direct the attention of a following critic toward tracing the lexia sequence of the "Man/Bear Confrontation," that is, studying each lexia and its associated labels, because these lexias are clearly central to the action of the narrative.

For example, turning one's attention to just one aspect of quest action type, reveals an interesting relationship. A quick perusal of the lexias labeled with the REF, "Code Of Earned Status," and the ACT, "To Earn," reveals that Isaac is often involved with both. By forming a list of only those lexias that are labeled with these two codes and which involve Isaac, one can see that Isaac's personal quest in "The Bear" is associated with the attainment of a particular status. Isaac is consistently driving to be a man's hunter, that is, to have all the attributes of a truly complete man of the wilderness who is attuned to it in all of its aspects (to know all of its inhabitants, plant and animal, and to know all of its secret ways), and, finally, to be himself accepted as part of the whole of it.

Thus, analyzing the relationship of a set of codes produced via the Barthesian/Xebran process, reveals a "fact of the text" that could be crucial to acts of interpretation regarding "The Bear." Figure 5, below, shows the distribution of the references and actions involving Isaac in terms of his quest. This is followed by an analysis of the graph's implications.

FIGURE 5:IKE'S QUEST

The graph in Figure 5 reveals that Section I and Section V are the heart of the matter in terms of Isaac's personal quest. In Section I, the nature of his quest is first defined, while in Section V, one is given a sense of its end, beginning with his reminiscing on Ash's response to his having killed his first deer, to his finding Boon.

The flashback to Ash and the resulting misadventure with a yearling bear is the Section V passage labeled with the REF, "Code of Earned Status." This passage functions as a reminder of Isaac's personal quest for status, centering as it does on his first major accomplishment toward the end which he sought, an accomplishment considered so important that Sam Fathers initiated him into the brotherhood of hunters as his apprentice. But the glory of that accomplishment is undercut by the foolish (humorous only in retrospect) adventure that he shared with Ash in their encounter with the bear.

This reminiscence by Isaac presages his own pending misadventure, one that is, perhaps, even more dangerous physically than the earlier one, yet carrying strong overtones of even greater danger than mere death. Isaac nearly rouses a snake to the attacking point, a snake that is anything but a yearling, which is instead "the old one, the ancient and accursed about the earth."¹⁹ Isaac avoids, this time, at least, the catastrophe of death, a death that implies falling to Satan (the snake), only to move on to his discovery of Boon (king of fools), hammering uselessly at his useless gun, a gun he never could use well, even when it was all in one piece. So we, as readers, know (even if Isaac does not) that his personal quest has pitfalls--he can end in foolishness, suffering a plebeian death, gaining but a plebeian share of this world, or, worse: he can end totally corrupted by Satan himself, thus lost forever.

¹⁹Ibid., 318.

As for the patterns of "Bequesting," if one peruses the list of lexia numbers related to the "To Travel" sequences and the "Inheritance" references and symbols, there is a certain pattern of overlap that is noticeable, a pattern of interest relating to Isaac, bequests, and questing. But first, one must have the list before one can peruse it.

As discussed in CHAPTER III one can construct a list which contains the lexia numbers of lexias that are labeled with any one of two or more labels in Xebra by entering an "OR" query against the Label Database. In this case, one must enter an "OR" query against the Label Databases that will retrieve all records that have either "Inheritance" or "To Travel" in the appropriate field.

A scan of the resulting list makes three areas of overlap apparent. After retrieving the lexias involved in these overlaps from the Lexia Database, a critic must then read each lexia. Upon doing so, one learns that the first such overlap lexia is concerned with Isaac's Grandfather having inherited slaves and traveling to New Orleans to get a wife for one of them. However, one learns that the other two are specifically about Isaac and his quest for the two grandchildren of his Grandfather in order to deliver the Grandfather's bequest of $1,000 in gold.

Table 24, below, is a report generated from the two lexias that involve Isaac, travel, and inheritance. A discussion of the report follows after the table.

TABLE 24

ISAAC: INHERITANCE (BEQUEST) AND TRAVEL (QUEST)

Reading the associated lexias, Lexia 351 and Lexia 371, in the report above, reveals that Isaac's travels are, indeed, a quest, one related to his Grandfather's sins. These sins include fathering a child with one of his own slaves, then, further compounding the problem by fathering yet another child with the offspring of the first liaison. These were sins that resulted in suicides, broken families, lost children, destroyed lives, not to mention, Isaac's own questing for a place in the world separate from that which was bequeathed him by his father and his grandfather.

In other words, there are quests within quests operating here, and all turn, in one fashion or another, on the misbehavior of one man. This man, this character, is off-stage at the time of the action of the narrative, being long since dead and buried and thus, quit of the problems he generated for his children and his grandchildren and their children down through the generations . . . perhaps unto the seventh generation.

In "The Bear," the reader is not told just how many generations are to be tainted by this man, though certainly, there are the three discussed in the narrative, and by implication, all those that arise between the end of the narrative and Isaac's death in the late 1940's. Thus, the human race is condemned to seemingly endless repetitions of misdeeds by some small number of individuals, perhaps only one, followed by generations of penance and penalty suffering. A bleak outlook, yes, but one heavily supported, underscored, and returned to, again and again, by the text.

Before moving to the next criterion, a point concerning how the overlap of inheritance (bequest) and travel (quest) was discovered is in order. This discovery involved a particular kind of search of the Label and Lexia Databases. This search was based on terms given by Davis' criterion four. A proper question might be: how would a user of Xebra know to do that search if the user was not given the search keys? The proper response is that Xebra is a tool, a tool that can aid in the discovery of answers when given questions, questions properly formulated, questions that are the responsibility of the critic to formulate, then ask. Such questions form in the critic's mind after scanning the data and noticing points to reflect upon, patterns of intersection and skew. Thus, Xebra does not ask or state questions; an analyst/critic asks questions. Strictly speaking, Xebra does not answer questions either. Again, it is up to the analyst/critic as a user of Xebra to determine from the query responses what an answer might be. So, like Walter Davis in the Act of Interpretation, the assumption must be made that the would-be dancer in the hermeneutic circle has sufficient power to bring to the task in order to first unearth (to label in a Barthesian world) and understand the preliminary data gathered from the text.

What is important to note here is that one is led, as an analyst/critic, to this discovery of Isaac's quest and its denouement through the simple clues of the labels attached to just a few lexias. This is certainly proof that criterion four, which requires the critic to have unraveled the secrets of the action sequences before attempting an act of interpretation, is very much within the realm of possibility, given Xebra and the Barthesian methodology.

In the rating system, the score here for the Barthesian/Xebran reading is a strong "+2." While the basic facts necessary to meeting Davis' requirements are not directly available from the databases, they are certainly readily discernable via a relatively simple analysis of the data in those databases.

Evaluating Xebra: Criterion Five

Criterion five, the role of structures of myth and ritual in Ike's development, as with the others, depends in the first place on the accuracy and completeness of the coding done. In the second, it depends on the ability of the analyst/critic to comprehend the data.

As to the data, if one were to look over the list of codes found in Tables 17-21, CHAPTER III, one should see that several codes are most likely pertinent:

1. Code of Ages of Manhood Attainment;

2. Code of the Always Already Known;

3. Code of Heroic Antagonists;

4. Code of Hunters;

5. Code of Hunting;

6. Code of Rites of Passage;

7. Code of Rites and Rituals;

8. Code of the Sixth Sense;

9. Gnomic Codes;

10. Heart As Truth Knower;

11. Mythology.

All of these codes lead an analyst/critic to lexias that are concerned with either myth or ritual. In particular, the codes "Ages of Manhood Attainment," "Rites of Passage," "Hunting," and "Hunters" key on lexias that are specifically related to Isaac's development. These lexias represent his direct (usually his knowing and approving) participation in a rite of initiation and learning, since doing so is necessary (Isaac believes) for success in his personal quest for a status (separate from and superior to) that which his forbears and his contemporaneous relatives would have him take as his own.

The other codes are more abstract, less directly related to Isaac's consenting passage through mythic and ritualistic processes. Instead, they are reflective of his acquiring aphoristic knowledge and beliefs that are rooted in some mythic past. For instance, the "Always Already Known" code is attached to lexias that reflect his belief in a body of knowledge that is accessible, from birth, through the mind; Jung's archetype knowledge base of all that mankind has experienced and known. He is connected to a mythic world through his always already known knowledge, but it is not clear that he realizes that this is a knowledge base that not everyone can tap, at least knowingly, nor that not everyone agrees that there is such a knowledge base.

For instance, the following passage, Lexia 300 in the Manual Lexia Database (which, as it happens, is reachable via both the "Always Already Known" code and the "Heart As Truth Knower" code) is a classic example:

And I know what you will say now: That if truth is one thing to me and another thing to you, how will we choose which is truth? You don't need to choose. The heart already knows. He didn't have His Book written to be read by what must elect and choose, but by the heart, not by the wise of the earth because maybe they don't need it or maybe the wise no longer have any heart, but by the doomed and lowly of the earth who have nothing else to read with but the heart. Because the men who wrote His Book for Him were writing about truth and there is only one truth and it covers all things that touch the heart.²⁰

Certainly McCaslin's response, "So these men who transcribed His Book for Him were sometimes liars . . .,"²¹ is instructive for its lack of enthusiasm for the logic of Isaac's argument, a logic grounded on the notion of an innate truth knower hidden away in every person's heart.

²⁰Ibid., 257-258.

²¹Ibid.

But even more instructive concerning Isaac's development (in terms of structures of myth and ritual) than any of the eleven codes listed above, are probably the antithesis codes, particularly, the "Ideal/Non-Ideal Nature" antithesis structure, of which Isaac is an integral part. In fact, he is frequently the point of mediation for the two terms: twenty-one lexias out of twenty-nine lexias labeled with the antithesis code of "Ideal/Non-Ideal Nature" couple with "Mediation" in the Manual Label Database, to be precise.

Isaac obviously is not an aware participant in this antithetical structure, but readers can see how, as he plays his role in the structure across the five sections, he consistently attempts to move towards his goal of a status with which he can live, while attempting to be assured of his oneness with the moral principles that he holds dear.

Two sets of lexias in the Manual Lexia Database drawn from near, and at the end of Section III, respectively, all of which bear the label for the "Antithesis of Ideal/Non-Ideal Nature" with Isaac as mediation point in the unfolding dialectic, illustrate the point.

These lexias are not chosen to illustrate the ability of tracing Isaac's development in terms of mythic, ritualistic concepts, completely at random. For it is clear, from Walter Davis' discussion of "The Bear," especially, in the section, "Dialectical Poetics,"²² that it is in these lexias that the moment (drawn vividly, yet seen as if through a veil, for there exist actions which are neither spoken of nor portrayed on the set, that happen off-stage) at the end of Section III that is the defining moment in Isaac's (and Boon's) development.

Davis sees the moment as timeless, thus, part of an impossible to maintain, return to, live in, world.²³ In the analysis that follows, it is seen as the moment in which Isaac's development is frozen, the point at which he has attained all the skills, all the knowledge, that he will ever attain, and then it is stopped, held in time, and he is forever condemned to attempt to return to that moment, to relive, to change that moment, or, at least, atone for it. These views, Davis' and the one taken here, are two ways of expressing the same notion, but, as is often the case with multiple perspectives, each one is sufficiently different so that more is seen in two, than with one.

²²Davis, 35-49.

²³Ibid., 45-46.

Lexias 258 through 263 are concerned with Isaac's fight to stay at the camp following the killing of Old Ben and the death of Lion. Ostensibly, he wants to stay because of his concern for Sam Fathers, his mentor, his spiritual father. But the reader has clues that this is not necessarily the case. What follows is a detailed analysis of these ten lexias, in terms of the labels assigned to them in this reading, with the end goal of discovering Isaac's character and his stage of development, in terms of myth and ritual.

Table 25, below, contains the pertinent lexias and their associated codes, which are referred to in the following analysis. The references are by lexia number and code type, which includes one of the five codes and the label term assigned it. For example, in Lexia 258, a reference to the symbol label for "Endings," would be "258, SYM, Endings."

It should be noted that many of the lexias discussed here should have been labeled with "REF, Code of Rites of Passage" and "REF, Code of Rites and Rituals," but, through error, were not. However, these lexias are discoverable in terms of the same concepts embodied in both REFs through another key, that of "SYM, Antithesis." That this is true constitutes further proof of the power inherent in Barthes' decision to rely on connotation as his access method to the scattered nodes of meaning, signifiers. Barthes, unlike his fellow countryman, Napoleon, was intent on not losing a battle and thus, a war for want of one crucial item.

TABLE 25

ANTITHESIS EXAMPLE: IDEAL/NON-IDEAL NATURE

^aFaulkner, 248.

^bIbid., 248-249.

^cIbid., 249.

^dIbid., 251-252.

^eIbid., 252.

^fIbid., 252.

An example of incomplete Barthesian labeling is found in Lexia 258, which is labeled with one ACT and two SYMs: "To Go Back," "Endings," and the antithesis of "Ideal/Non-Ideal Nature". In this lexia, "To Go Back" has two signifieds: one is the action of returning to camp; the other is the action sequence of Isaac's attempting to not go back to his other life, that is, to school. Both are important, though only the second is specifically cited as an ACT. However, the return to camp is caught as a SYM, with the label "258, SYM, Endings," for it is the return to camp which signifies that an ending is taking place, but labeling the action sequence as action would be reasonable, perhaps necessary.

The return to camp is significant because of its citing of the end of a sequence of action, a completion (partial) of one portion of the dialectic of the antithesis structure. It is, indeed, a return back from one term, the A term, the Ideal, of the antithesis, so that the dialectic is here beginning its passing through mediation (via Isaac aided by Boon) as it heads back to the Non-Ideal, the B term.

There has been a partial cancellation of the A term, for Old Ben, the Holy, Inner Spirit of the Ideal world, has been eliminated from this plane of existence, and Lion, the second part of the trilogy of spiritual leaders, is also laid to rest, and now, Sam Fathers is apparently near his own end, if Isaac is a reliable witness. What remains to necessarily occur is the completion of the cancellation, then the uplift, then the preservation. Isaac, with Boon, will perform this priestly function, as will be seen.

But first, Isaac must resist the attempt of the Non-Ideal, represented here by McCaslin and, ironically enough, his helper, Boon, to get him away from the scene, to return him to the safe confines of Non-Ideality (the school room, where pedagogues do their work with the aid of dusty, bone-dry books). It is important to note that Boon constantly swings with the wind between the poles of Ideal and Non-Ideal, sure sign of his plebeian nature.

Lexia 259 continues Isaac's attempt to resist going back to the Non-Ideal, with the same codes being present as were given to Lexia 258. However, there are two additional codes, an hermeneutic (HER) and a seme (SEM). The HER code is there because of "Enigma 8: What happened to Sam," while the SEM code of "Blindness" is there because only Isaac (and possibly Sam) are aware, can see, that Sam is not all right, or at least, that he will be dying.

Sam collapsed, off-stage, during the epic struggle between Lion, Old Ben, and Boon (Judas Iscariot?), but the reader does not have a clue as to what caused it, except for the country doctor's assessment, and connotatively, the reader knows that the opinion of a country doctor is usually questionable. As for Isaac's opinion, the reader knows that he, also, could be unreliable. The country doctor's opinion is cited by the text as proof that Sam will be "all right." However, that is a snare, for a reader (at least a Barthesian reader) knows that he is going to die. Then, of course, there is always the question of what is meant by "all right." Death can be viewed as an "all right" condition under some circumstances, by some individuals, especially, when viewed through the myriad myths and rituals which humans have invented over the millennia. Certainly, readers are invited to see it just that way in the closing lexias of Section III.

At the very least, readers know (that is, Barthesian readers who have "read" the text many times, and thus, have its major and most minor turns of plot and circumstance well in hand) that Sam is going to die, that the "others" are wrong, at least, in some sense of the term, so they are, consequently, "blind." But actually, as discussed in the earlier section of this Chapter, "Evaluation Xebra: Criterion Three," Isaac, too, can be thought of as blind, for he is not realistically cognizant of the world around him. He moves through it as if he were a part of some mythic drama, where gods, goddesses, and heroes, incorruptible and taintless, are real, and mere humans, corruptible and tainted are, if not to be totally disdained, at most, merely suffered to exist.

Lexia 260 is, like Lexia 259, labeled with "SEM, Blindness," "HER, Enigma 8," "SYM, Endings," and "SYM, Antithesis Ideal/Non-Ideal Nature," and for the same reasons. However, two additional labels are there as well: "260, ACT, To Look," and "260, ACT, To Drink." The first, "To Look," is indicative of Isaac's realization that he needs the support of other people, while the second, "To Drink," is indicative of Boon as parody of Isaac's notion of an Ideal world. Young Isaac believes:

those fine fierce instants of heart and brain and courage and wiliness and speed were concentrated and distilled into that brown liquor which not women, not boys and children, but only hunters drank, drinking not of the blood they spilled but some condensation of the wild immortal spirit, drinking it moderately, humbly even, not with the pagan's base and baseless hope of acquiring thereby the virtues of cunning and strength and speed but in salute to them.²⁴

²⁴Faulkner, 198.

But Boon and drink are something else, as Isaac (and the reader) knows, as well, after the crazy trip to Memphis the two of them made in order to get whiskey for the camp. Boon is attempting to draw, like the pagans, cunning, strength, and speed, not to mention courage, from the bottle. This is one of the Barthesian reader's clues to Boon's inability to handle either world--the Ideal as embodied in the wilderness, or the Non-Ideal, as embodied in the towns and cities. Hokes is about as large and as civilized a place as Boon can begin to handle, while the camp and its immediate environs are, also, as large and as wild a place as he can handle, and both of those are problematical.

Lexia 261 reemphasizes Isaac's great need to be a part of the coming mythic, ritualistic, and finalizing action to occur during Sam Fathers' last hours, an action of which only Isaac seems to be aware. The labels attached to this, besides the ubiquitous "Endings" and "Antithesis Ideal/Non-Ideal Nature," are "261, ACT, To Breathe" and "261, SEM, Loyalty." The heavy, difficult breathing of Isaac indicates to the reader his intense need to stay at the camp in order to see the great drama through to the end. There is a pathetic, clearly desperate air about his need to be loyal to his mentor, his spiritual guide. Further, it seems as if he is being smothered, choked by the prospect of what the future is to bring. For, whether he gets permission to stay or leave, either way, he knows that a turning point in his personal quest is imminent.

Lexia 262 is that turning point, where, once again, General Compson intervenes in his behalf, revealing the General's own close, sympathetic, but, finally, flawed understanding of the mythic value of the unfolding drama and Isaac's role in it. The General, as indicated by "262, SEM, Worth," has a great regard for the value of the wilderness, though, when all is said and done, despite his obvious distaste for civilization with its pedagogues, labeled here under "262, REF, Code of Writing," he will opt for the confines of the city, of civilization.

Perhaps it is because of the General's awareness of his own pending abandonment of the wilderness and all it stood for, that he stands up for Isaac, thus, making an attempt to atone for his sins before the fact of their commitment. There is, indeed, an ending here, then, for the General.

Unfortunately, General Compson thinks he sees that there is a possibility of a true beginning for Isaac, so he does what he believes will aid that along. Ironically, five years later, the General will be one of the most puzzled by Isaac's relinquishment of the McCaslin farm and all the civilized wealth it signified, symbolically, as well as, actually. If General Compson truly believed in the superiority of the wilderness over "what some pedagogue put between the covers of some book,"²⁵ then he would know what motivated (however misguided those motives were) Isaac in his own abandonment of one possible future.

²⁵Ibid., 249.

Lexia 263 triply underscores in red what Lexia 262 merely stated: General Compson shares, to some degree, in Isaac's mythic view of the wilderness, as well as, in Isaac's valuation of civilization--the world of banks and farms is for people who cower from the hard, fierce realities of the wilderness. Civilization is for those who cannot possibly become so imbued with the ways of that wild world that they could navigate from one specific tree to another ten miles away as easily as they can move from one city to the next, or even from one saloon to another.

General Compson's remark about God's intentions is captured in the label "263, REF, Code of Godliness," with a note attached to the effect that God cannot (or at least, does not) always reveal His ways to humans. There is a seme of "Destructive Force" implied in General Compson's dissertation, which echoes all the poets since Milton who have attempted to "justify the ways of God to men." It is a seme, labeled "263, SEM, Destructive Force," that carries with it the implication that man cannot touch, cannot destroy, the inner spirit of the wilderness no matter how great their artifice in weaponry.

Ironically, Old Ben and Lion are dead, even as the General speaks, and Sam Fathers is close to death. If human guile did not kill them, some entity certainly did or does. In fact, as will be seen later, it would appear that the two misfits, Isaac and Boon, are ultimately responsible for the death of Sam Fathers--the father of none, the father of all.

To complete General Compson's thought: God made banks and farms for people who are afraid to take on the world of the natural as God intended it to be; God made woods and camps for people who are afraid to take on the world of the artificial as humans have made it. Heaven help those who cannot be at home in either, whether they are the Boons' (the plebeians) or the Isaacs' (the royalty).

Skipping to the end of Section III, to Lexia 270, one finds that Isaac and Boon have set up Sam Fathers' body in a ritualistic form, after the manner of his Indian forebears, as he ostensibly requested them to do. The lexia has two labels attached: "270, ACT, To Attack," and "270, Antithesis (Ideal/Non-Ideal Nature)." The two are intertwined, inextricably, to the point that the attack is the antithesis structure, and the antithesis structure is the attack.

Thus, this lexia opens the attack sequence, where McCaslin strips Boon of his (useless to Boon) gun, backing the plebeian up against a tree in an attempt to discover what happened to Sam Fathers. Boon begins the sequence with a threat, an empty threat, for he cannot keep the men from the town from, ultimately, giving Sam Fathers a white man's burial. This is indicative of the way that the entire structure of the "Antithesis Ideal/Non-Ideal Nature" within the text is situated--the Ideal is constantly retreating before the onslaught (however halting and inept it might be) of humans and their civilization, yet it is equally clear that those same humans and that same civilization are lost, as well--trapped in their own corruption and sins, having now ruined the new world, the new promised land.

Lexia 271 carries on the attack action, with McCaslin successfully disarming Boon. The antithesis structure continues, with the Non-Ideal term (McCaslin) transgressing the realm of the Ideal term (Sam Fathers). Ironically, Sam's chosen protectors are the two members of the hunting camp who are not likely to be successful--a grown man who cannot successfully hit a target from five feet, and a boy torn by inner struggles, thus, frozen in time and place, unable to act meaningfully, a victim of the existential problem of too many choices, none of them clearly best, and thus, unable to affect his own becoming. Isaac, as we know from early on in the text, will stay a man in lust with the wilderness, but wedded to the world of civilized humans. Unfortunately, he is doomed to sterility in both.

Lexia 272 continues the attack sequence and the antithesis structure, but adds: two sub-action sequences, "272, ACT, To Drink" and "272, ACT, To Breathe," as well as an hermeneutic, "272, HER, Enigma 8 (Snare)," a reference, "272, REF, Code of the Bible (Judas)," and two semes, "272, SEM, Blindness," and "272, SEM, Loyalty."

Boon is depicted as behaving as if he were drunk, a condition that a true man of the Ideal would never attain, and also as being unable to breathe, the condition of a man torn by the pressures of the moment, much as Isaac had been in earlier lexia sequences. Boon has conflicting loyalties; to Sam (his father-in-wilderness) and to Major De Spain (his father-in-civilization). The current action places him squarely between them--a position he cannot maintain.

As a mediation point of the antithesis between Ideal and Non-Ideal ("272, Antithesis--1"), Boon is as unstable as it is possible to be; neither side can count on him. He is truly Judas Iscariot: friend to God the Son; tool of God the Father. Such a friend, such a tool, cannot help but break; and break he does at the end of the narrative.

But did he kill Sam? Is he Judas Iscariot? Did Isaac aid in the murder? Or was it the other way around? Or did Sam, in some mystical, mythical, ritualistic way, will his own death, with the two misfits serving (ironically) as high priests in a high drama? Enigma 8 is still with readers who are involved in their first reading, who cannot really know the answer at this point in the text.

In pondering this question, one is reminded of Boon's ineptitude in Memphis as opposed to his ineptitude in the wilderness. He is equally bad in both; a statement of the impossibility of both worlds. This is doubly reinforced by Isaac's own failure to succeed in the world of his cousin. Being frozen psychologically in time in the world of Sam Fathers, Old Ben, and Lion, Isaac makes his physical pilgrimage (one believes over and over and over, as if caught in a time warp endlessly looping) to their resting place. To do so runs the risk, of course, that the next time old man snake will get him, thus, assuring Isaac the loss of any possibility of redemption. Redemption being his true end goal, the true holy grail of his personal quest, this is a tragic loss. This is even more true, because he, like Christ, seeks redemption not for self, but for all Mankind. Both Boon and Ike seem incapable of carrying out the act of killing Sam. Nevertheless, somehow, Sam did die.

The labeling of this lexia, Lexia 272, reflects the Barthesian reader's acceptance of the obvious, surface-level explanation of Sam's death as the correct one: that it was to be trapped in snare to believe that Boon had killed Sam, thus, the note to the effect that Sam was going to die and that Boon did not kill him. However, the obvious is not necessarily so. There is still an hermeneutic snare at work here: one cannot, or, at least, perhaps, should not, simply believe or disbelieve any of the possible scenarios. The text, in fact, appears to leave the question open--a classic example of Roland Barthes' pensive text.

Lexia 273 closes out the sequence, the transgression of the antithesis of Ideal by Non-Ideal. It has but two labels: "273, REF, Code of the Bible" and "273, SYM, Antithesis." Isaac calls on God to condemn McCaslin for his transgression of the Ideal, to affirm whatever ritual or myth fulfillment action he and Boon and Sam participated in, and to call off the forever advancing, myrmidonic, insanely hostile forces of humankind, corrupted and tainted as they are, from their mindless, obviously sinful destruction of all that is good and holy.

However, as a reader lives the antithesis through the text, one cannot but believe that God condemns nothing, affirms nothing; that He is, not the mediation point, but the controlling point, of the antithesis, and that He intends to leave it forever frozen in (or out of, as expressed by Davis) time (Isaac), thus, balanced, yet always breaking apart (Boon), thus, unbalanced. So are the ways of God it would seem, and there is no justifying them, to man or beast, according to this modern Milton, Mr. William Faulkner, late of the sovereign state of Mississippi, USA.

Thus, one sees Isaac's development, such as it is; one sees the point in time where in he is forever "juxtaposed and reliefed against"²⁶ the antithesis structure, the dialectic of the Ideal and Non-Ideal. All of his (Isaac's) actions, from 1883 on, are attempts to escape the block of glass within which he is encased. He has attained, as General Compson attests, the highest level of wilderness skills that one human can possibly manage, but the ritualistic deaths of Old Ben, Lion, and, finally, Sam Fathers, have left him bereft of any capability of finding his way to an end worth reaching.

Barthesian/Xebran methodology, then, is again successful at meaningfully (ambiguous as that adverb is) naming the nodes of signification that are crucial to making a successful entrance into the hermeneutic circle. This success, achieved despite the lack of complete labeling, is important. It contributes to the validation, not of the Barthesian/Xebran project, as such, but of the Barthesian insight of the existence, the concrete realization, of atoms of signifiers within texts.

The rating given here for this performance in relation to Davis' criterion is a "+1." While the positive correlation is definitely existent, the errors in labeling made it problematic that an analyst/critic would discover all the necessary elements. Solutions to avoiding these kinds of errors are addressed in CHAPTER V.

²⁶Faulkner., 197.

Evaluating Xebra: Criterion Six

Criterion six, the successful unearthing of the theological and moral issues as embodied in thematic oppositions in nature and history, is achievable through the same methods used in the previous five sections. First, the Barthesian reader does the labeling, the naming process, then the analyst/critic does the abstracting, the coalescing, the function discovery process.

This criterion calls for the intersection, and perhaps the union and complementation, of four primary signifier node sets: the theological, the moral, the natural, and the historical. Given a good labeling of the nodes of the signifier galaxy of "The Bear," this is an activity readily performed with Xebra's analysis functions. The process begins with the recalling of the members of each of the sets using the appropriate labels culled from those listed in Tables 17-21 in CHAPTER III as keys into the Label Database.

Having done this, the next step is then to actually take the intersection, union, and/or the complement of the four sets, taking any two or more sets at a time as input into the particular operation. This series of processes are specifically supported in the database engine of Xebra. Once the various operations on the sets are achieved, one uses the retrieved sets of lexia numbers as access points into the Lexia Database, in order to begin analysis of the relationships of the four primary sets, in accordance with the stated goal of criterion six.

To illustrate this process, one strand of relationships among the four sets, the strand formed by intersecting history with theology, serves as the exemplar. In order to isolate this strand, a table was constructed (via an appropriate query into the Manual Label Database) that contained all the records from the four primary sets (the theological, moral, natural, and historical), thus forming a union set. A second table was then constructed containing only the theological set. Using the theological set lexia numbers as keys, only those records that matched on history records were retrieved from the union table. This last retrieval set represents those lexias in the text that were coded as being both of an historical and theological nature.

The following several pages list the ten lexias in the retrieved set, with commentary in terms of the relationship of theology to history.

Lexia 290:

and of the five hundred years during which half the known world and all it contained was chattel to one city, as this plantation and all the life it contained was chattel and revokeless thrall to this commissary store and those ledgers yonder during your grandfather's life; and the next thousand years while men fought over the fragments of that collapse until at last even the fragments were exhausted and men snarled over the gnawed bones of the old world's worthless evening until an accidental egg discovered to them a new hemisphere.²⁷

Commentary Lexia 290: this passage is in the heart of Isaac's debate with McCaslin over the nature of the world, its truths, its meaning, all of which related to Isaac's attempt to rationalize his act of relinquishment. It forms the backbone of his analogy of history, since the death of Christ to the time before the Flood. The analogy drawn is to God having given the human race yet another new, clean, taintless world when the "accidental egg" of Columbus' ship found the Americas. For Isaac, the history of the race, of humans in time, is directly involved with God's working toward a perfect world. The human race mucked things up, more than once, but He keeps on trying.

Lexia 306:

not even glancing toward the shelf above the desk, nor McCaslin. They did not need to. To him it was as though the ledgers in their scarred cracked leather bindings were being lifted down one by one in their fading sequence and spread open on the desk or perhaps upon some apocryphal Bench, or even Altar, or perhaps before the Throne Itself for a last perusal and contemplation and refreshment of the Allknowledgeable, before the yellowed pages and the brown thin ink in which was recorded the injustice and a little at least of its amelioration and restitution faded back forever into the anonymous communal original dust²⁸

Commentary Lexia 306: recorded history is, for Isaac, essentially a record of the moral turpitude of the human race, with some little amount about those few, small, inadequate attempts to make good, to atone for the sins of the race. It is a record that will someday be reviewed by God, who will presumably render a final judgement, taking into account those few good deeds. Then everything will dissolve, along with those who were within the record.

²⁷Ibid., 255-256.

²⁸Ibid., 258-259.

Lexia 377:

and over all, permeant, clinging to the man's very clothing and exuding from his skin itself, that rank stink of baseless and imbecile delusion, that boundless rapacity and folly, of the carpet-bagger followers of victorious armies. 'Don't you see?' he cried. 'Don't you see? This whole land, the whole South, is cursed, and all of us who derive from it, whom it ever suckled, white and black both, lie under the curse? Granted that my people brought the curse onto the land: maybe for that reason their descendants alone can--not resist it, not combat it--maybe just endure and outlast it until the curse is lifted. Then your peoples' turn will come because we have forfeited ours. But not now. Not yet. Don't you see?'²⁹

Commentary Lexia 377: again Isaac is referring to the analogy of current times, and to that time in history before the Flood, when God destroyed all but Noah, his family, and the beasts of the land. When white men brought the slaves to the new world, the promised land, God again placed a curse upon the land, a curse that will, in time, be lifted, just as the Flood receded, but only those who can endure the bad times until then will survive to the next new world. History and theology are one, in Isaac's view.

Lexia 378:

The other stood now, the unfrayed garments still ministerial even if not quite so fine, the book closed upon one finger to keep the place, the lenseless spectacles held like a music master's wand in the other workless hand while the owner of it spoke his measured and sonorous imbecility of the boundless folly and the baseless hope: 'You're wrong. The curse you whites brought into this land has been lifted. It has been voided and discharged. We are seeing a new era, an era dedicated, as our founders intended it, to freedom, liberty and equality for all, to which this country will be the new Canaan----³⁰

Commentary Lexia 378: Isaac's view is rebutted by this never actually enslaved individual. There is no dispute concerning the curse, but only whether its effect still reigns. The reference to the "new Canaan" is key, for as history has unwound since that first promised land for Abraham's people, it is clear that reaching the promised land is not sufficient, not even the clearing and settling of the land is sufficient. Always the promise is recalled, the chosen people thrown out and left to their own devices. The passage still seeks to unite history and theology.

²⁹Ibid., 273-274.

³⁰Ibid., 274.

Lexia 394:

and McCaslin 'More men than that one Buck and Buddy to fumble-heed that truth so mazed for them that spoke it and so confused for them that heard yet still there was 1865:' and he 'But not enough. Not enough of even Father and Uncle Buddy to fumble-heed in even three generations not even three generations fathered by Grandfather not even if there had been nowhere beneath His sight any but Grandfather and so He would not even have needed to elect and choose.³¹

Commentary Lexia 394: despite all the attempts, of which there were many, by God, by his messengers, and by those who listened to them, the Civil War still occurred; the South still lost. Isaac maintains that this is because the sin was so great that needed to be atoned for, that even three generations fathered by his Grandfather, and all the other fathers of Buck's and Buddy's, were not enough to breed those who could atone for the sin of slavery. Thus, the South must indeed fight and lose the bloody, terribly destructive war--for only in the bloodshed was any hope of redemption to be found.

Lexia 401:

and the thundering cannonade of politicians earning votes and the medicine-shows of pulpiteers earning Chautauqua fees, to whom the outrage and the injustice were as much abstractions as Tariff or Silver or Immortality and who employed the very shackles of its servitude and the sorry rags of its regalia as they did the other beer and banners and mottoes, redfire and brimstone and sleight-of-hand and musical handsaws:"³²

Commentary Lexia 401: politicians and pulpiteers earned their livings off of the outrages and injustices of the post-war era, just as they had always done off of other gimmicks. In particular, in terms of theology, "redfire and brimstone" is an ironical reference to God's retribution for sinners (that is, their consignment to the fires of Hell). For politicians and pulpiteers, there is no reality in that concept, but there are certainly "votes" and "Chautauqua fees" to be earned, which is their only reality, their only morality. Clearly, theology and history, for them, are only a kind of coin of the realm to be cashed in for other coins.

³¹Ibid., 276-277.

³²Ibid., 278.

Lexia 416:

the Boston-bred (even when not born in Boston) spinster, descendants of long lines of similarly-bred and likewise spinster aunts and uncles whose hands knew no callus except that of the indicting pen, to whom the wilderness itself began at the top of tide and who looked, if at anything other than Beacon Hill, only toward heaven³³

Commentary Lexia 416: to Isaac there is a type of human being who is not of the world, not in the world, from birth to death. These are the wealthy spinsters who have no responsibility to carry out, no honest work, thus, given over to useless pastimes, including ranting about evils of the world that they truly know nothing of, socializing with their peers, and attending to their souls. They are the frozen chosen of God, one might say--no passion, no sweat, no blood to them; only ice water in their arteries. Yet, somehow, such people were drawn into the Civil war, because God chose the right men, the right Generals.

Lexia 424:

This time there was no yellowed procession of fading and harmless ledger-pages. This was chronicled in a harsher book, and McCaslin, fourteen and fifteen and sixteen, had seen it and the boy himself had inherited it as Noah's grandchildren had inherited the Flood although they had not been there to see the deluge:³⁴

Commentary Lexia 424: finally, there is an actual reference to the Flood, the other major action by God to wipe out all sin by destroying the sinners. Historically, those who follow the generation in which the world is cleansed (turned over, turned inside out), have to endure and make do. This is not easy, for many reasons. But here, Isaac is making the debater's point that those who do not experience a catastrophe directly, but do have to live its consequences, are subject to special problems that those who were actually there do not have. Someone who is directly burned by fire is much more apt to remember to avoid it the next time, while one who is only told about such a thing as fire is quite likely to suffer a similar fate. Humans learn by experience. Faded, ancient ledgers of past sins are not sufficient warning for many of the race. The dictum that those who do not remember their history are doomed to repeat it, is here underscored and highlighted.

³³Ibid., 281.

³⁴Ibid., 283.

Lexia 430:

leading, first in mufti then later in an actual formalized regalia of hooded sheets and passwords and fiery Christian symbols, lynching mobs against the race their ancestors had come to save:³⁵

Commentary Lexia 430: this passage underscores the irony of Christian symbols being used by those who would only burn, destroy, and murder the innocent members of a group of people, without a shred of moral authority to back their actions, yet wrapping themselves and their deeds in the regalia of white cloth--white, ironically, the sign of goodness, of Christ. The Klu Klux Klan was an historical reality, engendered by twisted historical accounts, by mutated theological truths.

Lexia 432:

and the Jew who came without protection too, since after two thousand years he had got out of the habit of being or needing it, and solitary, without even the solidarity of the locusts, and in this a sort of courage since he had come thinking not in terms of simple pillage but in terms of his great-grandchildren, seeking yet some place to establish them to endure even though forever alien: and unblessed: a pariah about the face of the Western earth which twenty centuries later was still taking revenge on him for the fairy tale with which he had conquered it.³⁶

Commentary Lexia 432: Jews wandered into the South after the War, like so many others, in search of a place to be and to become. They came without protection from those who did not want them there, as did many others. Here we find that the theological aspects of being Jewish is intimately tied to the historical. Jews conquered the world with a "fairy tale" two thousand years before, and are suffering, in time, in the world, for their audacity, suffering long past the traditional, biblical, seven generations, in fact.

³⁵Ibid., 284.

³⁶Ibid., 284-285.

Other strands of the complex relationship among the four primary sets, as specified by Davis, could be discovered in a similar manner. How one would then attempt to analyze and then understand the strands, in and of themselves, as well as, in relation to each other, would be up to each individual analyst. The method chosen for this example of simple commentary is only meant to illustrate one approach.

The rating given here for meeting this criterion in the Barthesian/Xebran reading of "The Bear" is a strong "+1." This rating is based on the fact that, while the ease within Xebra of doing the initial selection of appropriate strands of lexia sequences is high and the further manipulation of these strands is well supported in Xebra, there is no strong support for actually determining how these strands are interrelated. The fact that the text is broken into lexias is perhaps the best support, for the units of reading, being small, lend themselves readily to analysis.

Evaluating Xebra: Criterion Seven

Criterion seven, the shaping of subject through narrative styles, is a complex requirement, necessitating as it does the piecing together of many sub-networks of nodes of "The Bear"'s galaxy of signifiers into one internetwork. In the annotation, the naming of the text's signifiers, Barthes' practice in S/Z was to make few, if any, references to the larger issue of stylistics. This being the case, the work of the analyst could be complex, requiring extensive pattern-matching skills in order to satisfy criterion seven. This would be true, whether or not one was using a tool such as Xebra, if one were to follow Barthes' practice.

As it happens, Davis' specific example of the relationships of major section structures, as defined by the chronology reversals Faulkner uses, is relatively simple, reflecting, as it does, an extremely immanent quality of the narrative--its continual citing of time or chronology. In order to successfully demonstrate the aid of Xebra in meeting this criterion, the first step is to obtain a list of all lexias that contain references to time. Then this list must be further culled to eliminate citations that are not pertinent to ascertaining the use of time in arranging the section structure. At this point, one would be ready to then individually read the lexias and to review their associated labels for clues as to the time-related structure of the sections. The real work can begin, in other words.

This real work would be to formulate a theory of the structure of the text that one has determined to exist through the preceding analysis by first formulating an hypothesis, then testing it against the facts of the text, iterating over this paradigm until one has finally refined the hypothesis to where it can be considered a respectable theory. That is, the theory at least accounts for all the known facts of the text in terms of the effect of the structure on shaping the text's subject. The facts of the text are represented, of course, by all of the labels in the Label Database and by all of their possible relationships.

To begin, then, with the problem of chronology and structure, Figure 6 reveals the pattern of time through the sections, based on retrieving from the Manual Label Database lexia numbers, with the code, "REF, Code of Chronology" attached, then recording the actual dates associated with each and plotting the dates in relation to the sections. The dates used are narrative time, that is, the present time of the individual actors in each lexia. In this manner, flashbacks and flashforwards are caught as present time, but real time remembrances, or references to past events in conversation, records, stream of consciousness, etc., are labeled as being the time of the conversation, or the noting of a record's contents, or the thinking of the stream of thoughts, and so forth.

Thus, Isaac's thoughts about the events of 1883 presented in Section V as he moves across the area where Old Ben, Lion, and Sam Fathers are buried, are recorded as 1885, but the flashback to 1880, when he killed his first deer and the resulting misadventure with Ash, is recorded as 1880.

FIGURE 6: SECTION CHRONOLOGY EXAMPLE

The patterns of time reversal in "The Bear" are complex, but this graph captures the highest level (most abstract) relationships. One, it is clear that each section begins at some time, call it year zero, then moves away from year zero. Thus, no section is only concerned with one present time; they all have some movement away from year zero. Two, Sections I, II, III, and V are the simple ones, practically straightforward, compared to Section IV. Three, only Section IV has any flashforwards from the year zero. Four, only Section II moves strictly upward in time from year zero, and, in fact, has no flashbacks or flashforwards, thus, representing a linear progression in time.

These are the facts that can be garnered directly from the graph. It is up to the analyst/critic to relate these facts to the narrative and its subject development. To illustrate one method of doing this, one possible hypothesis for fitting the facts of the chronology to the subject development is presented here. This illustration relies as much as possible on those lexias that define turning points in time. Table 26, below, contains information regarding these turning points and their lexia numbers.

TABLE 26

CHRONOLOGY REVERSALS IN "The Bear" BY YEAR AND LEXIA

ACROSS SECTIONS

Section I begins in December, 1883, at the falling off from the cusp of the defining action sequence of the narrative, at the time when two men and two beasts, accompanied by a silent witness, have just met in final confrontation. If one looks at Figure 6 and Table 26, above, one can see that, after this point, narrative time falls away from 1883, down to 1877, then slowly rises back up to 1878 through the end of Section I. The rising time will continue through Section II, which begins in 1880 and ends in 1882. Section III begins in 1883, bringing the reader back to the same year, the same action that Section I began with, though not quite at the same point, being just a few days before the confrontation referenced in the opening of Section I. There is a brief fall back to 1877, then a return to 1883, where the action begun in Section I is brought to a climax, leaving three dead and two extremely upset. Just how upset is revealed in the next two sections.

Section IV is the most complex section in terms of time, with a nearly constant rise and fall from the primary year of the action of this section, 1888. Section V has a "quiet" time line, relatively, containing only two flashbacks and no flashforwards.

Given the obvious complexity of Section IV, one ought to focus in on it for clues to the shaping of subject in terms of time reversals. It is a time-based, kaleidoscopic panorama of a multiplicity of scenes, facts, characters, and actions, which begins with Isaac's enunciation of his desire to escape his fate, and ends with him being totally ensnared in the same; not exactly what he had in mind when he set out to enter the woods in November, 1877.

Section IV appears totally disconnected from the major action line of Sections I, II, III, and V, except when one notes that there is a falling back to 1883, not to the confrontation sequence, but to a time when Isaac learns (systematically, ironically) from the old ledger books of his grandfather, father, and uncle, the nature of the history of his family, both black and white. Thus, we learn that Isaac has two reasons to be agitated: one, the death of his heroes (his mythic gods) and two, the totally corrupt nature of his bloodline (his inheritance).

The wildly moving time structure of Section IV is, among other things, a reflection of Isaac's internal state, his absolutely chaotic agitation, engendered in the bitter coldness of his loss in the confrontation between the Ideal and the Non-Ideal and the hellfire of the old ledger book. It also reflects Isaac's fate, of being frozen, as it were, in perpetual motion, oscillating between the twin points of evil in his life, never breaking free of either.

Readers experience a nausea, as if trapped on a roller-coaster, with a constant up and down and all around movement. Or, perhaps, the reader is in that surrey with Isaac as he enters the woods for the first time, but this time, no matter how long one rides, the woods never get closer, one just goes up and down, up and down.³⁷

³⁷Ibid., 200.

If Section IV is a time-based whirlpool reflecting an image of Isaac's fate, Section V is a different view, a different image of that same subject, done in sequences of still life frames. The time frame matches the sequences exactly. They are flashed before us, as if in a slide show. First, there is a quick portrait of civilization and the wilderness in the here and now (1885), of Jefferson and Hokes and their rising economy, and of the slow, but steady destruction of the woods. Then there comes an image of how they once were (1865), when Hokes was smaller, the woods larger. This is followed by yet another image of the here and now (1885), where this time the relationship of black man to white man (Ike, Major De Spain, Boon, Ash) is sketched. This leads to a return to a past time (1880), and a depiction of how Isaac and Ash once were.

Then the narrative returns to the now (1885), where one finds that in Isaac's imagination, the wilderness is still existent in all its glory, immortal and free, embodied in the souls of Old Ben, Lion, and Sam Fathers. But, in reality, the woods are still there, still holding danger for mortal man: snakes (Satan) for those with the imagination and intellect for moral struggle (Isaac), and squirrels for those who lack either (Boon).

This series of portraits are arranged in an order, by time and subject, that reflects the twin concerns of Isaac as he grew to know them: the destruction of the wilderness by man, and the destruction of man by man through slavery. From Isaac's view, the two are one. The existence of slavery guaranteed the land's corruption, thus, the wilderness' destruction, and, thus, the corruption and destruction of humanity.

In this brief review of narrative time flow in "The Bear," both across and in sections, it should be clear that discovering the effects of narrative style on subject shaping requires the recognition of narrative style patterns, proceeded by the intense following up of all the clues. With the aid of Xebra, it is possible to do the pattern discovery quickly. This is true because it is relatively simple to make queries that return data that can be analyzed through graphs and tables. In an entirely manual approach, such as Barthes' own in S/Z, an analyst/critic would have to search through the labels and lexia, consuming a great deal of effort. With Xebra, that effort can be expended on determining what the patterns might mean, instead of what the patterns are.

The rating for this performance in meeting the criterion is clearly a strong "+2," given that the system made the relationship discovery process straightforward. While it is true that the reading did not specifically state the relationships sought, their existence was deducible from applying Xebra's capabilities to retrieve the appropriate data points that contributed to patterns of narrative style.

Evaluating Xebra: Criterion Eight

Criterion eight, determination of primary action, which Walter Davis stipulates is the tragedy of Ike and the wilderness,³⁸ seems anticlimactic after the previous seven criteria. In fact, all seven criteria together form a very strong argument for Davis' assertion. If those seven had not been explored, however, one would still need to meet criterion eight. The Barthesian system, as implemented in Xebra, provides a very reasonable entry point into solving this type of problem.

As part of the labeling process, the action sequences are supposed to be named, sequentially, from the beginning of the text through the end, with the labeler being cognizant, at all times, of each sequence as a whole within the text. This should guarantee that there will be sufficient keys available to an analyst/critic who wishes to determine the relative importance of the actions within the text, including designating one as the primary.

In the case of "The Bear," from the first lexia forward, every encounter with Old Ben was coded as "ACT, Man/Bear Confrontation." If one simply uses Xebra to count the unique occurrences of all the ACTs, then the graph in Figure 7 can be derived. This graph contains all of the ACT codes that represent more than three percent of the total number of unique occurrences.

³⁸Davis, 9.

FIGURE 7: ACT CODE WEIGHTS

From the graph in Figure 7, it can be seen that the "ACT, Man/Bear Confrontation" sequence forms, by far, the highest percentage: nearly two to one over its three nearest competitors. When one considers that there are a total of thirty-five action sequences in "The Bear," and that only fourteen of them individually account for more than three percent, the twenty percent that "ACT, Man/Bear Confrontation" accounts for is clearly important.

Certainly, one would not want to rely on numeric data alone to determine the primary action of a text, but graphs such as Figure 7 can give a critic a large step forward in their project. In this particular case, it happens that the action sequence that occurred most frequently (as signifying nodes in the text), coincides very well with Davis' assertion that the primary action of "The Bear" is, indeed, the tragedy of Ike and the wilderness. To see that this is true, one would need to read each pertinent lexia, as well as, its associated labels, looking for clues as to what is happening in terms of action in the text.

If one were to do that, one finds that the movement of the text through the first three sections is constantly, consistently, relentlessly flowing toward the climax at the end of Section III, where three primary characters (representatives of the Wilderness as Ideal) are killed, and the other two participants in the confrontation are very much shaken. This is a clear indication that the destruction of the wilderness is a key action of the text, and, indeed, a tragic one.

As for Isaac, the "ACT, Man/Bear Confrontation" key is not sufficient. To supplement it, one must look through the various lexias and their labels which are associated with the confrontation sequence, searching for clues as to other possible participants in the primary action.

In this case, one should note that the "SYM, Antithesis" is always coincident with the "ACT, Man/Bear Confrontation," which should lead an analyst/critic to retrieve all the records in the Label Database with the "SYM, Antithesis" code. If one does that, then it should become clear that Isaac is, indeed, involved intimately with the tragic dialectic structure that is the main symbolic structure of the text. From this, then the analyst/critic should conclude that Isaac is, indeed, a primary participant, along with Sam Fathers, Lion, Old Ben, and Boon, in the tragedy that is overcoming the wilderness; that Isaac is, in fact, a participant who, also, is finally, destroyed, over time, by the same tragic forces.

The rating for the Barthesian/Xebran reading performance in relation to meeting criterion eight regarding discovering the main action of the text is a "+2." Again, it requires sophisticated used of the analytical functions of Xebra to trace down the possibilities, but the answer is in the data, and the tools do aid the analyst/critic very directly.

Evaluating the Evaluation

In the beginning of this chapter, three general criteria for judging the success of the Xebra project were given:

1. demonstrate Xebra's capability to aid in performing a Barthesian reading well;
   
2. compare results of an actual Xebra-based analysis with accepted readings of a specific text to demonstrate its ability to discover, name the facts of the text and the larger patterns of those facts;
   
3. show that a Xebra-based Barthesian analysis aids in deepening our understanding of the text.

The preceding eight sections were each devoted to demonstrating the effectiveness of Xebra and, more generally, of the Barthesian method in aiding a critic in the task of unearthing the facts related to each of Walter Davis' set of criteria, vis-à-vis pre-interpretation necessities. That being noted, three claims are made here regarding the Barthesian/Xebran process.

First, the claim is made that if Xebra, and more generally, the Barthesian methodology, were not effective aids in gathering the facts of prose texts, then meeting each of the eight criterion using the same would have been difficult, if not impossible.

Second, the claim is made that, in fact, each criterion was, indeed, met through the production of a Barthesian reading using Xebra.

Third, the claim is made that there was, in fact, a deepening of the understanding of the text that resulted primarily from the use of the tools of Xebra.

Before examining these claims, recalling the main points concerning the prospective problem areas that were enumerated and discussed in earlier chapters is appropriate. One, it was stated that such problems were of two types: theory and practice. Two, regarding the latter, there were three concerns: precision, completeness, and consistency regarding the application of the system to a given text. Three, regarding the former, there were five concerns: the agrammacality of the method; number of possible codings of a given signifier (lexia); and related to that, the number of possible patterns that the signifiers can enter into; the validity, or more concretely, the usefulness of the five codes; and the applicability of the system to inter-text analysis. In evaluating the evaluation, all three problems of practice will be addressed, as will be four of the five problems of theory. Only the intertextual analysis problem will be put aside for the moment, as it is a matter for CHAPTER V, where future extensions, uses of Xebra and the Barthesian methodology, will be explored.

Given that the first claim for the success of the Barthesian/Xebran reading is totally dependent on the successful defense of the second, attention is directed to it, letting the arguments made for supporting claim two stand as arguments in favor of claim one.

In eight sections of this chapter, criterion by criterion, it has been demonstrated how each could be met through appropriate use of the two databases constructed in the labeling phase of the Barthesian reading process. While it is true that problems in the databases were unearthed, none of them were fatal to the project of discovering the facts and the patterns which those facts form.

Further, it is important that those problems were almost universally related to human error, and not inherent in the process or in the tools. The downside to this, then, is that the existence of the errors demonstrates that the tools do not totally immunize a user against personal limitations of intellect, skill, or experience.

In that regard, because of the computer tools, there was, in fact, a lessening of the number of errors. In particular, the ease of using three different methods for producing lexias, and the computer support for labeling them, together helped assure completeness, precision, and consistency.

Thus, by having three different lexia-based views of the text, it was more difficult to miss aspects of the text. In other words, the differences in where the text was cut helped highlight different signifiers in the text. This was especially true when the signifier, in one form or another, was buried in a long lexia, but in, at least, one set, it (the signifier) was in a small lexia, isolated. Conversely, the large lexias aided in capturing signifiers that spanned significant amounts of text. Since small signifiers were often intermixed with, if not actually part of, larger ones, this ability to see the same text differently was vital to making a complete labeling of the text.

Further, by using a database engine with its rigid definition of record structures, it was more difficult to vary the form of the labels and the content. When problems of this sort occurred, particularly with regard to content (since label form was controlled quite rigidly), the tools of the database were helpful. For example, when two or more terms were used to label the same concept, it was simple to cull the list of extent labels for all such duplicates, settling on just one version. Thus precision and consistency were supported, all in the same procedure.

As for the theory questions, as a general proposition, it can be claimed that, if the agrammacality of the system, or the apparently infinite possibilities of labeling and of pattern formation, or the assumed limitations of the five codes, were truly problems, then the resolving of the eight criteria was not achievable. This can be deepened, however.

First, agrammacality was, in fact, an aid, not a hindrance, simply by forcing the Barthesian reader's attention on discovering the signifiers in a specific lexia; with only peripheral regard to related signifiers in the text, it became easier to find them. By interrupting the expected grammatical flow, a labeler is jolted out of complacency, and is more tightly and completely focused on the task--much like a driver of a car on a road with potholes is more likely to pay attention to the pavement than one who is driving on a smooth, flawless surface.

The problem of too many possible codings is addressed, first, by the controlling of completeness, precision, and consistency, and second, by noting that the method depends on connotation. Thus, the infinite capability of language to connote is the method's strength; not its weakness.

The problem of too many patterns is similarly not a problem, if one accepts Barthes' insistence on the validity, indeed, the necessity, of the infinite play of meanings. However, assuming that one is not sanguine on this point, then the solution does lie in practice. For instance, as an analyst/critic peruses the labels in the Label Database, determining various patterns via unions, intersections, and disjoint operations, only those patterns that strike the analyst/critic as being of interest are ultimately pursued.

The human mind automatically limits the number of patterns that can be and, thus, are considered at any one time, as noted in CHAPTER I via Edsgar Dijkstra's defense of the analytic method. We have only so much capacity for carrying patterns in our minds. With the tools available in Xebra, the process of forming, analyzing, and either accepting or rejecting a candidate pattern, is actually quite fast and simple. A manual approach would be nearly impossible for any but the smallest of texts, but with a computer system, virtually any existent text becomes quite accessible to manipulation and analysis in this manner.

Finally, the notion that Barthes' five codes might be insufficient to the task of revealing the facts of the text, or, put differently, that there is a fundamental problem of incompleteness to his scheme, is not supported by the evidence of this Barthesian/Xebran reading. Since all eight criteria are met using only the five codes, this would suggest strongly that they are sufficient to the task.

On a cautionary note, it should be remembered that the absence of evidence for a condition is not proof that the condition is nonexistent. However, as stated at the beginning of the chapter, one of the reasons for selecting "The Bear" as the test object was due to the extreme complexity of the text, the premise being that such complexity would stretch both Xebra and its underlying reading model, that is, Barthes'. However, on the assumption that there exists, at least, one exception text that would break the Barthesian system, Xebra was designed to be extensible to other labeling systems. This aspect of Xebra will be explored in CHAPTER V.

As for the third claim, that there was, indeed, support for a deepening of the understanding of the text, one need but turn to Figure 6. In that graph, the fluctuations of time, especially in Section IV, are made quite apparent. While it is true that it is possible to come up with such a graph without Barthes' method or Xebra, it can be readily shown that the graph is just a simple by-product of a computer-based implementation of his method, while any other approach, especially, a less systematic one, would hit on this as much as by serendipity, as by force of intellect. Further, because of the lexia approach, one's attention can be tightly directed and focused on one, and only one, aspect of the text, such as the time lines and their intersection with the subject material of the text.

If one reads only those lexias where the turns in time occur in Chapter IV, one quickly realizes that Isaac is involved in a complex escape process, and his racing back and forth in time is an analog of his attempt to find some way, any way, to escape from the fate that claimed him at the end of Section III. Knowing this, the analyst/critic is led ever more deeply into the relationship of time to subject. Thus, pattern tracing becomes a recursive process, moving ever inward, to the most basic sub-nets, as well as, ever outward, to the highest, most abstract internets, all interrelated metonymically.

In summation, then, the final numerical rankings, criterion by criterion, of the Barthesian/Xebran reading of "The Bear" are:

1) Criterion One: +2

2) Criterion Two: +3

3) Criterion Three: +1/+2

4) Criterion Four: +2

5) Criterion Five: +1

6) Criterion Six: +1

7) Criterion Seven: +2

8) Criterion Eight: +2

When summed together, the total is "+14" or "+15," depending on how number three is counted. This resolves to an average score of "+1.75." This score, being closer to a "+2" then a "+1," clearly supports the claim that the tool helps a great deal, assuming a capable reader and an equally capable analyst/critic are performing the tasks necessary to each function. If such is the case, then succeeding in fully discerning the basic patterns of meaning in the text is clearly possible using the Barthesian/Xebran reading system.