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... original component. According to these editors and compilers the character of Jane Mac Crea, a young woman who was abducted and murdered by the Indians, served as a source of inspiration for the death of Cora Munro. The truth is that Cooper read many captivity narratives and it is logical that he chose relevant aspects of such kind of quasi-mythical American figures in order to enrich a narrative dealing with an important episode of the history of the U. S. A.
The most important genre of The Last of the Mohicans is epic, as it occurs in Herman Melville's Moby Dick. A good way in which it may be proved is to compare this work by Cooper with the main representatives of the genre trying to look for parallelisms. First of all, the story begins in what is called "in medias res", that is, the action does not start from the very beginning. This means that, for example, we are not told the birth of Hawkeye or the origins of the French and Indian war. We are told its causes superficially and the characters are introduced at this moment of the narrative so, as a consequence what we know about the past we know it through some scarce retrospective narratives. Epic recounts the deeds of a hero which often represent the values and goals of a society.
In the case of The Last of the Mohicans this goal is to tame and conquest the wild American lands in order to spread all over them, a task executed by the white men. But the Native Americans have also their representatives in the novel, the Mohicans, standing for a kind of life closer to nature, loyal to their laws, rules and beliefs. So it is possible to claim that if there is a patriotic component in the book it is a double one. This patriotic component covers also religion in Song of Mio Cid, which relates the heroic exploits of Rodrigo Daz de Vivar, a fierce Christian knight, in the Spain of the eleventh century fighting in order to recover the lands from the Arab invaders.
The Aeneid's purpose was to highlight the Trojan origins of the Roman Empire in order to spread the idea that the empire was great even from its very beginnings. With regard to this question of the values of a society, in The Odyssey, the underlying message is that of the respect for the gods and order. War or isolated battles are always present in the epic poems; Odysseus and Aeneas have to fight against many and varied enemies, like Hawkeye and his companions, who struggle for saving the Munro sisters or their own lives against Indian tribes and the French army. As a consequence of this insistence on the theme of war, epic portrays some examples of besieged cities as for instance Troy or Valencia.
In this way, Fort William Henry could be a good example in this special epic story by Cooper. Long journeys are also something usual and they often last decades, and obviously, this is not the case in The Last of the Mohican whose story seems to last approximately one week. Epic mixes historical facts and places with legends, in this way The Odyssey and The Iliad take place in the Mediterranean, Song of Mio Cid in the Spain of the late eleventh century, narrating the conquest of Valencia, Castelln and including historic figures as King Motamid, Rodrigo Daz or King Alfonso II. Its historical facts are given a legendary component which affects the characters in such a way that we are told that the Spanish army with four thousand soldiers beat a five thousand warrior enemy army.
With regard to this matter of mixing history and fiction, The Last of the Mohicans also mixes historical characters and events with fictitious characters based on legendary figures belonging to the white American and Native American culture, since Units and Chingachgook acquire a mythical dimension for being the two last representatives of a lost tribe. The hero is the central character of any epic poem. Among the qualities of an epic hero, his physical strength and courage is what allow him to fight for noble causes. Hawkeye displays all these features; his qualities as a warrior permit him, with the support of the two Mohicans, help the white men without asking or expecting any kind of reward. Indeed, Hawkeye lacks the perfection that other epic heroes display, like Beowulf, since he is beaten and taken prisoner by the French army. The epic hero is not a mere killer, their skills as strategists are what often help them to obtain their goals.
Hawkeye's knowledge of the environment and slow meditation in battle make him closer to these heroes. Due to the subjects that these stories deal with, weapons acquire a great importance; for example, Achilles' armor, made by gods, Odysseus' bow an axes, or Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar's swords, Tion and Colada. Hawkeye's famous rifle in The Last of the Mohicans even becomes a legend among his enemies. Epic epithets are used in epic poetry for mnemonic purposes and also as a way to exalt and describe the uniqueness of the virtues of the hero. In the case of Odysseus he is called 'cautious' or 'wise'. Achilles is said to be 'the man breaker' or 'the great runner', Aeneas is often called 'pius' and 'god fearing' and Rodrigo Daz 'buen vas allo' or 'lidia dor contact' among other instances listed by Francisco Lopez Estrada in Poema del Cid.
Hawkeye is also given many names in the novels in which he appears, the so-called Leatherstocking tales. His real name is Natty Bump, but in The Last of the Mohicans he is called 'la longe caroline', that is, 'the long rifle', 'the scout' and of course Hawkeye. Loyalty is a recurrent theme which usually appears in epic poems, it is the cause for Odysseus to come back to Ithaca, the loyalty towards the ones he loves. This is the cause of the vengeance of Achilles on the Athens, who killed Patroclus, his best friend. This theme is crucial in Song of Mio Cid, since Rodrigo Daz in spite of being rejected by his king remains loyal to him and all the exploits he makes are intended to recover his favor.
The conflicts between good and evil are never unjustified, that is, the evil in antagonists is due to some reason. With regard to this matter, it would be interesting to explore the causes of Magua's vengeful attitude. He can be compared with the Satan of Paradise Lost, a work belonging to what is called literary epic, works self-consciously produced adapting aspects of traditional epic for specific literary or ideological purposes. These two characters have the prototypical virtues of an epic hero, that is, strength and courage. Both are leaders, (Magua, 'Le cerf agile', is called the 'Sun of his tribe'), and both display a great skill as orators.
But they used these good qualities for bad purposes. They are vengeful monomaniac characters who lived in peace until they tried to be the equal of a superior being who punished them for this reason, a punishment which causes their fall and their desire for vengeance. In conclusion, The Last of the Mohicans does not belong totally to a particular genre since it displays some key aspects of epic, it is one of the most important forerunners of western and inherits some aspects of characters of captivity narratives, facts which help to create an special example of romantic literature close to Herman Melville's Moby Dick, works which seem to be adventure stories but in fact they are richer than that due to both their quality and the variety of their sources. WORKS CITED Cohen, Hennig and Levernier, James eds. and comps.
The Indians and their Captives. Wesport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press Inc, 1977. 299 pp. Cooper, James Fenimore. The last of the Mohicans. 3 rd ed.
Oxford: Oxford's World Classics. , 1998. 433 pp. Let Estrada, Francisco. Poema del Cid. 12 th ed. Fuenlabrada, Madrid: Ones Nuevos, 1986. 164 pp. web
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