Christopher Lucas
Dr. Craig White
Literature 5535
30 September 2003

            In Romantic literature, fictional characters and in some cases real people, portray an almost uncontrollable desire for undertaking journeys or a quest. In these stories, protagonists and historical figures alike tend to create the conditions necessary to live out a romantic story line.  Both Columbus and John Smith display a propensity for allowing their desires for travel and discovery to cloud or color their visions and perceptions of what is actually going on around them.  In fictional stories such as The Last of the Mohicans, Cooper uses the action or inactions of characters like Hawkeye and the Mohicans to perpetuate and ensure the quest storyline.

            As Krisann Muskievicz points out in her American Romance essay, The Gothic Style: America’s First “Extreme” Entertainment, Americans have always sought excitement and the danger of the unknown.  This same desire can be seen in Columbus who made four voyages to the Caribbean and coast of South America between 1492 to 1500.  During this time, Columbus “developed a plan to find a commercially viable Atlantic route to Asia.” Ultimately, Columbus ends up descending from being the hero of exploration to being the scapegoat for all that has gone wrong in the New World.

            On a physical level, the quests and voyages of Columbus are plain to see. On a deeper level, his need for a quest and the self-fulfilling manner in which he views his travels is also evident. In his writings, Columbus creates an Edenic image of  the New World which nourishes and sustains his physical desire to travel. Columbus deceives himself into believing only the “good parts” of his voyage. In doing so, Columbus reaffirms that what he is doing is correct and justified and therefore, should be continued. Essentially, the paradise described and envisioned by Columbus fuels his need to continue the quest.

            Columbus writes, “there are in it very many sierras and very lofty mountains, beyond comparison[…]” (26-27). “[…] with trees of a thousand kind and tall, and they seem to touch the sky.” “[…] there are very large tracts of land cultivatable lands, and there is honey and there are birds of many kinds and fruits in great diversity. In the interior are mines of metal, and the population is without number. Espanola is a marvel.”              Through Columbus’s eyes this new land is almost perfection, he seems unable or unwilling to see anything derogatory about the lands he discovers. Columbus appears to turn a blind eye to the changes and challenges presented by the cultural differences, disease, temperature, humidity, and insects that must have been evident even in the first voyage.  For Columbus to truly acknowledge these conditions would contradict his vision of his quest and journey and pollute his Romantic dreams of his quest.

            With John Smith, we see a figure with an almost uncontrollable yearning for discovery and quest.  Smith blurs the line between reality and romance in terms of his writing and desire for adventure.  Smith was so influenced by “tales of exploration, piracy, and military adventure[…]” (43) in his childhood, that it becomes difficult for him to separate fact from fiction in his autobiographical and historical accounts of his travels.

              Smith’s life is a testament to his attempt to live out the adventure romance which stirred his imagination as a child.  Immediately following his fathers death, Smith volunteered to travel and fight wars in The Netherlands and Austria. During this time, Smith rises to the rank of Captain, is wounded in battle, taken as a slave escapes by murdering his master and flees to Romania. On a grand scale, Smith lives out the capture/escape story line through this ordeal.  While this is a great story, and no doubt based in fact, it is still necessary to remember that “many of these details come to us only through Smith’s own at times garbled narratives, most of them penned long after the events” (43).

            Smith’s war adventures in Europe apparently were not enough to satiate his desire to live a romantic life. Following his escape from the Turks, Smith undertakes the voyage to Virginia in 1607.  During this journey, Smith is arrested and threatened with death by the people in charge of the voyage.  Again, Smith lives out the imprisonment /freedom motif, and again through a twist of fate, he is set free.

            Once in America, Smith is yet again imprisoned. The captors this time are in the form of the Chesapeake Bay Indians. These Indians, like the Turks and his fellow voyager before, plan to kill Smith.  Here we see the capture/escape storyline repeated again. This time the storyline has the added twist of romance since Smith’s future wife, Pocahontas, saves him. 

            Smith, like Columbus, internalizes the Romantic storyline and chooses only to remember the parts of his travels that support this theme.  For example, in Smith’s version of the Pocahontas story, there is only a brief mention of the two soldiers killed while Smith was out being heroically captured by the Chesapeake Bay Indians. The death of the soldiers, coupled with loss of provision, was a very serious and noteworthy event.  In fact, Smith, “would have been hanged had a fleet with much-needed supplies not arrived from England” (43).  A point Smith conveniently sidesteps in his “historical” version of the events. Additionally, Smith rewrote this story several times with the final version coming only after the death of Pocahontas. During the rewriting process the actions of Pocahontas become more and more heroic.

            Cooper, unlike Smith and Columbus, is truly given the opportunity to create a Romantic storyline in The Last of the Mohicans.  It is here in Cooper’s fictional world that the characters are free to live out a Romantic quest. Given an authors license, Cooper is able to push realty into the shadows while placing the spotlight on the Romantic events of his storyline.

            The Last of the Mohicans contains almost all of the elements normally associated with a Romantic story.  There are strong character types, women in distress, a Byronic hero, a setting encompassing nature and spirit, male bonding and enough capture/ escape scenarios to exhaust any would-be hero. Cooper also adds enough history to his story to give it a place in time and space, but unlike Smith,  he does not attempt to portray his account of any event as historically accurate.

            Cooper is able to develop a Romantic quest in his novel quite easily.  In fact the entire story can be viewed as quest. The wanderlust and need for adventure is evident from the first meeting of Hawkeye, Chingachgook, and Uncas.  Cooper shifts to the opening scene of these characters by showing them “lingering on the banks of a small but rapid stream” (28).  Later in the passage, Cooper refers to them as “loiterers.”  It appears that Cooper has these would be heroes waiting around, like Knights of Old, simply waiting for some Romantic quest to befall them. 

            Cooper uses several plot twist to keeps the journey or quest moving throughout the story.  For example, Magua is kept alive until the very end of the novel.  At several points in the tale either Hawkeye, Chingachgook, or Uncas could have killed Magua, but this would have effectively ended the journey.  Instead, Cooper has his heroes choose to live by a code and a sense of honor that prevents them from simply shooting Magua on sight.  This code also prevents the heroes from walking away from Cora, Alice and Heyward and letting them fend for themselves at any of several points in the novel.  By instilling this code, Cooper is able to ensure that the adventure will continue.

            Like Columbus, Hawkeye shows a propensity to view the nature around him as Edenic. “Here the Lord laid his hand, in the midst of the howling wilderness, for their good, and raised a fountain of water from the bowels of he ‘arth[…]” (119).  Hawkeye doesn’t confuse his admiration for wilderness around him with an admiration for all of the indigenous people he meets.  Hawkeye states “And I tell you that he who is born a Mingo will die a Mingo.” and “Give me a Delaware or a Mohican for honesty” (37).

            Columbus, Smith and Cooper all strike the same cord with reference to Romantic literature and the desire for characters to be anywhere but “the here and now.” Columbus and Smith allow their desires for travel and discovery to obscure their vision of reality to the point where it becomes difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. Cooper on the other hand, develops fictional storylines which create the conditions necessary to create a Romantic story.

Works Cited

Columbus, Christopher. “Letter to Luis De Santangel” The Norton Anthology of

            American Literature. Shorter 6^th ed. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton &

            Company, 2003. 25-29.

Cooper, James Fenimore. The Last of the Mohicans. New York: Penguin, 1986.

Smith, John. “John Smith 1580-1631” The Norton Anthology of

            American Literature. Shorter 6^th ed. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton &

            Company, 2003. 42-56.

Muskievicz, Krisann. “The Gothic Style: America’s First “Extreme” Entertainment”  LITR             5535: American Romanticism. Ed. Craig White. Summer 2002. U of Houston –             Clear Lake. Summer 2002             <http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/5535/models/2002/midterms/defau            lt.htm>.