The Violent Bear It Away

The Violent Bear It Away Summary | Chapter 1 Summary

The Violent Bear it Away is the story of a young boy, Francis Marion Tarwater, whose life in the backwoods of Tennessee takes a prophetic turn over seven days when he experiences a trial by fire and comes to understand his ultimate destiny.

As the story begins, a Negro man named Buford Munson has just buried the body of Mason Tarwater, an eighty-four-year-old backwoodsman from the small town of Powderhead, Tennessee. Buford came to Mason's shack looking for moonshine at about noon, and it is now sundown. Buford is about to leave, his work of mercy completed but his jug still empty because Mason's great-nephew, Francis Marion Tarwater, has not yet returned from the still.

The narrative reverts to the past to explain the events which lead up to the day of Mason's death and why fourteen-year-old Francis Marion, who goes by the name of Tarwater, lives with his great-uncle. As far as Tarwater knows, he has always lived with his great uncle who raised him, schooled him and most importantly, taught him religion. Tarwater's only other living relative is his uncle, Rayber, whom Tarwater's great uncle, Mason, refers to simply as the schoolteacher. Tarwater's parents died when the boy was a baby, and Rayber wanted to raise the child. Mason kidnapped Tarwater from his crib, though, claiming the baby for Jesus' work. He said that Tarwater would be raised to be a prophet just like Mason considered himself to be.

In addition to the basics of a backwoods education, Mason teaches Tarwater the ways of prophesying so that the child may carry on the legacy when Mason passes on. It is important that Tarwater understand the evil that can fall upon a prophet, both manmade and those sent from the Lord which can burn a prophet until he's clean and new. Mason himself has been burned many times and has learned from the experiences.

One of the experiences is the time Rayber comes out to Mason's shack to retrieve the infant, Tarwater, in an attempt to save the child from a life of lack and ignorance. Rayber enlisted the help of the local welfare office worker, Bernice Bishop, and the pair traipses through cornfields and over clay roads to reach the shack. Mason appears at the front door of the shack and threatens to shoot anyone who approaches. Rayber takes one move up the steps, and Mason shoots Rayber's leg and takes a second shot at Rayber's head, cutting out a chunk of Rayber's ear and ending the rescue mission.

Tarwater can recall times when his great uncle would leave for days at a time to communicate with God in the woods and return looking as if he had spent days wrestling with wild animals. Mason would always be bloodied and bent but not beaten and urged God to send him another mission, another soul to save.

One particular soul of interest to Mason is the child named Bishop, the mentally retarded son of the schoolteacher and Bernice Bishop, who eventually marry. Mason even makes a trip into town to baptize Bishop and kidnap him for the sake of the child's soul, so that he will not have to live in the house with someone as evil as the schoolteacher and the lewd Bernice.

The kidnapping and subsequent baptism are thwarted, and Mason passes on the spiritual onus to Tarwater should Mason die before Bishop is saved. Tarwater feels that the Lord has bigger plans for him than to baptize a slow-witted child, but Mason cautions Tarwater that his place is not to think but to act on the Lord's calling.

The plot now returns to the morning of Mason's death at the breakfast table. Mason has fixed breakfast for Tarwater and himself, just as he does every morning. After he sits down at the table, Mason dies before he can put the first bite in his mouth. Tarwater sees the tremor pass over his great uncle, and the big man freezes in place, his eyes bulging out of his perfectly balanced head staring straight across the table at Tarwater.

Tarwater knows that his great uncle is dead but finishes his breakfast before verifying the fact. After he finishes his meal, Tarwater throws the breakfast remains to the chickens and sits down on the lid of the pine box on the porch to plan his next move. Tarwater knows that he must bury his great uncle before anything new can begin.

Tarwater considers the changes he can make to the property now that Mason is dead, but a strange voice tells him that the land now belongs to the schoolteacher as Mason's next of kin. The voice urges Tarwater to bury Mason first before taking on any property alterations. Tarwater is sitting on the pine coffin that Mason built and inscribed with his name, but Tarwater has no burial plans for the box.

Mason is much too heavy for Tarwater to lift up and over the edge of the box, and Tarwater remembers his great uncle's second option if the pine box would not work out. Tarwater is to bury the man in a hole ten feet deep and make sure that a cross is placed at the head of the grave.

Tarwater balked at the instructions when his great uncle provided them not too long ago, thinking that the extra effort of the cross was an unnecessary trifle. In retaliation, Mason reminded Tarwater of his good fortune to be living in the woods instead of in town with the schoolteacher where Tarwater would be forced to attend school.

The mention of the schoolteacher reminds Mason of the time he himself spent at Rayber's house after Mason was released from an insane asylum. Mason thought that Rayber took him in out of kindness, but as it turned out, Mason was the subject of an article Rayber wrote about religious fanaticism for a schoolteacher magazine. This familial betrayal was the last insult to Mason, who managed to get away and lead his life his own way and not as the subject of some school teaching exercise.

Tarwater breaks out of his reverie on these incidents and decides that he needs to begin digging the hole for burial of his great uncle. As he digs, Tarwater thinks of his uncle Rayber. The only time he saw him was the night Mason took Tarwater into town to kidnap Bishop. Tarwater is pleased to know that Rayber will not bother him who gave up on him after the shooting incident.

The stranger's voice returns and tells Tarwater that Rayber never did any harm to Mason or Tarwater. Tarwater chops at the ground but does not make much progress, and he remembers the day that Mason took him into town to visit a lawyer to have Mason's will changed so that Rayber would not inherit the property. Unfortunately, the will could not be changed, and Mason visited several lawyers that day who told him the same thing. It is on this very day that Mason dragged Tarwater to Rayber's house for the unsuccessful attempt to kidnap Bishop.

Tarwater continues to dig, and the stranger's voice urges Tarwater to stop the work with the shovel and just burn the old man's body. Mason wanted a cross at his grave so that Jesus could find him on the day of Redemption, but the stranger's voice logically suggests that any inscription on a cross made in 1952 will surely be illegible by the day of the Second Coming.

Tarwater feels that burning his great uncle would not be natural. He is concerned for his own soul should he go through with such an act. The stranger perseveres and tells Tarwater that he is alone at the shack now, and no one will know the difference should Tarwater happen to leave a cigarette burning inside and burn up Mason's dead body in the process.

The voice tells Tarwater that the schoolteacher was always too smart for his uncle, who kidnapped Rayber when he was only seven so that he could baptize the boy. Rayber stayed only four days after his baptism, which means nothing to him now as an adult. The voice tells Tarwater that Mason was crazy and that the schoolteacher escaped the fate of becoming a prophet, which has now fallen on Tarwater.

The stranger's voice tells Tarwater that the Lord is not concerned with Tarwater, and if Tarwater really wants to be a prophet he needs to get away from this backwoods shack and get to town where the people are. When the grave is two feet deep, Tarwater sees Buford Munson and his woman coming toward him from across the field. The woman knows that Mason is dead because she has seen the old man's spirit for the past two nights. Tarwater deflects any gestures of sympathy. He takes Buford's jug and heads for the still to fill it.

As Tarwater stumbles through the woods and the brush, the stranger's voice repeats that the old man was crazy to bring an infant to the backwoods to raise as a prophet. According to the voice, the only reason Mason wanted Tarwater was to have someone to give him a Christian burial when the time came. The voice continues to taunt Tarwater about his great uncle's making a living off of liquor but condemning anyone who drinks it.

Tarwater can take the taunts no longer and begins to take swigs of the moonshine in the hopes of silencing the persistent voice. The voice reminds Tarwater that he could have lived in the city for the past fourteen years and had access to things instead of being holed up in this dilapidated shack all his life. As the voice continues to remind Tarwater of betrayals and abuses inflicted by his great uncle, Tarwater continues to drink the moonshine until he passes out drunk.

Soon Tarwater comes to. Buford is pulling on his arm, reminding Tarwater of the task of burying his great uncle, but Tarwater is too drunk to move. Buford lets him lie. Tarwater finally awakens at night and makes his way back to the shack. Crawling on the ground, he begins to set fire to the shack.

Tarwater makes his way to the highway at about midnight and hitches a ride with a copper flue salesman named Meeks. This is Tarwater's first trip into town at night. At first the lights confuse him, and he thinks the car is headed in the wrong direction, back toward the blazing shack. When Meeks corrects him, Tarwater claims to have made the mistake because he was asleep, but he is awake now.