Cooper's Last of the Mohicans: Myth, Race, and American Identity
This essay examines James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans (1826) as a work of mythic nation-building rather than straightforward historical fiction. Through close readings of protagonist Natty Bumppo's racially ambiguous identity, the comic function of the psalmodist David Gamut, and the novel's place within the "last of the race" literary tradition identified by Fiona Stafford, the essay argues that Cooper constructed a fictive foundation for the United States by elegizing a pre-national past. The analysis also draws an unexpected parallel with The Book of Mormon to underscore how powerfully — and how consequentially — Cooper's racial mythology resonated in nineteenth-century American culture.
- Introduction: History, Myth, and the Novel's Dual Title: Cooper's title points to national mythmaking
- Natty Bumppo and the Racially Ambiguous American Hero: Bumppo's identity bridges European and Native worlds
- David Gamut: Comic Foil and the Limits of Civilization: Gamut satirizes religion and refined civilization
- The 'Last of the Race' Tradition and Elegiac Theme: Novel joins elegiac genre mourning vanished peoples
- Conclusion: Cooper's Myth and Its Lasting Resonance: Book of Mormon parallel reveals myth's cultural power
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What makes this paper effective
- The essay builds its argument in clear, announced stages — protagonist, comic foil, elegiac genre — then synthesizes them in a conclusion that reframes the entire novel as an act of mythmaking.
- It moves beyond plot summary by situating Cooper within the specific "last of the race" literary tradition and drawing an unexpected, thought-provoking parallel with The Book of Mormon to illustrate the cultural reach of Cooper's myth.
- Direct quotations from the novel are used purposefully: each passage is chosen to demonstrate a specific argumentative point rather than to fill space.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper models contextual close reading — it anchors textual evidence (names, dialogue, comic scenes) in a wider historical and ideological frame (post-colonial race politics, the captivity narrative genre, linear vs. cyclical concepts of time). This prevents the analysis from remaining merely descriptive and keeps every observation connected to the central thesis about national myth-building.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with a dual-focus thesis (title as historical pointer; novel as national myth), then devotes one section each to Bumppo, Gamut, and the "last of the race" genre before closing with the Book of Mormon comparison. This "three-exhibit" structure — two character studies followed by a genre argument — allows the conclusion to synthesize all three strands into a single claim about American cultural mythology.
Introduction: History, Myth, and the Novel's Dual Title
The theme of James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans would seem to be contained not only in the title of the novel, but also in its subtitle: A Narrative of 1757. Both halves of the book's title point to a historical past and indicate the tremendous changes that had occurred on the North American continent between the Colonial era of the French and Indian War depicted in the novel and the prosperous bourgeois United States of 1826, when the novel was first published. This essay explores how certain aspects of Cooper's narrative illuminate this theme in different ways and attempt to point to a vanished past — not necessarily a Paradise Lost, but a version of history constructed mythically, to justify the United States by offering a myth of its early beginnings.
First, I will examine the novel's protagonist, Natty Bumppo, to see what Cooper is saying about America through his depiction. Then I will examine the specific comedy or satire that Cooper has placed in the novel with the character of Gamut, who exists as a kind of joke within the novel to better define Bumppo. Finally, I will examine Bumppo's relationship with the Indians depicted in the book and how it relates to the book's central theme of a vanished historical American past. Overall, Cooper's central theme — to present a mythic "narrative" of events that were a half-century in the past when he was writing, and which predated the existence of anything called "The United States of America," as a way of establishing a fictive foundation for the nation — will be seen as the unifying purpose of the novel.
Works Cited
Fenimore Cooper, James. The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757. Online: Project Gutenberg. Accessed 11 July 2011 at: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/940/940-h/940-h.htm
Fiedler, Leslie. Love and Death in the American Novel. New York: Dalkey Archive, 2003. Print.
Haberly, David T. "Women and Indians: Last of the Mohicans and the Captivity Tradition." American Quarterly 28.4 (Autumn 1976): 431–44. Print.
Stafford, Fiona J. The Last of the Race: The Growth of a Myth from Milton to Darwin. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Print.
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