Behind The Leatherstocking Tales Essay, Research Paper

Behind The Leatherstocking Tales James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales is made up of five different novels. These novels include The Pioneers; or, The Sources of the Susquehanna (1823), The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (1826), The Prairie: A Tale (1827), The Pathfinder; or, The Inland Sea (1840), and The Deerslayer; or, The First War-Path (1841). These novels were based upon the fictional life of Natty Bumppo, a former wilderness scout, and his conflicts between “rival versions of the American Eden: the ‘God’s Wilderness’ of Leatherstocking and the cultivated garden of Judge Temple” (”Cooper, James Fenimore”). Many critics have tried to analyze these novels. Things that they have examined are the order of the novels and the symbolism of nature. James Fenimore Cooper, the first major United States novelist, was born on September 14, 1789, in Burlington, New Jersey. His father, William Cooper, was the founder of Cooperstown, New York and served as congressman during the administrations of George Washington and John Adams. James Cooper was raised the eleventh of twelve children, “sparing him the hardship of frontier life” and benefiting him educationally due to the families prosperity after settlement. He attended Yale until his Junior year when he was expelled due to a prank. Cooper then joined the navy as a midshipman. He later resigned from the navy to marry Susan De Lancy in 1811. Carbo 2 After ten years of marriage, Cooper published his first book, Precaution (1820), due to a challenge from his wife. He later wrote his second novel The Spy (1821), “based on another British model, Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Waverley’ novels”, stories of adventure and romance set in seventeenth and eighteenth century Scotland. This novel was special because it was the first novel to use an American Revolutionary War setting, which was based partly on experiences of his wife’s British Loyalist family, and by introducing several “distinctively American character types.” ” The Spy is a drama of conflicting loyalties and interests in which the action mirrors and expresses more subtle internal psychological tensions.” The Spy was a great blessing , monetarily, since his father and his older brother had passed away and left him the sole heir to their debts. The Pioneers, the first of The Leatherstocking Tales, was much like The Spy in that they both have the same basic conflicts and Cooper continues to employ family traditions. In The Pioneers, however, “the traditions were those of William Cooper of Cooperstown, who appears as Judge Temple of Templeton,” along with many other disguised aliases from Cooper’s childhood in Burlington and Cooperstown. But oddly enough their was “no known” real life Natty Bumppo, main character of the Leatherstocking Tales. In The Pioneers Natty is elder man in his 70’s “who ineffectually opposes ‘the march of progress,’ namely, the agricultural frontier and its chief spokesman, Judge Temple.” His next novel contributing to The Leatherstocking Tales was The Last of the Mohicans. In this Cooper takes the reader back to the French and Indian Wars of Natty’s middle age, “when he is at the height of his powers”. The Prairie was next follow, in which Leatherstocking is now very old, 82, and “philosophical.” In the end Natty Bumppo dies, “facing the westering sun he has so long followed.” Cooper originally intended to “bury” Leatherstocking in The Prairie, buy years later decided to Carbo 3 resurrect the character and depicted him in his early maturity in The Pathfinder and in youth in The Deerslayer. “These novels, in which Natty becomes the centre of the idealization process further.” In The Pathfinder Leatherstocking is portrayed as the “American Adam”, while in The Deerslayer he demonstrates his fitness as a “warrior-saint” by passing a number of “moral trials” and uncovering a “keen, though untutored, aesthetic sensibility.” As one can see these novels are not written in their narrative order (”Cooper, James Fenimore”). Many critics are confused about the order of The Leatherstocking Tales. Some say one should read these stories as they were published. Yet most say that the novels should be read in chronological order. The confusion comes from the time the novels were published. The first three, The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Prairie, were meant to be a series according to Terence Martin: And it is a matter of record that Cooper thought of The Prairie as concluding a series of three novels. In October 1826, he wrote to Carey and Lea that “Pioneers, Mohicans, and this book [The Prairie] will form a connected series, which will do to print and sell separately.” Earlier in the same month he had advised Henry Colburn in London that The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Prairie “will form a complete series of tales.” (70)This series ends with the death of Natty Bumppo at the age of 82. But in the next novel, The Pathfinder Natty is at the age of 42. This obviously would throw off a reader who is trying to read the Tales in the order in which they are published. And even more confusing the next novel, The Deerslayer, Leatherstocking is at the ripe age of 21, the youngest of a five works. I agree with Axelrad when most simply states “the

Carbo 4 Tales should be read in the chronological order of Leatherstocking’s life.” Many scholars support the idea of reading the books as they are published because they believe that is what Cooper tried to accomplish, an “old age to golden youth”, understanding of Bumppo’s life. But Axelrad refutes the opposing argument because “it requires a creative leap to overcome the fact that the order of publication does not precisely take Leatherstocking in a linear retrogression from old age to youth” (190-191). Another issue arises when critics try to explain why Cooper wrote the Tales in the order that he did. Many state that this was an unconscious circumstance brought on by the people’s need for more Natty Bumppo. Yet others express that their is evidence of a conscience ordering of the Tales. Allen Axelrad does agree that there is no “explicit internal evidence within the novels or letters to publishers or friends” that states that Cooper intentionally ordered The Leatherstocking Tales in a certain manner (192). But he also remarks that Cooper wanted his reader to know the correct order. With this, Axelrad comes up with very intelligent way of ordering the Tales, in which he believes was the intention of Cooper: When the five Tales are arranged serially in alphabetical order, Leatherstocking becomes progressively older in each successive novel. The probability of five number-21, 38, 42, 70, 82- randomly arranging in a series according to ascending order is very, very small; so small that it is reasonable to conclude that in all probability Cooper self-consciously alphabetized the titles to coincide with the life cycle of their hero, from budding manhood to superannuation and death. (193) Carbo 5 In a series of five numbers, when the first two numbers are randomly ordered, the next three will arrange in descending order only once out of six times or seventeen percent of the time. And there is less than a five percent chance for all five numbers to fall into a descending order. So it is reasonable to say that Cooper consciously ordered the novels. There are many hidden meanings in The Leatherstocking Tales. I have just presented one to you. One other topic ,which I have noticed, that goes along with the theme of hidden meanings is the meanings behind the symbols in nature. Some examples of this, in which Cooper uses in his novels, are deserts or desert islands, forests, and the “pastoral garden.” The deserts and desert islands lack tree; they indicate the desolate state at the end of a cycle. Forest mark the beginning of a cycle but are “fit habitats for savages.” In the “pastoral garden” there is a healthy blend of nature and the human community. This is the type of landscape which is ideal for human life and which is the cycle Cooper wished to conserve. “In the cyclical turning away from the garden, the disappearance of trees is linked to the loss of esthetic, moral, and religious values.” So therefor, in Cooper’s novels, the well-being of the community will be presented as the character’s “reverence” and “regard for trees.” Axelrad gets risky when he later describes the tree to be the “prime example of organic life” and “a vestige of archaic man’s envisagement of the cosmos as a gigantic tree.” I personally think that in this case Allen Axelrad looked too deeply for an example of a meaning behind the trees in the stories (Axelrad 207). Axelrad uses his source of The Leatherstocking Tales to cite specific things that Leatherstocking himself mentions about nature. Natty Bumppo explains that all work is “mutable” and so is the “work of man.” “It is the fate of all things to ripen and then to decay.” He uses “organic metaphors” to indicate the way of nature and “course of civilization.” Leatherstocking hypothesizes that the plains had once been a “garden for a Carbo 6 great monarch” whose entire civilization vanished leaving no traces. “The tree blossoms and bears its fruit, which falls, rots, withers, and even the seed is lost!” Nature constantly undergoes changes, “in the life cycle of plants and animals,” and in the “daily cycle and cycle of seasons.” Therefor as the world of nature is forever being changed, so is human society. “Nothing in nature or society is permanent” (Axelrad 207-209). James Fenimore Cooper is one of the greatest American writers of our time. He has put together a series of books called The Leatherstocking Tales which have been critiqued over many years and will continue to cut up in the hands of critics. And because of the critics people like myself will be able to further understand great works written by great people. Just from my research I have a head full of information about the history of James Fenimore Cooper, the order of the novels, and the symbolism use with nature. 1655 words