Last of the Mohicans James Fennimore Cooper

Last of the Mohicans has been adapted to cinematic versions many times before, which speaks volumes about the enduring popularity of the book. There is something about the novel that continues to attract modern directors and thus we have so far been given four different cinematic versions of the book, the latest being a directorial piece of Michael Mann who has films like Miami Vice to his credit. This version appeared in 1992 and included some big names of Hollywood the most prominent being Daniel Day Lewis who played the role of Hawkeye in the movie.

If you have read the book, then it is extremely easy to detect the numerous differences that exist between the novel and its cinematic version. Inn fact these differences are so obvious and glaring that a reader, who had merely skimmed through the book could also see them clearly. However that doesn't make the movie any less interesting or engrossing than the book and the credit for that goes to the director who made some shrewd changes to the movie to make it more interesting for modern viewers.

The director made some crucial changes to the storyline, which more or less change the entire story while not altering the basic theme of the novel. Alleva (1992) highlights these differences in these words: "The screenplay, concocted by Mann and Christopher Crowe out of both the novel and the 1936 Randolph Scott movie, rearranges the book's love rivalries, relieves Natty Bumppo of his indifference to sex, disparages the British colonial policies with a vigor that Cooper never employed, kills off characters that the author spared, spares some that he dispatched, and, by necessity, speeds up and streamlines the plot. Yet this version captures an element of Cooper's vision that is indispensable to the special magic of the story."

The vision of cooper's remains intact and so does the main theme of the novel. But if we don't touch the similarities which are certainly numerous and therefore not worth mentioning, we end up with some crucial and critical differences that set the movie apart from the book and reveal the true cinematic genius of the director. The reason I believe Mann took the right step when he altered a few things is because modern viewers can relate more to the movie version of some characters and the storyline than they can to the 1757 version of the same. For example, lets discuss the leading character in the novel and see how the same character is depicted in the film.

Hawkeye is shown as the real Mohicans hero with little or no emotions in the book. Cooper's hero is a man who doesn't necessarily need love to survive and neither is he seriously in love with any woman. Though he likes Alice, there is emotional detachment apparent from his attitude towards the woman and whole idea of love. He is more interested in being a rough and tough hero who can hit a target from any distance without any trouble at all. He can also fight evil Indians fearlessly and doesn't know a thing about cowardice.

Cooper's Hawkeye is a highly skillful man who is born and brought up in the woods and is quite familiar with the rules of the jungle. On the other hand, Mann's Hawkeye is a slightly different person. The director has tried his best to preserve some of the most essential characteristics of Hawkeye intact including his fearlessness and extreme courage. But some essential changes were introduced to make his character more humane.

Novak (1992) writes: "Mann omits most of Cooper's incidents designed to display Hawkeye's skill as a marksman and scout. This is not all bad, since many of those incidents were so preposterous that Mark Twain, especially annoyed at Hawkeye's ability to hear Indian enemies sneaking up on him in the woods, said in a critical essay that The Leatherstocking Tales should have been called The Broken Twig Series."

In the movie version of the book, Hawkeye is shown to be in love with Cora. Now here comes the most glaring difference. For one Hawkeye was never in love with Cora in the book, he liked her sister Alice. In the movie, however, not only is he in love with Cora, he also enjoys sexual contact with her. Not only is Hawkeye slightly more human in the movie than he was in the book and shown to be in love with Cora, there are other crucial changes too including the ending in which Cora survives and ends up with the hero. In the book, however, Cora dies in the end.

It is important to understand here that Cooper's reasons for killing Cora were deeper than they appeared in the book. Cora was more fearless and independent than her sister Alice and slightly less feminine. The author however preferred woman more docile and therefore chooses to assign a tragic fate to Cora while Alice "lives happily ever after" (p. 372) Critics agree that since Cooper belonged to the pre-women liberation period, he couldn't come to terms with women like Cora. In fact he appears to resist their independence as he consistently insists upon calling them 'females' and not even women.

Nina Baym argues that the Cooper's main reason of assigning less powerful roles to women was his rejection of the idea of women's liberation. "He is resisting or rejecting the fantasy of women's novels that women's elevated place in white society is a function of a spiritual power by which male physical force can be countered, contained, and even disarmed.... [The Last of the Mohicans] denies that women have influenced world or national events and uses the romanticizing of American Indians in women's novels as evidence of their unfitness for the cultural power to which they were apparently aspiring" (22, 25).

Another very important difference is the complete absence of David Gamut from the movie. This character played an important role in the novel and was one of the very few characters that evolved over the course of the story. He was described in rather derogatory terms in the beginning of the novel:

His head was large; his shoulders narrow; his arms long and gangling; while his hands were small if not delicate. His legs and thighs were thin, nearly to emaciation, but of extraordinary length; and his knees would have been considered tremendous, had they not been outdone by the broader foundations on which this false superstructure of blended human orders was so profanely reared." (Chapter 1)

Over the course of the novel, David Gamut's character undergoes crucial transformation and can be used to explain the main message of the book, which appears: 'what makes a man is not his physical strength alone but his ability to face challenges courageously whether physical or emotional' I fail to understand why this important character was completely removed from the movie even though he was present in older cinematic versions of Last of the Mohicans.