“Mislike me not, for my complexion, the sad owed livery of the burnished sun.” When you first open Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper this is one of the first things you read. This quote from Shakespeare seems to state that the book will not show the racist tendencies of the time, but display the different races in equal light. While writing a historical fiction, being a completely anti-racist novel is not possible but Cooper seems to state with his head note that the color of skin does not matter. Despite the surface level image of a heroic narrative of Native Americans, Cooper betrays an underline racist agenda, much like the opinions of his own protagonists, which comes through in relationship tension and through the inversion of the native tribes, which played into the racist propaganda of the times increasing tension. Last of the Mohicans is part of a series which tells the adventures of Hawkeye as the main protagonist. Hawkeye is a white male, who has in a sense, disowned his race and ancestors and lives in the wild with the Mohicans. Yet while Hawkeye seems to see his race in such a bad light to live out in the wild, he takes extreme pride in being a white male. “ “Iroquois, daren’t deny that I am genuine white,” the scout replied, surveying, with secret satisfaction, the faded color of his bony and sinewy hand” (23).* While his best friends are Native Americans, Hawkeye still acts as if he is above them, more evolved, because he is a white man. During racial arguments, Hawkeye always draws attention to his race, demonstrating that it is of such great importance to his personal identity and something of which others must be made aware of. Even though he has left the settled life of a white man he has not ultimately left behind the white man’s philosophy on Native Americans and those who are mixed race. “I am not a prejudiced man…” (23). This is always Hawkeye’s way to start a conversation. It is a method he uses to smooth over the conversation right before be goes into how he is genuine white and above them. No one ever comments on this or corrects Hawkeye of his ways showing that it is not something that he should be ashamed of or in any way wrong. “But neither the Mohicans, nor I, who am a white man without a cross, can explain the cry we heard” (59). I find it interesting that instead of saying we, Hawkeye uses the Mohicans and I. Again, “No Indian myself, but a man without a cross” (126). He makes a point to separate himself from them. He is a white man, not a Native American. Also he points out that not only is he white, but he is without a cross. Here I think it can be implied that it means that he is pure white, his bloodline has not been crossed with any other race. He uses this as a status of power, inserting himself carefully above the Native Americans and those of mixed race. Is this how Cooper then sees the hierarchy of people, that those with a pure white bloodline are above the rest? That they are better than everyone else? I believe in a way this is how Cooper feels, if not why would he write a whole series on Hawkeye, allowing him to spew his propaganda about how whites are above all the rest. It is then interesting to look at how Cooper displays characters that aren’t pure white. Cora the heroin of the story is actually of mixed race decadency, her father is white, and her mother was from the Caribbean. “You scorn to mingle the blood of the Heywards with one so degraded-lovely and virtuous though she be?” (161). When Heyward goes to Colonel Munro to ask one of his daughters hand in marriage Munro is shocked and calls Heyward racist for picking his daughter with fair skin instead of his eldest darker skinned daughter. Heyward’s embarrassment and shock come through but he realizes in a way that is why he doesn’t desire Cora, because of how he was raised to look down on those of mixed race. Yet Cora is ultimately the center of desire for two Native Americans, Uncas and Magua. Near the end of the book I would have guessed that the novel would end happily with Cora and Uncas remaining together despite the fact that Uncas is a Native American and Cora of mixed decadency. Ultimately, we see the collapse of every character in the love triangle however, love is not lost! Alice and Heyward having both survived the final battle are deeply in love. Their relationship is allowed to flourish and grow as they both take their experiences back to civilization, leaving the wild, savage forest behind. Cooper in allowing the relationship of Alice and Heyward to thrive while that of Uncas and Cora is doomed reveals his thoughts on mixed race relationships. Mixed race relationships or even that between a civilized person and a savage person are doomed to fail. They can’t happen or he may even mean to say that they shouldn’t be allowed to occur. Cooper even goes as far to say that even in heaven the lovers will not be together:“Say to these kind and gentle females, that a heartbroken and failing man returns them his thanks. Tell him, that the Being we all worship, under different names, will be mindful of their charity; and that the time shall not be distant when we may assemble around his throne without distinction of sex, or rank, or color.” The scout listened to the tremulous voice… “To tell them this,” he said, “would be to tell them that the snows come not in winter, or the sun shines fiercest when the trees are stripped of their leaves.” (360-61) From Hawkeye’s point of view, even in heaven there is apartheid, which means there is no way that the lovers will ever be happy together in heaven or on earth. This again is where the racism of Cooper’s time comes seeping through the pages of the novel. Mixed race relationships were greatly frowned upon, even considered illegal in that time. Copper while trying to display the book as anti-racist by making Uncas and Cora, both who aren’t white, his heroes, he underneath the main plot creates this racism that mirrors that of the 1820s. “And I tell you that he who is born a Mingo will die a Mingo” (31). Only a couple of chapters into the book and Cooper already shows his true colors about how he feels about the Native Americans. There is no redemption for them, they cannot move up the totem pole of class structure, they are born low-class Native Americans and will die that way. Cooper actually inverts the native tribes in the book from that in history. During the French and Indian War, the Mohicans was actually paired with the French, not the British, and the Iroquois were paired with the British. In historical context the Mohicans were actually the villains and the Iroquois the heroes but that is not the case in the book. So why did Cooper have this role reversal? While it may seem like an innocent difference it actually has very racial implications. When Cooper’s book was published was the time of Native American removal. During this time, the tribe that the country was trying to move was mainly the Iroquois tribe. Here is where we see the propaganda that Cooper displayed. He makes the Iroquois in the book the villain, which in turn causes people to be less sympathetic of their cause and makes people more likely to support the Native American removal. “The pale-faces are the masters of the earth, and the time of the redmen has not yet come again. My day has been too long. In the morning I saw the sons of Unamis happy and strong; and yet, before the night has come, have I lived to see the last warrior of the wise race of the Mohicans” (363-64). In the end the Native Americans left decide that it is time to move on, it is the white man’s turn to thrive. This is the solution Cooper paints to the Native American removal and shows his support to the cause. They should want to leave. They no longer have a key influence to the making of the world. The Native American tribes should just move on and do what the white man says for they no longer have a place in history. “Mislike me not for my complexion.” A bold statement that Cooper inserts on the front pages of the book yet tears apart as the reader dives deeper into the novel. The head note can be compared to Hawkeye stating, “I am not a prejudice man…” right before he says something racist. This is Cooper’s way to smooth over the racism that he displays in his novel. With Hawkeye as his main character in this series he can be thought of as having Cooper’s own thoughts on race, interracial relationships, and the Native American removal. Cooper allows the racism of the current time seep through as propaganda in the book and destroying any anti-racist plot that he tried to display in his novel.This review is actually a paper I am writing for class and in the editing stages :) UPDATE This was a paper for class and I got the grade back today and received a 3.8, one of the higher grades in the class!
Note: I've just edited this review slightly to correct a chronological typo. When I read this book the first time, I was nine, not seven years old --I knew, when I wrote the first draft of this review, that I was in 4th grade the first time, so I don't know what I was thinking when I typed "seven!"This novel, set in northern New York in 1757 and involving wilderness adventure and combat during the French and Indian War, was my first introduction to Cooper; the dates given here were for the second reading, but the first was back when I was nine years old. (Newly transferred to parochial school, I stumbled on it in what passed for a school library: two shelves of donated books.) I didn't mind the style (I was a weird kid), and it actually had a lot to appeal to a boy reader: Indians, gunfights and knife fights on land and water, chases, captures, escapes, and the appeal of some actual history thrown in. It left me with a solid liking for Cooper, and interest in reading more by him (though I've only scratched the surface there).Like most early 19th-century authors, Cooper's popularity suffers with modern readers because of his diction; and the literary/critical set have been particularly hostile to him, starting with the Realist period with its root-and-branch condemnation of Romanticism and all its works. Mark Twain launched the attack with a hatchet job titled "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" (see below), and in the next generation, Charles Neider's verdict was snide and disparaging. The probability that Twain was motivated by professional jealousy as much as anything else, and the fact that Neider was a Washington Irving partisan who saw Cooper as dangerous competition for the highest laurels, don't seem to have discouraged today's critics from taking their assessments as the last word in Cooper criticism; indeed, they pile on the added condemnation that he held incorrect political views, which, for today's critical clerisy, is enough to damn a writer to eternal literary-critical hell. (As a high-school student, I recall watching Clifton Fadiman, the favorite 16mm talking head of English classes of that day, sneering at this book as a "dead classic" --which, having actually read it, confirmed my opinion of Fadiman's critical incompetence. :-) ) Interestingly, that wasn't the view of Cooper's contemporaries; he was not only very popular with readers in the U.S., but was one of the few pre-1865 American writers to have a literary reputation abroad. Balzac was a fan, going so far as to say of him that "had his characterizations been sharper, he would have been the master novelist of us all." He continued to earn high praise even from several serious literary pundits in Twain's day (and that worthy's flip assertion that none of these men had actually read Cooper is a fair sample of Twain's substitution of ridicule and sarcasm for reasonable discussion).My own assessment of Cooper, and of this work in particular, isn't uncritical. There's no denying that his prose style, even by the standards of his day, is particularly dense, wordy and florid. This is especially notable in much of his dialogue. Even granting that in 1757 upper and middle-class speech tended to be more formal than ours, it's difficult to imagine anyone speaking in as orotund a manner as most of the characters here, especially in some of these contexts. (In fairness to Cooper, though, it's not true that none of his characters have speaking patterns that are distinct and reasonably reflect who they are; and David Gamut, the character with, IMO, the most ridiculously fulsome speech, is to a degree intended as comic relief.) His plotting doesn't hold up as well to a read by a 59-year-old as by a seven-year-old kid; some of the character's decisions are foolhardy, and there are plot points that strike me as improbable (though not the ones that Twain cites). While I don't necessarily mind authorial intrusion in the narrative, he uses it here a bit too much. And this edition could also have benefited from the inclusion of a map.For all that, though, the positives for me outweighed the negatives. He delivers an adventure yarn that's pretty well-paced, absorbing and suspenseful. The characters are clearly-drawn, distinct, realistic, round, and complex, and evoke real reader reactions. Actual history is incorporated into the narrative in a seamless way. The portrayal of Indians and Indian culture, while not the treatment of them as blandly homogenized, gentle New Agers that modern monolithic "multiculturalism" would prescribe, is basically a realistic one that derived partly from first-hand contacts, and more knowledgeable than most white literary treatments would have been. While he sometimes refers to them as "savages," --and it's fair to note that they are people who, in real life, at times DID torture captives and kill noncombatants-- he doesn't demonize them or make them out to be stupid, unfeeling brutes. Like whites, individuals can be villains, like Magua, but other individuals can be very good; title character Uncas is portrayed as an admirable embodiment of masculine virtues, and the author actually contrasts Indian culture with Anglo-European culture to the disadvantage of the latter in several places.Critics of Romantic school action-adventure fiction tend to deny that it has any serious messages (partly because they don't want to see messages they don't like, or recognize serious thought in a despised source), but they're present here nevertheless, and related to the above. Moral qualities such as courage, honor, loyalty, kindness and self-sacrifice, generosity, and love for family and friends are both praised and presented by favorable example, while the opposite qualities are disparaged. And there's a serious call to the reader to discard prejudiced ways of looking at people of other races/cultures. It's no accident that Uncas, an Indian depicted at a time when many people despised Indians, is the title character and real hero of the book, and that Cora, the strongest female character and Cooper's clear favorite, is also the one with some Negro descent on her mother's side. (In this respect, the racial attitudes here, IMO, show an advance in enlightenment on the part of the maturing Cooper that isn't evident in earlier works like The Spy and The Pioneers, the two other Cooper novels I've read.) There's even a hint that for Cooper, the idea of interracial romance isn't a complete taboo, though the presentation is subtle. True, Hawkeye, who obviously carries some emotional baggage from being disparaged by other whites for his Indian associations, stresses his un-crossed bloodlines with no Indian "taint," and won't consider the idea of intermarriage (though his bond with his Indian friends is subversive of his culturally-conditioned racism). But to automatically assume, as some readers do, that Hawkeye must always speak for Cooper is, I think, a mistake. He is who he is, warts and all, and that includes being opinionated and fallible (it's not likely, for instance, that his disdain for books and literacy was shared by an author who was a professional writer!). Cooper was a strong Christian, and this book has several naturally-integrated references to religious faith and prayer, as well as a couple of short discussions of religious belief. The type of Christian belief Cooper finds congenial comes across as one that's not doctrinally dogmatic and narrow (as opposed to Gamut's Calvinism), and not judgmental in consigning others to hellfire and damnation. (When Hawkeye refuses to translate Colonel Munro's statement, "Tell them, that the Being we all worship, under different names, will be mindful of their charity; and that the time shall not be distant when we may assemble around his throne without distinction of sex, rank, or color," this reader perceived Munro, not Hawkeye, as speaking for the author!)A major factor in my rating was the ending. (view spoiler)[At the climax, the two most positive characters in the book are killed. This accords with the Romantic penchant for tragedy, which I don't share as strongly; I much prefer happy endings. But the ending here, while I didn't like it, does seem to have an inherently fated quality that grows naturally out of the arc of the story. (hide spoiler)]
What do You think about The Last Of The Mohicans (1982)?
The movie is much better than the book, no doubt about that.The illustrated version is available for free download at Gutenberg ProjectIllustrated by N.C. Wyeth"Mislike me not for my complexion,The shadowed livery of the burnished sun."NEW YORKCHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS1933Copyright, 1919, by Charles Scribner's SonsPage 26: UNCAS SLAYS A DEERAvoiding the horns of the infuriated animal, Uncasdarted to his side, and passed his knife across the throatPage 66:THE BATTLE AT GLENS FALLSEach of the combatants threw all his energies into thateffort, and the result was, that both tottered on thebrink of the precipicePage 114:THE FIGHT IN THE FORESTThe battle was now entirely terminated, with the exceptionof the protracted struggle between Le Renard Subtil andLe Gros SerpentPage 166:THE MEETING OF THE GENERALSAs soon as this slight salutation had passed, Montcalmmoved towards them with a quick but graceful step,baring his head to the veteran, and dropping his spotlessplume nearly to the earth in courtesyPage 214:THE FLIGHT ACROSS THE LAKEThe scout having ascertained that the Mohicans weresufficient of themselves to maintain the requisite distance,deliberately laid aside his paddle, and raisedthe fatal riflePage 250:THE TERMAGANTThrowing back her light vestment, she stretched forthher long skinny arm, in derisionPage 268:THE MASQUERADERThe grim head fell on one side, and in its place appearedthe honest, sturdy countenance of the scoutPage 278:THE LOVERSHeyward and Alice took their way together towards thedistant village of the Delawarespage 320:THE SUPPLICANTCora had cast herself to her knees; and, with hands clenchedin each other and pressed upon her bosom, she remained likea beauteous and breathing model of her sex
—Laura
3.5 StarsThe novel was entertaining and enjoyable but I found it took real patience to get though, especially at the beginning. I found the amount of descriptions of the setting and scenery was over-done, it was extremely infuriating after a while but I managed to stick with it. The second half of the book was a lot better than the first - the pace of the novel speeds up, there's a lot more action. I really enjoyed the novel once I got passed the halfway mark. This novel may be hard-going, but it's worth reading. You will need to take some time over it and persevere with the first half, but when you finish the novel you'll feel it was worth it. Note: You'll need a dictionary or the internet to hand to translate the French dialogue, but this doesn't occur much.
—Aoibhínn
Joan, if I could go back & "unread" this novel, I would. It was SO awful that it actually tainted the movie for me (somewhat). The author found it necessary to describe every last twig or blade of grass. And I just wasn't a fan of his writing style in general. He did such a poor job of writing these characters that they came across as "caricatures" or "cartoonish." So whoever wrote the screenplay for the movie deserves a freaking medal b/c he/she turned a mediocre novel into a stunning achievement.... I've been very low on energy as of late, but if I can, I plan on watching the movie tomorrow in order to scrub the remnants of the book from my mind.... Joan, you made the smart choice by forgoing this novel. It would have only left you disappointed & probably a little pissed off.... I hope that you have a Happy New Year! I'll talk to you soon. (Hug)
—Maida
