The Last Of The Mohicans Essay

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The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757, written in 1826, is a historical novel by James Fenimore Cooper. It is the second book of the Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy (literary work divided into 5 parts) and is possibly considered his most famous to modern readers. The Last of the Mohicans is set in 1757, during the French and Indian War (also known as the Seven Years' War). During this conflict, France and Great Britain battled for control of North America. Both the French and the British used Native American allies, but the French were particularly dependent since they tended to be outnumbered in the Northeast frontier areas by British colonists. According to the Encyclopedia of Media and Propaganda in Wartime America, the novel has been one of the "most popular novels in English" since its publication and it remains "widely read in American Literature courses" (Manning and Wyatt 75). The Last of the Mohicans has been considered James Fenimore Cooper's most popular work by many. It has continued as one of the most widely read novels throughout the world, and it has influenced popular opinion about American Indians and the frontier period of eastern American history that persist to this day. The phrase, "the last of the Mohicans," has come to represent the …show more content…

This all reflects Cooper's social ideal, the hierarchical order of the great chain of being (Butler 129). This can be viewed as a pattern of historical change that is actually depicted in The Last of the Mohicans as possession of America passes from a red to a white nation. Cooper's work can actually been seen to derive from a technique of "synecdoche" through which a local and sometimes trivial conflict is transformed into a metaphor for the past, present, or future of America itself (McWilliams