To some, culture and community may seem very similar. Yes, there are some similarities between the two, but if you interpret them further, they become more different. Culture is a set of rules and regulations, a heritage, the influence on how people act, the roles in society that people encounter and can be quite manipulative. Community is what people experience on a personal level. Culture is about the entire environment, and community is about the people within the culture and their personal relationships. In the story "The Bear That Wasn't There" by Frank Tashlin, Tashlin describes the essence of culture. This story was used to represent the theme of culture in the classroom because it tells the story of a bear who is told that he is not a bear and is forced to change the way he lives to fit into a certain culture and become institutionalized. In this story, readers learn about a bear who goes into hibernation and when he wakes up he finds himself in this new environment, a factory. Since the factory has no role for a bear, he is told that he is not a bear. For a while the bear tells the people at the factory that he is actually a bear, and they simply tell him that he is a hairy man who needs to shave, because if he were really a bear he would be at the zoo or the circus. After trying multiple times to tell many different people that he is a bear, and being repeatedly rejected, the bear begins to believe that he is not a bear at all. He has lost his sense of identity and his sense of self. The bear cooperates with the rules and plays the role of worker. At the end of the story he hibernates again, awakens in his real environment and realizes that he is a bear. This is a good choice for a story abo... middle of paper... he comes back after many years of being alone whenever he needs something or a little trust. The tree is not just given to anyone, but only to this boy. Silverstein does a great job of making readers understand how community comes into play in a culture. Even though humans don't live in a culture where they have special bonds with trees and inanimate objects, there's more to it than just the tree being a tree. The tree is THIS GUY'S tree. As told in these stories, we can realize what it means to be part of a culture and have a community. The main difference between culture and community is that culture entirely encompasses all relationships and creates roles that people can fulfill, and community is what holds culture together. Community is the backbone of a culture. Without relationships, there would be no roles and rules for people to fall into.