Tuesday, 31 January: Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans, through chapter twenty-four (through p. 254 in Penguin Classics edition.)

Web-highlighter: Amy Breazeale (midterms on Mohicans)

Explore the use of gothic and sublime throughout the Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans from previous students’ midterms.  Most students focus on Cooper’s use of nature to illustrate the ideas of gothic and sublime. 

Another writer, James Fenimore Cooper, also used the forest as a place of both sublime and gothic elements.  This was best displayed in The Last of the Mohicans.  In it, the forest can be a place of haven and one of gloom.  An example would be when Hawk-eye led his group into his secret hiding place.  This area was surrounded by dark and mysterious areas.  However, all of this darkness led to a sanctuary for them during that time.  Cooper masterfully led his reader through the fear of where Hawkeye was taking them to the pleasure of knowing that they have reached a haven.  Cooper also uses the gothic element by his use of color, which he used by his inclusion of the three major races during that time.  The whites portrayed (Hawkeye, Alice, etc.) were seen as pure and good, the bulk of Indians portrayed (Excluding Chingacook and Uncas) were displayed as passionate, almost blood-thirsty people.  Finally, the only African-American portrayed (Cora) was not seen as evil, but was very headstrong and the total opposite of the white people she was surrounded with.  Cooper maintained a sense of gothic styling through the dark forest and his mixing of races, but also had some moments were the nature surrounding his characters became sublime.  One of the strongest points of this was when Hawkeye and his party climbed the mountain and observed the nature below them.  Although they went through hell to reach that point, Cooper really illustrated through his words how beautiful the area was around them.  The pleasure and pain aspect is key in the formation of sublime writing.  Cooper, just as Irving before him, mixed the forest into something that is both scary and beautiful at the same time.  The American romantic novel was fully realized. [JL 2004]

James Fennimore Cooper had an incredible sense of the lush nature of New York.  He did not, however, have knowledge of castles and alleyways.  In effect, the readers receive tremendous images of the untapped North American landscape in The Last of the Mohicans.  One example, taken from a model from last year’s midterm, is the cave that Alice, Cora, Hawkeye, Uncas, and the rest hide in from the Mohawks.  This student makes a wonderful analogy to the cave as Hawkeye’s haunted house “with secret passageways and concealed exits.”  The cave is almost completely dark with only a slight glimpse of light seeping through the cracks between the rocks.  Throughout the Mohicans, Cooper uses light and dark imagery as he describes the characters qualities, such as their light or dark hair, or their red, black or white skin (the three most significantly gothic colors).  In fact, Cora alone represents the gothic, in that she is black and white, and even farther, she falls in love with a man with red skin. [SR 2002]

**Good example how the student ties in another reader’s midterm.

Cooper’s work is very representative of historical struggles just as Jacob’s and Douglass’s slave narratives. Their descriptions are used to represent their dark experiences but, more specifically, is directed to their master or mistress when “under the influence of slavery.” Although their experiences are real, the reader can still capture a glimpse or a feeling of the gothic. [SM 2004]