Dealing with Loss in Killing the Bear

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Dealing with Loss in Killing the Bear

Often things that we experience as children have lasting affects on us that creep up when we least expect them. In Judith Minty's story "Killing the Bear", a woman finds herself in just such a situation. She finally deals with something that happened to her as a young child that she probably never even realized was bothering her. In this story the central character painfully comes to grips with a major loss of security from her childhood.

Throughout "Killing the Bear" the author flips back and forth from the story at hand and seemingly only loosely related anecdotes about the main character and bears. One of the first of these side stories is about the woman's childhood. It talks about something that happens to most children, the loss of an object of security. The girl is attached to a stuffed bear and her mother takes it away "for three months" (12). She is told that when the time is over if she has stopped sucking her thumb, she can have the toy back. When the time passes, however, the child discovers...

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