"Killing the Bear"

Paper Summary:

Often things that we experience as children impact the way we develop as adults. The paper shows that in Judith Minty's "Killing the Bear," a woman painfully comes to grips with a loss of security from her childhood. She combines the past and present, representing her great loss as a bear that she has come into contact with. The paper shows that in order for her to regain her security and power as an adult, she must defeat the bear, which is a symbol of her loss.

From the Paper:

"Over time, the woman has developed an obsession with bears, both healthy and unhealthy. She gathers information about people honoring and worshiping the animal: the Gilyak tribe honors him, Ainus women suckle the cubs, in Lapland he was the King of Beasts. (91) Yet, she also collects stories which show the bear as a cold-blooded killer, and always with the use of its claws. In the travelogue about Alaska, "his claws stretched out like fingers" and "with the sweep of a paw, he split open the head of the other" (91)."

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