1My Appreciation of
the Last of the Mohicans
As one of ?°The Leather-stocking Tales?±, The Last of the
Mohicans creates an American hero-myth by the name of Hawkeye.
In this novel he is portrayed as a perfect example of the western man, shaped by the forest in which he lives and broken away from the
falsity of civilization. He is the embodiment of basic human virtues like kindness, wisdom, bravery and rustic chivalry. His Indian companion, the Mohican chief Chingachgook, is Cooper?ˉs ideal of the natural man, whose native intelligence, loyalty and brotherly love are not tainted by civilization. Besides vivid characterization, this novel is full of blood and fight, set in descriptive images of the
beauty of nature reminiscent of Sir Walter Scott.
What is more, I think that repetition, oppositions and contrasts abound in the novel. Repetition exists most obviously in the plot device of the trap and escape of the characters while oppositions show themselves mainly in the numerous frontier clashes: French against English, Indians against Indians and against whites, Magua against Hawkeye?ˉs party. The most important and controlling
opposition in the novel are between evil and good. As to contrasts, the most appealing one is that between the condition of nature and the condition of humans.
In addition, after reading this novel, I find two themes from it. 2The first one is ?°interracial love and friendship?±. The Last of
the Mohicans is about race and the difficulty of overcoming radical divides. Cooper suggests that interracial mingling is both desirable and dangerous. Cooper lauds the genuine and longtime friendship between Hawkeye, a white man, and Chingachgook, a Mohican
Indian. Hawkeye and Chingachgook?ˉs shared communication with nature transcends race, enabling them to team up against Huron enemies and to save white military leaders like Heyward. On the other hand, though, cooper shows his conviction that interracial romances are doomed and undesirable. The interracial love of Uncas and Cora ends in tragedy, and the forced interracial relationship between Cora and Magua is portrayed as unnatural. Through Cora, cooper suggests that interracial desire can be inherited.
The second one is ?°the changing idea of family?±. Cooper uses the frontier setting to explore the changing status of the family unit. Cooper posits that the wilderness demands new definitions of family. Uncas and Hawkeye, for example, form a makeshift family structure. When Uncas?ˉs real father, Chingachgook, disappears without
explanation in the middle portion of the novel, Hawkeye becomes a symbolic father for Uncas. As Uncas develops his leadership qualities and emerges as a hero at the Delaware council of
Tamenund, he takes on some of the charisma and skill of Hawkeye, 3just as a son would inherit behavior from his father. Not only do Uncas and Hawkeye form a family not related by blood, they form a family that transcends race. Despite this redefinition, however, the novel dose not allow new family formations that mix race, for Uncas and Cora do not to get to act on their interracial attraction. The tragedy of this sentimental novel is that Cora and Uncas cannot redefine the notion of family according to their desires. All in all, Cooper?ˉs style in this novel is plain and
straightforward. His lucid description of nature often achieves a poetic simplicity. The tragic irony is that the last of the Mohicans, symbolically represent the last of a dying Indian culture, including not only the Mohicans but all the Indian tribes?adispersed, divided and ultimately destroyed by the coming of the Europeans.
