Abstract

In this research we try to discover the insight of “Last of the Mohicans” in a holistic perspective. The key heart of the study is on “Last of the Mohicans”. The research also examines various characteristics of “Last of the Mohicans” and tries to measure its effect. Lastly the research illustrates the writing style of “James Fenimore Cooper” and describes the overall effect of it.

Table of Contents

Introduction1

Discussion and Analysis1

Conclusion8

Works Cited9

Last of the Mohicans

Introduction

The Last of the Mohicans is the second of the five books making up Cooper's Leather stocking Tales, and its action is second in terms of the adventures of Cooper's hero Natty Bumppo and his Indian friend Chingachgook. The first novel of the series, The Pioneers (1823), portrays Natty, bitter and at the end of his life, leading a group of pioneers westward, and fighting to protect the wilderness against the ever encroaching civilization.

The Last of the Mohicans takes the reader back to Natty's youth, when he, Chingachgook, and Chingachgook's son Uncas are given the task, during the French and Indian War, of escorting Alice and Cora Munro from Fort Edward through the wilderness to Fort William Henry to be reunited with their father, British lieutenant colonel Munro. Natty, at home neither with his own people nor with the Indians, from whom his race necessarily excludes him, remains a man surviving solely on his intuitive understanding of the wilderness, his Christian moral values, and the companionship of Chingachgook. Natty (also referred to as Hawkeye in this novel) is "a man without a cross," meaning that he is purely white, with no trace of Indian blood. Magua, the Munro sisters' hired Huron Indian guide, along with psalmist David Gamut (the novel's comic relief) and Major Duncan Hayward, constitute the rest of the party. Magua, however, whose tribe is at war with the Mohicans, is leading the group into an ambush, propelling the action of the first half of the novel.

Discussion and Analysis

One of the first American novelists of note, James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) had difficulty settling down as a young man. He was expelled from Harvard for misconduct, resigned his commission in the navy, and was in his 30s when he finally began writing novels, most of them about the exploration of North America's wilderness. The Last of the Mohicans is the second and best of the five Leather stocking novels, the history of a frontiersman named Natty Bumppo, also known as the Long Rifle, and the basis for the television series Hawkeye (Ratliff, 98).

Cooper viewed the American Indian as noble savages who valued honor, according to their code, and lived in many ways a more exemplary life than the Europeans and colonists. The governments of the Old World, particularly England and France, were in Cooper's opinion corrupt and inefficient, and they victimized both sides in North America with their endless maneuvering against one another. At the same time, he recognizes that the threat of the "savages" was exaggerated by fear and became a potent force in the former ...