The Last Of The Mohicans Analysis

After the American Revolution in 1765-1783, there are many literary works that truly are a window into the development of Americans free of British influence. There is a lot of romanticism in the natural world of America and elevating the men who lived freely in the wilderness, the “mountain man,” was something distinctly American. The emergence of American slave narratives was also around this time, so the pride in the liberty and freedom of America was shadowed by the shame of enslaving millions of African people over the course of the country’s history. As a means to show this contrast, one can look at the work of James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) and Frederick Douglass (1818-1895). Cooper wrote The Last of the Mohicans, a fictional story

In The Last of the Mohicans, there are two main Native American characters names Chingachgook who is a longtime friend of Bumppo, and Uncas who is Chingachgook’s son. Uncas plays an important and heroic role in this book, he helps Bumppo defeat the main antagonist of the book, Magua, who is a Huron assisting the enemies of the Mohicans and Bumppo. Cooper also has a character named Cora who is biracial and she is depicted as intelligent and brave. While these characters are shown in a positive light, there is still a sense of white superiority in the book that can be seen at the start of the third chapter where Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook get into a bit of an argument. The argument seems to try to justify parts of the French and Indian War in favor of the white men, but also tries to separate Natty Bummpo from the negative parts of those men as Hawkeye says, “And I am willing to own that my people have many ways, of which, as an honest man, I can’t approve” (149). While Hawkeye says “every story has its two sides” (150), it cannot be denied historically that the Native American people were treated unfairly by white men. So Cooper often places Hawkeye above his other non-white characters where he always comes out above them a greater

Early in his life Douglass, realized the importance of learning to read and write due to his master, Mr. Auld, getting so angry with Mrs. Auld for helping Douglass learn to read. This sparked an intense desire for a young Douglass to do everything he could to continue his learning despite Mrs. Auld halting her teachings, “All this, however, was too late. The first step had been taken, Mistress, in teaching me the alphabet, had given me the inch, and no precaution could prevent me from taking the ell” (338). He convinced poor, young, white children to help him learn to read and write by making games of it with them or offering them food in exchange for whatever they could teach him. Douglass is a more realistic representation of an American hero, and he fought vehemently for his own freedom and then against the injustices still left in this country. While Natty Bumppo represents one kind of American hero, is Frederick Douglass not a better representation of what it really means to be American? Cooper progressively creates non-white characters, but still holds a strong bias towards having a white hero stand above the rest and does not fully address the shame of what was done to Native Americans in pushing them from their own land. While America was freed from British control, there was still an unjust power struggle in