Preview

The Last Of The Mohicans Essay

Best Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2515 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Last Of The Mohicans Essay
The Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore Cooper was born on September 15, 1789 and by the time of his death; he was considered the “national novelist” of America. In his novel, The Last of the Mohicans, we have a classic story set in the 1700 's. During this time, the French and Indian War is raging, complicated by an additional dispute between two Indian tribes, the Mohicans and the Hurons. Throughout the book we see characters with hearts that are strong and brave, but in spite of the characters, we see the inhumanity of the cruelty of the war. In The Last of the Mohicans, the theme is a conflict between civilization and savagery, and Cooper portrays a clash between races/cultures through the interracial friendship of Hawkeye and Chingachgook, through the barbarity between the Mohicans and the Hurons, and through the interracial love between Cora and Uncas.
Cooper
…show more content…
Hawkeye and Chingachgook have an interracial friendship due to the fact that Hawkeye is white and Chingachgook is a Mohican Indian. The barbarous actions between the Mohicans and the Hurons are the constant battles they have throughout the book. Since Cora is not white and Uncas is a Mohican Indian, they have an interracial love that is forbidden. The book is characterized by a series of thrilling attacks, captures, fights, and rescues; and Cooper does a good job of portraying the clashes of races/cultures discussed. At the heart of the novel is a poignant interracial friendship between the white man, Hawkeye, and the Mohican, Chingachgook, suggestive of Cooper’s misery with the cruelties that would eventually result in the death of Chingachgooks son Uncas, “the last of the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Apush Homework

    • 2371 Words
    • 10 Pages

    The movie The Last of the Mohicans took place in 1757 during the French and Indian War. In the movie the main character Nathaniel Hawkeye and his adoptive father and brother save Major Duncan Heyward and the two daughters of Officer Edmund Munro who were set up by their guide Magua. While on their way to the fort where Munro is Hawkeye and the group found the home of a friend and member of the Colonial Militia destroyed with its occupants murdered. Once at the fort Munro was taken aback at the site of his daughters since he had sent a message telling them not to come. At the fort Hawkeye told the militia about the Cameron home, but a jealous Duncan told Munro that this was done by thieves and as a result the militia is not allowed to leave the fort. Despite Munro’s threats Hawkeye helps his friends leave. The following day he was arrested for sedition and sentenced to hang. At the same time the French General Montcalm generously offered a safe passage to Albany to all occupants of the fort if they surrendered and vowed to never fight in North America again. Reluctantly Munro accepted after Montcalm showed an intercepted message, showing that no aid is coming. Magua, the guide, was not happy with this plan, he revealed to General Montcalm that because of Munro his family was destroyed. As the British soldiers and their families were leaving the fort Magua and his men ambushed them yet again. This time Magua succeeded in killing Munro, but not before promising to kill Cora and Alice too. Hawkeye, Cora, Alice, and a few others fled in canoes across Lake George and down a river to a cave behind a waterfall, but Magua and his men followed. To protect Cora and Alice, Hawkeye urged them to surrender and promised he will find them. Magua took Duncan and the two sisters to a Huron village. As Magua was negotiating the…

    • 2371 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    When Nacoochee’s father found out that she and Sautee had eloped, he was enraged. He vowed to find them and take out his anger on Sautee. Many young Cherokee braves who had longed for the chance to win Nacoochee’s love also volunteered to join the Chief of the Cherokees in his search.…

    • 664 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Junior Project

    • 2169 Words
    • 9 Pages

    The entire plot then revolves around the clash between these two parties. The chase continues through vibrant descriptions of forests, swirling waters, caves, and Indian villages because of Cooper’s transcendentalist style of writing. Magua chases the group and captures Duncan, Cora, Alice, and David. Uncas, Chingachgook, and Hawkeye rescue them and later unite the girls with their father. They then face the danger of the French, who have captured Fort William Henry. Magua strikes again and kills all the men, women, and children he can except for Cora and Alice, along with David who was acting as their escort. The two Mohicans and Hawkeye try to rescue them but fail and Uncas, Magua, and Cora die tragically after the attempted battle against the Huron Indians.…

    • 2169 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    "John Smith, the protagonist of Sherman Alexie's novel Indian Killer, is a man caught between the white world and the Indian world, and at home in neither. He is a full-blooded Native American Indian, but was raised by whites, and knows little about his Indian roots. As a result of these circumstances, and the fact that he is a man who appears to be an Indian in a nation of prejudice against Indians, he is a man without…

    • 1305 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early Republic is an amazing piece of historical writing. Alan Taylor, the author of this non-fiction work, engages the reader with detailed descriptions and thoroughly researched facts, bringing the society of New York in the 1780’s and 1790’s to life. The book portrays the true story of William Cooper and his American dream-come-true. William Cooper, the main character, is the middle child of a poor Quaker farming family, who lived in Byberry, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From such meager beginnings, he slowly climbs the social hierarchy to become a prominent land owner and a U.S. congressman. Alan Taylor uses the events of William Cooper’s life to portray important…

    • 1051 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    resulted in the death of so many colonists was the Gorilla warfare going on continuously…

    • 948 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Many people have probably heard of the Pequot War, assuming that it was just another battle between the English settlers and Indians, but really it was much more than that. Throughout history, the Pequot War has been characterized as the first serious conflict between the Indigenous people and the New England settlers. In 1996, a man named Alfred Cave published a novel titled “The Pequot War,” in which he describes the war as being “a small-scale conflict of short duration” (Cave 168) that “casted a long shadow” (Cave 168). Cave’s novel discusses the many defining aspects of the relationship between the Indians and colonists, as well as the war itself.…

    • 804 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “You can take a boy out of Kentucky, but you can’t take Kentucky out of a boy,” J.D. Vance writes while quoting Mamaw, his grandmother, and the woman who, in the midst of the adversities of his childhood raised him. With this quote the author explains that the hardship of his upbringing and the cultures of Kentucky, no matter what, will always be part of him. In the book “Hillbilly Elegy,” J.D.Vance, whom is both the author and the main character, narrates about his own experience growing up in the culture crisis of the social, regional, and class decline that affects many white Americans living in the Appalachian Mountains. The elegy of Hillbillies - world used to describe rednecks, the people who inhabit these places- takes place in Middletown Ohio, and Jackson, Kentucky, two cities that according to the author portray the…

    • 470 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Uncle Tom's Cabin Thesis

    • 1028 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is a book written by Harriet Beecher Stowe who was highly against slavery. She believed slavery was evil, un-ethical and un-Christian. This book is an anti-slavery novel meant to persuade the Northerners that keeping slaves and mistreating them is “evil”. Slavery was thought of as one of the worst times in American history and one of the most embarrassing and tainted times in history. The harm that was brought upon other humans and how they were treated like cattle was very evil and Harriet agreed.…

    • 1028 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Tecumseh Research Paper

    • 446 Words
    • 2 Pages

    With the Confederation almost complete, forwarded Shawnee decision to send Tecumseh, a young renowned warrior and a strong speaker ‘to traverse the Miscopy Valley, seeking to revive Neolin’s pan Indian alliance of the 1760s. Feeling that the only alternative to westward expansion was extermination, as one chief asked “Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pocanet, and other powerful tribes of our people? ‘They have vanished before the avarice {greed) and oppression of the white man, as snow before the sun.’ Indians, he proclaimed, must recognize that they were a single people and equal right in the land. He repudiated, “chiefs who had sold land to the federal government were no better than their white rivals.”…

    • 446 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The great Cherokee Nation that had fought the young Andrew Jackson back in 1788 now faced an even more powerful and determined man who was intent on taking their land. But where in the past they had resorted to guns, tomahawks, and scalping knives, now they chose to challenge him in a court of law. They were not called a 'civilized nation' for nothing. Many of their leaders were well educated; many more could read and write; they had their own written language, thanks to Sequoyah, a constitution, schools, and their own newspaper. And they had adopted many skills of the white man to improve their living conditions. Why should they be expelled from their lands when they no longer threatened white settlements and could compete with them on many levels? They intended to fight their ouster, and they figured they had many ways to do it. As a last resort they planned to bring suit before the Supreme Court. Prior to that action, they sent a delegation to Washington to plead their cause. They petitioned Congress to protect them against the unjust laws of Georgia that had decreed that they were subject to its sovereignty and under its complete jurisdiction. They even approached the President, but he curtly informed them that there was nothing he could do in their quarrel with the state, a statement that shocked and amazed them.…

    • 715 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The reason why the Lost Colony of Roanoke is significant to World History is because it was the first attempt for the English colonists to settle. They were looking for the first permanent place to colonize. The land that the Europeans settled in is now known as Virginia. It’s noteworthy because Jamestown had the same story as Roanoke. They were both attempts for the English to settle but both mysteriously disappeared, and both weren’t successful. Before Jamestown and Plymouth rock there was Roanoke.…

    • 323 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Makah and Whaling

    • 2207 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Colson, Elizabeth, 1953. The Makah Indians: A Study of an Indian Tribe in Modern American Society. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press.…

    • 2207 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Theda Perdue, “The Cherokee” (Frank W.Porter III General Editor, University of Kentucky, New York, Philadelphia, 1989…

    • 1506 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Boston Tea Party

    • 1509 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Cave, Alfred A. The French and Indian War. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2004. Web. 12 February 2010.…

    • 1509 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays

Related Topics