3 Famous Faulkner Short Novels: The Bear, Spotted Horses, Old Man

The Bear,” set in the late 19th century, is a hunting story told from the perspective of Isaac (“Ike”) McCaslin, a young man from an old family in Yoknapatawpha county. In the first three parts of the novelette, Ike trains under the expert tracker Sam Fathers and hunts down the legendary bear Old Ben.

In telling the story of a con artist who persuades his neighbors to buy untamable horses that wreak havoc on the community, Faulkner infuses a Southern slice-of-life narrative with a powerful moral parable, raising questions about man's place in a universe governed by greed and chaos.

Based on the classic novel about Joe Jack `JJ', a convict at a jail farm in the Deep South of the 1920s. JJ has served six years of a 15-year sentence when he and his fellow convicts are conscripted to help battle a monumental flood along the banks of the Mississippi. JJ can't swim. He can't even paddle a boat, but he is dispatched to try save a woman who has been caught up in a raging river.