We see him as a youth of twenty. Cooper describes his protagonist as:. Now specifically, what experiences happen to the Deerslayer to change or expand his philosophic temperament? It has already been stated that he is grossly naive. His innocence is reflected in the virgin, pure surroundings of Otsego Lake. It is in this setting that Natty first begins to discover himself as an adult.
Natty is in harmony with this pure state of things. The reader must admire the beauty and grandeur of the setting. So too, the reader must admire the character of Natty.
He is never so admirable again. And of course the most obvious experience that changes him is the famous scene, the killing of his first Indian. He accepts it stoically, but now he is more confident and sure of his capabilities. It is also in this novel that he decides once and for all that he is not interested in material possessions, or the things of the settlements, including Judith herself. The only material possession he values and will value till his death is Killdeer.
It is his experience with Thomas Hutter and Harry March that have shown him the folly of these things. And lastly, all of these experiences in The Deerslayer help Natty reaffirm his religious roots. As he himself states " I strive to do right, here, as the surest means of keeping all right, hereafter. In varying degrees, these religious beliefs remain with Deerslayer throughout all the tales, but never as persistently as in the first tale.
The second novel in the evaluation of Natty is The Last of the Mohicans. It is basically an action packed story. But if one looks deeper into the character of Natty, one will notice distinct changes in the hero, resulting from experiences in The Deerslayer.
First of all, we see Natty in his least moralizing stage. He is no longer wet behind the ears. His "baptism of blood" episode from The Deerslayer has altered him to an extreme.
In The Deerslayer , Natty Bumppo kills with great reluctance and with evident turmoil. Before he had killed his first Huron, he had been horrified by Hurry's advice, "Do as you're done by, Deerslayer.
Also by now Natty has become totally alienated from the white man's world and lives exclusively with the Delawares, specifically Chingachgook and Uncas. This was probably a result, in part, of the naturally repulsive scenes concerning Tom Hutter and Hurry Harry, the scalping in one situation, and the shooting of a young Indian girl in another. This book:. In this book, Natty is now at peace with himself and feels comfortable with his life style -- so much so that in the middle of the sight of a bloody massacre, he, Chingachgook, and Uncas converse casually and playfully before retiring for the night.
Here also we see Natty and Chingachgook become cemented together as life long friends. Natty's affections for him become justified through experiencing the death of Uncas.
No matter how much Chingachgook degenerates after this, Natty will always be his companion. As Chingachgook ends his funeral song, saying "I am alone--," Natty interrupts, no, Sagamore, not alone. As stated before, Natty is now alienated and basically alone, but this alliance will keep him from the solitude of his own heart.
And lastly, we see that Natty has evolved into a gentleman concerning the opposite sex. In The Deerslayer he appeared rather awkward and out of place in the presence of Judith and Hetty, but in The Last of the Mohicans , Natty carries on gallantly. He always acts gentlemanly, with first considerations for Alice and Cora Munro. Not that he didn't act as protector for Judith and Hetty. It's just that this time around, he does it more naturally and with more self-confidence; probably because by this stage in his life, Natty knows himself.
The third book in the series, The Pathfinder , finds our hero a little older, but still under forty. It is in this book that Natty acts most out of character. Before this, all of his confrontations concerned the things of the woods: the battles with Indians, the hunt, marksmanship.
But in this novel he has a much different confrontation in the form of Mabel Dunham. Also, Natty has never been defeated in any of his conflicts until now. Just when it seems as if he knows himself in The Last of the Mohicans , the opposite seems true now; and it's not until the end of the novel that he finds himself again. For during the whole novel he is obsessed with Mabel, which makes him act out of character. First of all, he develops a very low opinion of himself. This happens as he imagines himself married to that "gentle and pure-hearted creature" Mabel.
He calls himself "worthless" and "a poor ignorant woodsman", "too rude, and too old and too wild-like to suit the fancy of such a young and delicate girl. Now he neglects his responsibilities as a scout, has doubts about his ability as a hunter and woodsman. In this book he never mentions the plight of the Indian and barely notices his best friend Chingachgook.
But worst of all, he considers himself unhappy and lonely. All this happens because of his obsession for something he can never have -- Mabel.
And that is his defeat. Fortunately at the end of the novel he truly realizes that he was on "a false trail," and goes back to the old Natty, confident and content with himself, free, proud of his talents and still not tied down. This is how we find him in the fourth book in the series, The Pioneers. At this point though, he has aged considerably in the vicinity of seventy years and is referred to as the Leatherstocking. He is now living proof that he has lived by his beliefs without compromise.
Cooper is not, however, classified as a realistic author such as Balzac , but as a romantic writer. The realistic novelist tries to reproduce life exactly, and the romantic author lends forcefully his own interpretations and impressions to characters. Cooper did not base his creation of Natty Bumppo on a single person known to him; he apparently drew upon various individuals recalled from his youth. Cooper then contributed his theory of "a moral sense" or "a moral point of view" to delineate his hero of the New World.
Cooper's insistence upon morality is of course a reflection of the Puritan tradition — and his own forceful ideas. However, his originality lies in the creation of Natty Bumppo as an American epic hero. The epic hero is familiar in early European literature, and Cooper was undoubtedly aware of the English Beowulf, the French Roland, and the Spanish Cid. Romanticism called attention to the medieval heritage, largely scorned and ignored by the eighteenth century.
Cooper, then, merged his romantic interests and contemporary readings with his American background. He could not copy and imitate the European models fully, but he could — and consequently did — merge the foreign and the native influences. Therefore, Natty Bumppo resembles medieval knights and is dubbed by his creator "a knight of the woods.
This transposition of the European epic hero to American soil is one of the accepted explanations for Cooper's popularity, impact, and influence in Europe during the nineteenth century. Natty Bumppo, however, shows his originality by possessing indigenous traits; and these characteristics, peculiar to the New World at this stage of its development, mark Cooper's contribution to American literature.
Natty Bumppo is, in certain ways, the child of Rousseau, the French philosopher of the 18th century who preached that civilization is a corrupting element in the growth of man and that nature is good.
According to Rousseau, the natural man develops efficaciously in a simple, natural environment. Although he has been raised in the situation of the Indians, Natty Bumppo has in his soul the highest qualities of civilization and Christianity. He has received these qualities intuitively and lives by these virtues because he knows instinctively that this conduct, or code, is right.
Natty Bumppo also distinguishes between the positive and negative aspects of the Indians, whom he basically respects. For instance, Natty is firmly opposed to scalping as a horrible act for a white man, but he defends the Indians who use this technique as an honorable method of warfare.
In his reliance upon feelings, intuition, and instinct, Cooper's hero is the romantic ideal who rejects the neo-classical guidelines of reason and rationalism. Natty Bumppo is a compromise between the two worlds in conflict on the North American continent: the expanding dynamism of the white, European, civilized, Christian race and the primitive Indian races inhabiting vast tracts of land. Cooper constantly refers to the differences between the two races, and his anxiety to achieve some reconciliation between the two peoples is very evident.
Natty Bumppo, living and accepting many Indian ways, represents the American hero who endeavors to express his native background to the white men with whom he also feels the bond of blood ties.
Cooper defines his purpose in these words: "It appeared to the writer that his hero was a fit subject to represent the better qualities of both conditions, without pushing either to extremes. The Deerslayer was Cooper's favorite of the five romances he shaped around the figure of Natty Bumppo, perhaps because the tale is the last of the "Leatherstocking Tales" and his final, attentive effort to create an American hero.
Critics usually have been kind to The Deerslayer since its publication in It is true that The Last of the Mohicans always has been the most popular of the "Leatherstocking Tales" because it is at heart a boy's book. Although Cooper's ideas are already in evidence in The Last of the Mohicans and the tale is justifiably acclaimed as a dynamic, suspenseful story, The Deerslayer offers a structurally more sound and logical plot.
There is a strong use of the three unities in The Deerslayer , as all the action, concentrated in a few days around Natty Bumppo's "first warpath," takes place in the vicinity of Otsego Lake.
0コメント