The Last of the Mohicans story. Cooper. Analysis of the novel "The Last of the Mohicans"

The Last of the Mohicans, or the Narrative of 1757 is the second novel in James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking pentalogy. In it, hunter Nathaniel Bumpo, nicknamed Hawkeye, goes with his Mohican friends Chingachgook and Uncas on a dangerous journey through the northern forests. Their path will be blocked by natural elements, wild animals and ruthless enemies. However, the heroes will not be afraid of obstacles for the sake of a noble goal - saving the beautiful daughters of Colonel Munro.

“The Last of the Mohicans” was published in 1926, becoming the second in writing and internal chronology of the cycle. The plot is preceded by the events of the novel “St. John’s Wort, or the First Warpath.” True, the first part of the pentalogy was created much later - in 1841.

"The Last of the Mohicans" is one of the most popular works Cooper, describing historical events American territorial expansion and tragic fate indigenous people of the continent.

Colorful pictures of pristine northern nature, original romantic images of the main characters, acute problems, heroic pathos and a dynamic adventure plot have repeatedly inspired talented fans of Cooper's work to make artistic adaptations. The novel was filmed by directors in the USA, Canada, France and Germany. The film of the same name by Michael Mann, shot in 1992, is recognized as the most worthy film version. The main roles in the project were played by Daniel Day-Lewis (Nathaniel Bumpo/Hawkeye), Medeline Stowe (Cora Munro) and Russell Means (Chingachgook).

Synthesizing the American romantic tradition of the first decades of the twentieth century, Fenimore Cooper wrote a unique work of its kind. The prose writer became the founder of a new myth about the native American, created the archetypal image of the so-called “noble savage” and outlined the genre guidelines of the Western.

1757 The height of the French-English confrontation. The coastal area of ​​the Hudson and neighboring lakes became an arena for bloody battles. As usual, their victims were not only soldiers, but also civilians. Whole Indian tribes were wiped off the face of the earth, and those units that survived either hid in deep forests or went over to the side of one of the colonialists.

Allied Indians posed a terrible danger to peaceful settlers. Deprived of shelter and family, driven away from the graves of their fathers, these savage avengers dealt with the white-skinned strangers with all the cruelty of which they were capable. broken hearts. Soon, the inhabitants of the American frontier (the border between developed and undeveloped territories) flinched at every rustle coming from the forest. The image of the red man became their nightmare, a ghost in the flesh, their ruthless judge and executioner.

During this turbulent time, Colonel Munro's daughters, Cora and Alice, decided to visit their parent in the besieged English fort William Henry, which was located on Lake Lane George in the province of New York. To shorten the path, the girls, accompanied by Major Duncan Hayward and an absent-minded music teacher, separated from the military detachment and turned onto a secret forest path. The Indian speedster Magua, nicknamed the Sly Fox, volunteered to show her. Magua, from the allied Mohawk tribe, assured travelers that along the forest path they would reach the fort in a few hours, while along the main road they would have a grueling journey of a day.

Cora and Alice look with suspicion at the silent guide, who only casts abrupt glances from under his brows and peers into the thick of the forest. Hayward is also haunted by doubts, but the appearance of an awkward music teacher who hurries to William Henry defuses the situation. Accompanied by girlish laughter and songs, the small detachment turns onto the fateful forest path.

Meanwhile, on the banks of a fast-water forest stream, the white-skinned hunter Nathaniel Bumpo, nicknamed Hawkeye, was having a leisurely conversation with his friend, the Indian Chingachgook, the Great Snake. The savage's body was covered with black and white paint, which gave him an eerily resemblance to a skeleton. His smoothly shaved head was adorned with a single tail of hair with a large feather. Chingachgook told the hunter the history of his people from the bright times when his forefathers lived in peace and prosperity, and until the dark hour when they were driven out by pale-faced people. Now there is no trace left of the former greatness of the Mohicans. They are forced to hide in forest caves and wage a miserable struggle for survival.

Soon the young Indian Uncas, nicknamed Swift-footed Deer, the son of Chingachgook, joins his friends. The trio goes hunting, but the planned meal is interrupted by the clatter of horse hooves. Bumpo does not recognize him among the forest sounds, but the wise Chingachgook immediately falls to the ground and reports that several horsemen are riding. These are people of the white race.

A small company actually appears at the river: a military man, a gangly man on an old nag, two charming young ladies and an Indian. These are Colonel Munro's daughters and their entourage. The travelers are quite worried - it won’t be long before sunset, and the end of the forest is not in sight. It seems their guide has lost his way.

Hawkeye immediately questions Magua's honesty. At this time of year, when the rivers and lakes are full of water, when the moss on every stone and tree tells about the future location of the star, the Indian simply cannot get lost in the forest. Who is your guide? Hayward reports that Magua is a mohox. More precisely, a Huron adopted by the Mohox tribe. “Huron? - exclaims the hunter and his red-skinned companions, - This is a treacherous, thieving tribe. A Huron will remain a Huron, no matter who takes him in... He will always be a coward and a tramp... You just have to be surprised that he hasn’t made you stumble across a whole gang yet.”

Hawkeye is about to immediately shoot the lying Huron, but Hayward stops him. He wants to personally capture the walker in a more humane way. His plan fails. The cunning Fox manages to hide in the forest thicket. Now travelers need to get away from the dangerous path as quickly as possible. The traitor will most likely bring upon them a warlike band of Iroquois, from whom there is no escape.

Hawkeye leads the young ladies and their escorts to a rocky island - one of the secret hideouts of the Mohicans. Here the company plans to stay overnight and leave for William Henry in the morning.

The beauty of young blonde Alice and older dark-haired Cora does not go unnoticed. Young Uncas is most fascinated. He literally doesn’t leave Cora’s side, showing the girl various signs of attention.

However, the exhausted travelers were not destined to rest in the stone shelter. Ambush! The Iroquois, led by the Sly Fox, still managed to track down the fugitives. Hawkeye, Chingachgook and Uncas are forced to race for help while the Munro daughters are captured.

Cora and Alice are now in the hands of the Sly Fox. It turns out that in this way the Indian is trying to reduce personal accounts with Colonel Munro. Many years ago he ordered Magua to be flogged for drunkenness. He harbored a grudge and waited for a long time for the right time to pay back. Finally, the hour has come. He wants to marry the eldest Cora, but receives a decisive refusal. Then the enraged Magua will burn his captives alive. When the fire has already been laid out, Hawkeye arrives with help. The Hurons are defeated, Magua is shot, the beautiful captives are freed and go with their companions to the fort to see their father.

At this time, the French occupy William Henry. The British, including Colonel Munro and his daughters, were forced to leave the fortification. On the way, the convoys are overtaken by a warlike tribe from Magua. It turns out that the Indian only pretended to be dead in a fight on a stone island. He kidnaps Cora and Alice again. The Sly Fox sends the first to the Delawares, and takes the second with her to the lands of the Hurons.

Hayward, in love with Alice, rushes to save the honor of the captive, and Uncas rushes to rescue his beloved Cora. With the help of a cunning plan in which Hawkeye takes part, the major steals Alice from the tribe. Swift-Footed Deer, unfortunately, fails to save Cora. The cunning Fox is once again one step ahead.

Uncas, at this point already the supreme leader of the Delawares, follows on the heels of the kidnapper. The Delawares, who had buried their tomahawks many years ago, were once again on the warpath. In a decisive battle they defeat the Hurons. Realizing that the outcome of the battle is a foregone conclusion, Magua takes out a dagger, intending to stab Cora. Uncas rushes to the defense of his beloved, but is a few moments late. The Fox's treacherous blade pierces Uncas and Cora. The villain does not triumph for long - he is immediately overtaken by Hawkeye's bullet.

Young Cora and Uncas, the Swift-Footed Deer, are buried. Chingachgook is inconsolable. He was left alone, an orphan in this world, the last of the Mohicans. But no! The Great Serpent is not alone. He has a faithful comrade who stands next to him at this bitter moment. Let his companion have a different skin color, a different homeland, culture, and lullabies sung to him in a foreign language incomprehensible language. But he will be nearby, no matter what happens, because he is also an orphan, lost in the border zone of the Old and New Worlds. And his name is Nathaniel Bumppo, and his nickname is Hawkeye.

People of the World: Nathaniel Bumpo, Chingachgook

The novel "The Last of the Mohicans" stands out among romantic works Indian theme. Cooper, who grew up on the New York State frontier, witnessed social phenomenon, called "pioneering". That is why he was able to subtly sense the discord between the noble ideas of the pioneers and the harsh reality.

The heroes of his novel, in the best traditions of romanticism, are divided into positive and negative. However, this division is not based on race; the basis for differentiation is personal qualities and human actions. There are villains among the Indians as well as among the whites (on the one hand, the Hurons, the Sly Fox, on the other, the ruthless French and English colonialists).

Fundamentally important for the collapse of racial theory are the collective image of the brave Mohicans, Delawares and the central characters Chingachgook and his son Uncas. The Indians depicted by Cooper are not only not inferior to civilized whites, but also superior to them in wisdom, dexterity, and the ability to live in unity with nature and read its signs.

An example to follow

The author's ideal - main character pentalogy Nathaniel Bumppo, who appears in The Mohicans under the name Hawkeye. This is a borderline image that has absorbed best features Indians and whites. Bumpo – harmonious combination nature and civilization, the bearer of such rare qualities as simplicity, selflessness, justice, honesty, valor, spiritual power.

Chingachgook and Bumppo make the perfect heroic couple. They learn from each other, argue, but know how to listen. And most importantly, they go beyond the boundaries of racial prejudice and become people of the world. It is they, and not those who live in cities and boast about the latest discoveries of technology, who should be considered representatives of a civilized democratic society.

James Fenimore Cooper's novel “The Last of the Mohicans, or a Narrative of 1757”: summary

Ticket 26.

Heroes, conflict and plot in “The Last of the Mohicans” by J. Cooper or Heroes, plot, images in “The Song of Hiawatha” by G. Longfellow.

J. Cooper "The Last of the Mohicans" 1826

Plot:

The action takes place in North America in 1757. Information has been received that an enemy army is approaching Fort William Henry. Reinforcements are moving into this fort. Major Hayward Duncan is given the task of delivering his daughters to the commander of Fort William Henry. He decides to take a shorter route rather than the main road. An Indian runner undertakes to accompany them.

Along the way, they were joined by David Gamut. Soon they got lost and came to the lake. On the shore they were met by two Indians (Uncas and Chingachgook) and a white hunter (Hawkeye). After talking with them, he finds out that the Indian accompanying them is leading them into a trap. They decide to catch the Indian, but the Indian escapes into the forest. Afterwards, they take refuge in a cave for the night so that by morning they can slip past the ambush. But in the morning they are attacked by the Hurons, and after a short fight, the Mohicans and the scout sail away along the river to call for reinforcements at Fort William Henry. The rest take refuge in a cave. But soon they are found and taken to the Huron camp. Along the way, they stop on a mountain, where they are overtaken by the Mohicans and a scout. It turned out that they did not go to the fort, but chased the prisoners and their captors.

Among the kidnappers was an Indian who had accompanied them before. It was Magua, but he slipped away again. They then headed to Fort William Henry. The fort was surrounded by significant enemy forces. There were a lot of mingas in the forests. The travelers broke through the encirclement to the fort and entered it.

A few days later a temporary truce was declared. Negotiations were held at which the commander-in-chief of the French army gave the British an intercepted letter, which stated that there would be no reinforcements, and the besieged decided to surrender. The next morning, the besieged set out from the fort. But in the gorge they were attacked by the Mings and swept away the English army. Alice was grabbed by Magua and ran from the battlefield, knowing that Cora would run after him. David ran after Cora, singing a song to calm the attackers. The Hurons thought he was crazy, so they left him alone. Thus, it also served as a shield for Cora. They mounted their horses and galloped away. A few days later, Uncas, Chingachgook, a scout, Hayward and Munro came to the battlefield. They were looking for the girls' bodies. Then they saw their tracks and decided to start searching the next day.

The travelers decided that Duncan would infiltrate the Ming camp under the guise of an envoy from the white leader of Canada and try to kidnap Alice. Duncan came to the Huron camp and pretended that he was a doctor. But during the conversation they brought in a captured warrior. It turned out to be Uncas. After the test that Uncas went through so that he would not be killed, he was brought to the hut where Magua entered. He recognized Uncas and decided that he would be executed at dawn. Meanwhile, one of the Huron leaders took Hayward to the cave where his sick daughter lay. On the way, one of the bears tamed by the Hurons followed them. They entered the cave, the leader showed his daughter and left. The bear approached Hayward, his head fell to the side and it turned out that it was not a bear, but Hawkeye in a bearskin.

They found Alice in the cave. But Magua suddenly appeared. He propped up the door from which he had emerged with a log, but then a scout in a bear skin grabbed him, and they tied him up. Hayward carried Alice to the Delaware camp, and Hawkeye went to rescue Uncas. After that, they also went to this camp. They were held captives in the Delaware camp. Soon the deception was revealed. Magua took twenty warriors and went to the Delaware camp. From there he took Cora and went back.

In the Delaware camp it turned out that Uncas was the leader of the Delawares. The prisoners were released, and they went with the Delaware army to the Ming camp. Twenty men, led by Hawkeye, went to the rear of the Huron army. But they were spotted, and an unequal battle began. Soon the main forces arrived, and the Delawares won in a difficult battle. Only Magua and his two warriors remained. They began to run away. Uncas, Heyward and the scout ran after them. They walked through the cave and came out the other side. In the cave, Magua took Cora, and they ran on. But after leaving the cave, she refused to go, and one ming killed her. At the same time, Uncas jumped from above and killed Minga. At that moment, Magua thrust a knife three times into Uncas’ chest. Magua jumped onto another rock, could not resist, slipped and hung above the ground. The scout shot him with a gun.

Uncas and Cora were buried, and Hayward took Alice back to her homeland. This is where the work ends.

Heroes:

Uncas, aka the Swift-footed Deer.

Chingachgook, aka the Great Serpent.

Scout Natty Bumppo, aka Hawkeye

Eye and Long Carbine.

Major Hayward Duncan, aka Generous Hand.

Girls Cora and Alice.

Their father is Colonel Munro.

Magua, aka the Sly Fox.

Psalmist David Gamut.

Uncas and Chingachgook are Mohicans. These are strong, strong Indians who can see well in the dark, know how to find any traces, can navigate well in the forests and hear any sound, even the quietest.

The main character of the novel is the hunter and tracker Natty Bumppo. Stern and fair, brave and noble, Bumpo is one of Cooper's most beloved heroes.

Magua is an evil, treacherous, cunning Indian, leader from the Huron (Ming) tribe. He, like Uncas, loves the girl Cora and constantly tries to kidnap her.

Major Hayward Duncan is a brave, courageous Englishman who accompanies the girls Cora and Alice to Fort William Henry. He was in love with Alice.

Cora is a brave, beautiful, noble girl, the daughter of Munro and a black woman from the West Indian Islands.

Alice is kind, beautiful, a tender girl, sister of Cora, daughter of Munro and Alice Graham.

Their father is Colonel Munro, an elderly man who loves his daughters very much, the commander-in-chief of Fort William Henry.

Psalmist David Gamut is a singing teacher who reveres songs sacredly; he always carried with him a book of holy songs.

Conflict:

The conflict between civilization and nature is transformed into a clash between the “unnatural” alien civilization and the natural skills and customs of the red-skinned aborigines, and the tragic fate of the Indians itself becomes one of the leitmotifs of the narrative.

“The Song of Hiawatha” by G. Longfellow

Plot : Its plot was based on American Indian folklore. In the introduction, the author recalls the musician Navadagu, who once in ancient times sang a song about Hiawatha: “About his wondrous birth, / About his great life: / How he fasted and prayed, / How Hiawatha worked, / So that his people were happy, / So that he walked towards goodness and truth." The supreme deity of the Indians, Gitchi Manito - the Lord of Life - “who created all nations”, traced the river beds along the valleys with his finger, molded a pipe from clay and lit it. Seeing the smoke of the Pipe of Peace rising to the sky, the leaders of all the tribes gathered: “The Choctos and Comanches walked, / The Shoshone and Omogie walked, / The Hurons and Mendens walked, / the Delawares and the Mogoks, / the Blackfeet and the Pons, / the Ojibways and the Dakotas.” Gitchie Manito calls on the warring tribes to reconcile and live “like brothers,” and predicts the appearance of a prophet who will show them the way to salvation. Obeying the Lord of Life, the Indians plunge into the waters of the river, wash off the war paints, light their pipes and set off on their way back. Having defeated the huge bear Mishe-Mokwa, Madzhekiwis becomes the Lord of the Western Wind, but gives the other winds to the children: the Eastern - to Webon, the Southern - Shavondazi, the Northern - to the evil Kabibonokka. “In time immemorial, / In time immemorial,” beautiful Nokomis, the daughter of the night luminaries, fell onto the flowering valley right from the month. There, in the valley, Nokomis gave birth to a daughter and named her Venona. When her daughter grew up, Nokomis warned her more than once against Majekivis's charms, but Venona did not listen to her mother. “And the son of sorrow was born, / Of tender passion and sorrow, / Of wondrous mystery - Hiawatha.” The insidious Madzhekivis soon left Venona, and she died of grief. Hiawatha was raised and raised by her grandmother. As an adult, Hiawatha puts on magic moccasins, takes magic mittens, and goes in search of his father, eager to take revenge on him for the death of his mother. Hiawatha begins a fight with Majekiwis and forces him to retreat. After a three-day battle, the father asks Hiawatha to stop fighting. Majekivis is immortal and cannot be defeated. He calls on his son to return to his people, clear the rivers, make the land fruitful, kill the monsters and promises to make him the ruler of the North-West Wind after his death. In the wilderness of the forest, Hiawatha fasts for seven nights and days. He turns to Gitchi Manito with prayers for the good and happiness of all tribes and peoples, and as if in response, the young Mondamin, with golden curls and in green and yellow clothes, appears at his wigwam. For three days Hiawatha fights with the messenger of the Lord of Life. On the third day he defeats Mondamin, buries him and then continues to visit his grave. Over the grave, green stalks grow one after another, this is another embodiment of Mondamin - corn, food sent to the people of Gitchie Manito. Hiawatha builds a pirogue from birch bark, fastening it with the roots of temrak - larch, making a frame from cedar branches, decorates it with hedgehog needles, and colors it with berry juice. Then, together with his friend the strong man Kwasinda, Hiawatha swam down the Takwamino River and cleared it of snags and shoals. In the Gitchi-Gumi Bay, Hiawatha casts his fishing rod three times to catch the Great Sturgeon - Mishe-Nama. Mishe-Nama swallows the pirogue along with Hiawatha, and he, being in the belly of the fish, squeezes the heart of the huge king of fish with all his might until he dies. Then Hiawatha defeats the evil wizard Medjisogwon - Pearl Feather, who is guarded by terrible snakes. Hiawatha finds himself a wife, the beautiful Minnegaga from the Dakota tribe. At the wedding feast in honor of the bride and groom, the handsome and mocking Po-Pok-Kiwis dances, the musician Chaibayabos sings a tender song, and old Yagu tells the amazing legend about the wizard Osseo, who descended from the Evening Star. To protect the crops from damage, Hiawatha orders Minnegaga to walk around the fields naked in the darkness of the night, and she obediently, “without embarrassment and without fear” obeys. Hiawatha catches the Raven King, Kagagi, who dared to lead a flock of birds to the crops, and to warn him, he ties him on the roof of his wigwam. Hiawatha invents letters “so that future generations / It will be possible to distinguish between them.” Fearing Hiawatha's noble aspirations, evil spirits form an alliance against him and drown his closest friend, the musician Chaibayabos, in the waters of Gitai-Gumi. Hiawatha falls ill from grief, and is healed with the help of spells and magical dances. The daring, handsome Po-Pok-Kiwis teaches the men of his tribe to play dice and beats them mercilessly. Then, getting excited and knowing, moreover, that Hiawatha is absent, Po-Pok-Kiwis destroys his wigwam. Returning home, Hiawatha sets off in pursuit of Po-Pok-Kiwis. and he, running away, ends up on a beaver dam and asks the beavers to turn him into one of them, only bigger and taller than all the others. The beavers agree and even elect him as their leader. Here Hiawatha appears on the dam. The water breaks the dam, and the beavers hastily hide. Po-Pok-Kiwis cannot follow them because of his size. But Hiawatha only manages to catch him, but not kill him. The spirit of Po-Pok-Kiwis escapes and takes on the form of a man again. Running away from Hiawatha, Po-Pok-Keewis turns into a goose, only bigger and stronger than everyone else. This is what destroys him - he cannot cope with the wind and falls to the ground, but he runs again, and Hiawatha manages to cope with his enemy only by calling on lightning and thunder for help. Hiawatha loses another of his friends - the strongman Kwasinda, who was killed by pygmies who hit him on the crown of the head with a “blue spruce cone” while he was floating in a pie along the river. A harsh winter comes, and ghosts appear in Hiawatha's wigwam - two women. They sit gloomily in the corner of the wigwam, not saying a word, just grabbing the best pieces of food. Many days pass in this way, and then one day Hiawatha wakes up in the middle of the night from their sighs and crying. Women say that they - souls of the dead and came from the islands Afterlife, in order to instruct the living: there is no need to torment the dead with fruitless grief and calls to return back, there is no need to put any furs, no jewelry, or clay bowls in the graves - just a little food and fire for the journey. For four days, while the soul reaches the land of the Afterlife, fires must be lit to illuminate its path. The ghosts then say goodbye to Hiawatha and disappear. Famine begins in Indian villages. Hiawatha goes hunting, but is unsuccessful, and Minnegaga grows weaker day by day and dies. Hiawatha, filled with grief, buries his wife and burns a funeral pyre for four nights. Saying goodbye to Minnegaga, Hiawatha promises to meet her soon “in the kingdom of bright Ponim, / Infinite, eternal life.” Yagu returns to the village from a long hike and says that he saw the Big Sea and a winged pirogue “bigger than a whole grove of pine trees.” In this boat, Yagu saw a hundred warriors, whose faces were painted white and their chins covered with hair. The Indians laugh, considering Yagu's story to be just another fable. Only Hiawatha does not laugh. He reports that he had a vision - a winged boat and bearded, pale-faced strangers. They should be greeted with affection and greetings - this is what Gitchi Manito ordered. Hiawatha says that the Lord of Life revealed the future to him: he saw “thick armies” of peoples moving to the West. “Their dialects were different, / But one heart beat in them, / And their cheerful work was in full swing: / Axes rang in the forests, / Cities in the meadows smoked, / On rivers and lakes / Floated with lightning and thunder / Winged pies ". But the future that has opened up for Hiawatha is not always bright: he also sees Indian tribes dying in the fight against each other. Hiawatha, and behind him the rest of the Indians, warmly greet the pale-faces who have arrived on the boat and become familiar with the truths that are proclaimed by the teacher of the pale-faces, “their prophet in black clothes,” - to the beginnings Christian religion, stories “about Holy Mary the Virgin, / About her eternal Son.” Hiawatha's guests fall asleep in his wigwam, exhausted by the heat, and he himself, having said goodbye to Nokomis and his people and bequeathing to heed the wise instructions of the guests sent from the kingdom of light, sails in his pirogue to Sunset, to the Land of Ponim, "to the Isles of the Blessed - to the kingdom / Endless, eternal life!

Heroes and images:

Hiawatha is a historical figure. He lived in the 15th century, came from the Iroquois tribe, and became one of the leaders of the Indian people. In folklore, Hiawatha is endowed with the features of a fairy-tale hero. And in Longfellow's interpretation the story of Hiawatha becomes a poetic legend, a fairy tale, in which fantastic fiction is intertwined with folk wisdom. The hero of the poem is an extraordinary creature, endowed with fabulous strength, extraordinary intelligence and courage. He devotes all his strength to the good of people. This is the image of a real folk hero. Hiawatha teaches the Indians the skills of hunting and farming, he invents writing, and reveals the secret of the art of healing.

He learns the secrets of nature, understands the voices of animals and birds, knows how to listen to the sound of the wind, the splash of the river. The poem creates beautiful pictures of nature North America, describes the life of Indian tribes. The authenticity of the description of clothing, weapons, and jewelry is combined with a bold flight of imagination. The images of the heroes are poetic: the brave and gentle Chaibayabos, the simple-minded and courageous Kwasind, the slender and flexible Wenona, the beautiful Nokomis. They are all energetic and brave people who care about happiness and actively strive for it. In the final part of the poem, Hiawatha calls on his fellow tribesmen to live in friendship with the whites and listen to their wise advice. The ending of the poem is permeated with the spirit of forgiveness.

The American researcher of Iroquois folklore H. Hale, commenting on the image of Hiawatha created by Longfellow, notes its “components”: it combines the features of the legendary Iroquois leader Hayonwata, Taronhiawagon (the deity of the Seneca Indians) and the mythological hero of the Ojibwe Indians Manabozo. There is an argument that among the numerous “prototypes” that influenced the creation of the image of Hiawatha was Longfellow’s acquaintance, George Copway (1818-1863) - the leader of the Ojibwe Indians, and then a preacher and writer.

Hiawatha is not only mythological - he is also romantic hero, embodying the ideal of the American romantics, their dream of a hero who is most fully fused with nature (Emerson). From childhood, Hiawatha learns to understand nature, to communicate freely with everything living and nonliving in it, and to know its language. His mind is capable of perceiving and comprehending nature. The relationships between Hiawatha and his wife and between Hiawatha and his friends are romanticized. Hiawatha combines the traits of a poet and a warrior - he is called upon to free the world from monsters, he is an example of kindness and nobility. In the image of Hiawatha, Longfellow seems to compress three times together: the mythological time of the first ancestors (the time of the birth of rituals and customs, the birth of writing and poetry), historical time (the unification of the Iroquois tribes) and ideal time (in which Hiawatha acts as a hospitable host who prepared his people to a meeting with white Christians, as if handing over their lands and their inhabitants new era settlement of America by Europeans). Thus, Hiawatha turns into a grandiose image of a folk hero, connecting the past, present and future.

IN literary fairy tales For Hawthorne, fairy tale fiction is important: it acts, firstly, as a means of creating a romantic ideal and, secondly, as a way of metaphorical criticism of the world around us.
The action of N. Hawthorne's most perfect fairy tale, "The Tuft" (1852), takes place in the city of Salem and its environs. As for the time of action, it is characterized by fabulous uncertainty (“long ago”), but it is obvious that this bygone times- XVII-XVIII century. The main characters are typical characters of national folklore: “one of the most dexterous witches in New England,” Mother Rigby and her “dolls” (a human likeness created for the purpose of practical magic) Tufts. In this case, however, the creation of Khokholka pursues a completely innocent goal - to scare the crows in Mother Rigby's garden, and only then an insidious plan is born in the witch's head. She brings the garden scarecrow to life and sends him out into the wide world. Tufts with his pumpkin head, this caricature of modern man, must, according to Mother Rigby’s plan, prove that everyone around is as empty-headed and false as her brainchild.

Thanks to Mother Rigby's magic pipe, lit directly from hellfire, Khokholok not only lives and breathes, but also looks like a handsome and stately gentleman. But as soon as the light in the witch’s pipe goes out, the true essence of the garden scarecrow comes out. However, no one except street dog And small child, does not notice fleeting changes in the hero’s appearance: everyone is blinded by his tinsel shine. Thus, Khokholok easily wins the entire city, and then the heart of the daughter of the church warden (a longtime debtor of Mother Rigby), pretty Polly Gookin. As we see, two traditional fairy-tale plots are intertwined here: the creation of a human likeness by childless parents, which comes to life and replaces the child, and the hero’s journey in search of a bride. Both plots, however, are reinterpreted in a romantic spirit and filled with elements of New England folklore.

Unexpected plot twist in the finale, so characteristic of Hawthorne the short story writer, is not at all provided for by a folk fairy tale: the hero sees his reflection in the mirror, and his true patchwork squalor, devoid of any magic, is revealed to him. He understands that, having acquired a rich bride and position in society, he has not yet become a man. This episode contains an important idea for romantic art: the real, visible world is not only something imperfect, but also unreal, true peace- outside of it. In Hawthorne's work, it is mirrors that act as windows into this world.

Having learned the bitter truth, the romantic hero Khokholok, unlike the people around him, can no longer put up with surrogates and commits suicide: he breaks the pipe and falls to the floor in a pile of rags and sticks. The author's bitter irony is heard in final words Mother Rigby: “My poor, dear, pretty Tuft! There are thousands and thousands of all kinds of whippersnappers and charlatans in the world, made up, like him, from the same heap of rubbish, from the same worn-out, outdated, good-for-nothing things, and all they live happily ever after<...>. And why should only my little doll<...>die?<...>He is too impressionable and feels everything too deeply. He apparently has too tender a heart to fight and win in this insensitive and heartless world."

As we see, the rational prose of life, “insensitivity and heartlessness” turn out to be an unconditional evil for the New England romantic writer. Witchcraft, so fiercely persecuted by its ancestors, on the contrary, is surrounded by an aura of poetry and romantic exclusivity. Under the pen of Hawthorne, even a fairy tale, a genre that seems to be absolutely far from psychologism, reveals the ability to master quite complex characters: the romantically uncompromising Tufts and the artistic nature of Mother Rigby, not alien to artistic vanity. It is their logic, and not the standard fairy tale plot, that the plot ultimately obeys romantic fairy tale N. Hawthorne.
LECTURE 7
^ HISTORY AND MODERNITY OF AMERICA IN DIALOGUES OF CULTURES

James Fenimore Cooper. Biography and creativity

If the indisputable merit of Irving and Hawthorne, as well as E. Poe, was the creation of the American short story, then James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) is rightfully considered the founder of the American novel. Along with W. Irving, Fenimore Cooper is a classic of romantic nativism: it was he who introduced into US literature such a purely national and multifaceted phenomenon as the frontier, although this does not exhaust the America Cooper opened to the reader.

Cooper was the first in the United States to begin writing novels in the modern understanding of the genre; he developed the ideological and aesthetic parameters of the American novel theoretically (in the prefaces to works) and practically (in his work). He laid the foundations for a whole series of genre varieties of the novel, previously completely unknown to domestic and, in some cases, world fiction.

Cooper is the creator of the American historical novel: with his “The Spy” (1821) the development of heroic national history began. He is the founder of the American maritime novel ("The Pilot", 1823) and his specifically national variety- a whaling novel ("Sea Lions", 1849), subsequently brilliantly developed by G. Melville. Cooper developed the principles of American adventure and moral novels (Miles Walingford, 1844), a social novel (At Home, 1838), a satirical novel (The Monikins, 1835), a utopian novel (Colony on the Crater, 1848) and the so-called “Euro-American” novel (“Concepts of Americans”, 1828), the conflict of which is based on the relationship between the cultures of the Old and New Worlds; it then became central in the work of G. James.

Finally, Cooper is the pioneer of such an inexhaustible field of Russian fiction as the frontier novel (or “border novel”) - a genre variety that includes, first of all, his pentalogy about Leather Stocking. It should be noted, however, that Cooper’s pentalogy is a kind of synthetic narrative, for it also absorbs the features of historical, social, moral, and adventure novels and an epic novel, which is fully consistent with the actual significance of the frontier in national history and life XIX century.

James Cooper was born into the family of a prominent political figure, congressman and large landowner Judge William Cooper, a glorious descendant of quiet English Quakers and stern Swedes. (Fenimore - maiden name the writer's mother, whom he added to his own in 1826, thus designating new stage his literary career). A year after his birth, the family moved from New Jersey to New York State to the uninhabited shores of Lake Otsego, where Judge Cooper founded the village of Cooperstown. Here, on the border between civilization and wild, undeveloped lands, the future novelist spent his childhood and early adolescence.

He was educated at home, studying with an English teacher hired for him, and at the age of thirteen he entered Yale, from where, despite brilliant academic success, he was expelled two years later for “provocative behavior and a tendency to make dangerous jokes.” Young Cooper could, for example, bring a donkey into the classroom and seat it in the professor's chair. Let us note that these pranks fully corresponded to the morals prevailing on the frontier and the very spirit of frontier folklore, but, of course, went against the ideas accepted in the academic environment. The measure of influence chosen by the strict father turned out to be pedagogically promising: he immediately gave his fifteen-year-old scoundrel son as a sailor on a merchant ship.

After two years of service, James Cooper entered the navy as a midshipman and spent another three years sailing the seas and oceans. He resigned in 1811, immediately after his marriage, at the request of his young wife, Susan Augusta, née de Lancie, from a good New York family. Soon after, his father died from a stroke suffered during a political debate, leaving his son a decent inheritance, and Cooper healed quiet life country gentleman squire.

He became a writer, as family legend says, completely by accident - unexpectedly for his family and for himself. Cooper's daughter Susan recalled: “My mother was unwell; she was lying on the couch, and he was reading aloud to her a recent English novel. Apparently, the thing was worthless, because after the very first chapters he threw it away and exclaimed: “Yes, I would write to you myself.” a better book than this!" Mother laughed - this idea seemed so absurd to her. He, who hated even writing letters, would suddenly sit down to a book! Father insisted that he could, and indeed, he immediately sketched the first pages of a story that still there was no title; the action, by the way, took place in England."

Cooper's first work, an imitative novel of morals, Precaution, was published in 1820. Immediately after this, the writer, in his words, “tried to create a work that would be purely American, and the theme of which would be love for the motherland.” This is how it appeared historical novel"The Spy" (1821), which brought the author widespread fame in the USA and Europe, which laid the foundation for the development of the American novel and, along with V. Irving's "Book of Sketches", an original national literature generally.

How was the American novel created, what was the “secret” of Cooper’s success, what were the features of the author’s storytelling technique? Cooper based his work on the main principle of English social novel, which came into particular fashion in the first decades of the 19th century (Jane Austen, Mary Edgeworth): stormy action, free arts creating characters, subordinating the plot to the approval of a social idea. The originality of Cooper's works created on this basis lay, first of all, in the theme, which he found already in his first not imitative, but “purely American novel.”

This topic is America, which was completely unknown to Europeans at that time and always attractive to the patriotically minded domestic reader. Already in "Spy" one of the two main directions in which Cooper further developed this topic was outlined: national history(mainly the War of Independence) and the nature of the United States (primarily, the frontier and the sea, familiar to him from his youth; 11 of Cooper’s 33 novels are devoted to navigation). As for the drama of the plot and the vividness of the characters, national history and reality provided no less rich and more recent material for this than the life of the Old World.

Absolutely innovative and unlike the style of English novelists was the style of Cooper’s nativist narrative: plot, figurative system, landscapes, the very method of presentation, interacting, created a unique quality of emotional Cooper's prose. For Cooper literary work was a way of expressing what he thought about America. At the beginning of it creative path, driven by patriotic pride for his young fatherland and optimistic about the future, he sought to correct certain shortcomings national life. The “touchstone” of democratic beliefs for Cooper, as well as for Irving, was a long stay in Europe: a New York writer at the zenith of world fame, he was appointed American consul in Lyon. Fenimore Cooper, who took advantage of this appointment to improve his health and introduce his daughters to Italian and French culture, stayed abroad longer than expected.

After a seven-year absence, he, who had left John Quincy Adams's USA, returned in 1833, like Irving, to Andrew Jackson's America. Shocked by the dramatic changes in the life of his country, he, unlike Irving, became an implacable critic of Jacksonian vulgarization of broad frontier democracy. The works written by Fenimore Cooper in the 1830s earned him fame as the first “anti-American,” which accompanied him until the end of his life and caused many years of persecution by the American press. "I'm at odds with my country," Cooper said.

The writer died in Cooperstown, in full bloom creative forces, although his unpopularity as an “anti-American” overshadowed the singer’s brilliant fame native land.
^ Cooper. Analysis of the novel "The Last of the Mohicans"

Fenimore Cooper's most famous and beloved novel in the United States and abroad, The Last of the Mohicans (1826), is part of the so-called Leatherstocking pentalogy - a cycle of five novels created in different time. These are "The Pioneers" (1823), "The Last of the Mohicans" (1826), "The Prairie" (1827), "The Pathfinder" (1840) and "Deerslayer" (1841). They are all united in the same way central character- pioneer pioneer Nathaniel (Nutty) Bumppo, who goes by the nicknames Deerslayer, Tracker, Hawkeye, Long Carbine, Leatherstocking and is shown in different years his life. He is a twenty-year-old youth in "Deerslayer" (set in 1740), a mature man in "The Last of the Mohicans" and "The Pathfinder" (1750s), old man in "Pioneers" ( late XVIII century) and a very old man in "The Prairie" (1805).

The fate of Natty Bumppo is dramatic: the tracker-scout, once without equal, in his declining days observes the end of the free and wild America he so loved. He gets lost among unfamiliar clearings, does not understand the new laws introduced by landowners, and feels like a stranger among the new owners of the country, although he once showed them the way and helped them settle here.

Arranged not by the time of creation, but by the chronology of events, the novels in this series cover more than sixty years American history, represented as art history development of the frontier - the gradual movement of the nation from the northeast of the continent ("St. John's wort") to the west ("Prairie"). This is romantic historiography. The fate of Natty Bumppo, like a drop of water, reflected the process of development of the continent and the formation of American civilization, which included both spiritual ups and downs. moral losses. Admittedly, the Leatherstocking pentalogy is the best that Cooper has written; it was she who brought posthumous fame to her creator.

At the same time, one cannot help but notice some inconsistencies in the plots of the novels, as well as their stereotyping. In each of them, Leather Stocking helps someone, rescues someone from trouble, saves them from death, and then, when his mission is over, he goes alone into the forests, and when there are no forests left, into the prairie. However, if in “Pioneers” the narrative is still somewhat spasmodic and seems to stagnate between intense action and boring moralization, then in the subsequent novels of the cycle action determines everything. The course of events is rapidly accelerating, the intervals between the fatal shots of the Long Carbine are so short, the moments of relative safety are so precarious, the rustling in the forest is so ominous that the reader knows no peace. The mature Cooper is an excellent storyteller, and the very fact that he talks about very serious subjects in such an entertaining way - he explores the foundations of American society and national character- does him great honor.

“The Last of the Mohicans” is the second novel in the pentalogy. It was written by a mature author, at the peak of his creative powers and talent, and at the same time even before his departure to Europe, which marked the beginning of Cooper’s life drama. The plot of the novel is based on the traditional American literature, but the author’s romantically reimagined “story of captivity and deliverance.” This is the story of the treacherous capture of Colonel Munro's virtuous daughters - the beautiful and brave black-eyed Cora and the blond, fragile and feminine Alice - by the cunning and cruel Huron Magua and the repeated attempts of Hawkeye (Natty Bumppo) with the help of his faithful friends - the Mohican Indians Chingachgook and his son Uncas - to save the captives. The twists and turns of the novel: persecution, traps and brutal battles - noticeably complicate, but also decorate the plot, make it dynamic and allow the characters to be revealed in action, introduce various pictures of American nature, show the exotic world of the “redskins”, and give a description of frontier life.

IN artistic research Cooper's character of the courageous pioneer pioneer "The Last of the Mohicans" - important stage. Natty Bumppo is shown here at the zenith of life: his personality is already fully formed, and he is still full of strength and energy. Formed and writing skills author: the romantically isolated character of the hero appears alive and natural. He is immersed here in his true environment - the element of untouched American forests, and therefore his constant properties are clearly manifested: simplicity, selflessness, generosity, fearlessness, self-sufficiency and spiritual power. They reflect his organic connection with nature; they define the hero’s uncompromising rejection of a civilization that is opposite to him in spirit.

Natty Bumppo is the first and ideal original hero of national literature, and his love of freedom, independence, self-sufficiency and uncompromisingness, associated with the natural principle, will constantly resonate in the characters of US literature - in Melville's Ishmael, Twain's Huck Finn, Faulkner's McCaslin, Hemingway's Nick Adams, Salinger's Holden Caulfield and many, many others.

Full rights actor Fenimore Cooper shows the powerful and majestic nature of America. In "The Last of the Mohicans" it is the diverse landscape of the Hudson River region. In addition to the purely artistic, aesthetic, it also has another very important function, which is different from the function of landscape in the works of European romantics, where nature is the personification of the hero’s soul. Cooper, like other American nativist romantics, gravitates not toward a lyrical, but toward an epic depiction of nature: for him, landscape becomes one of the means of establishing national identity, a necessary component of an epic story about a young country.

Equally, if not more effective means of revealing national specifics is an image of the Indians, their exotic way of life, their colorful rituals, and the incomprehensible and contradictory Indian character. Fenimore Cooper brings out in “The Last of the Mohicans” (not to mention the entire pentalogy) a whole gallery of images of Native Americans: on the one hand, this is the cunning, treacherous, “evil and ferocious” Huron Magua, on the other hand, Natty’s brave, persistent and devoted best friends Bumpo, the former leader of the exterminated Mohican tribe, the wise and faithful Chingachgook and his son, “the last of the Mohicans,” the young and ardent Uncas, who dies trying in vain to save Cora Munro. The novel ends with a colorful and deeply touching scene funeral rite over Cora and Uncas, whose death symbolizes the tragedy of the Indian people, the “vanishing race” of America.

The polarization of the characters of the Indians (the concentration of their positive or negative properties) is associated in “The Last of the Mohicans” with the features and conventions of romantic aesthetics.

Fenimore Cooper with his conventional “good” and “evil” Indians, helping or opposing to the white man, marked the beginning of a new, although also largely mythologized, perception of the Native American in national literature and had a huge impact on US culture by developing the genre parameters of the Western.

Thus, life on the frontier and the image of the “redskin” so impressively and artistically depicted by Cooper appear less aesthetically perfect, but more reliable and not at all conventional, in the prose of Native Americans.

Composition

If the indisputable merit of Irving and Hawthorne, as well as E. Poe, was the creation of the American short story, then James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) is rightfully considered the founder of the American novel. Along with W. Irving, Fenimore Cooper is a classic of romantic nativism: it was he who introduced into US literature such a purely national and multifaceted phenomenon as the frontier, although this does not exhaust the America Cooper opened to the reader.

Cooper was the first in the United States to begin writing novels in the modern understanding of the genre; he developed the ideological and aesthetic parameters of the American novel theoretically (in the prefaces to works) and practically (in his work). He laid the foundations for a whole series of genre varieties of the novel, previously completely unknown to domestic and, in some cases, world fiction.

Cooper is the creator of the American historical novel: with his “The Spy” (1821) the development of heroic national history began. He is the founder of the American maritime novel ("The Pilot", 1823) and its specifically national variety - the whaling novel ("Sea Lions", 1849), later brilliantly developed by G. Melville. Cooper developed the principles of American adventure and moral novels (Miles Walingford, 1844), a social novel (At Home, 1838), a satirical novel (The Monikins, 1835), a utopian novel (Colony on the Crater, 1848) and the so-called “Euro-American” novel (“Concepts of Americans”, 1828), the conflict of which is based on the relationship between the cultures of the Old and New Worlds; it then became central in the work of G. James.

Finally, Cooper is the pioneer of such an inexhaustible field of Russian fiction as the frontier novel (or “border novel”) - a genre variety that includes, first of all, his pentalogy about Leather Stocking. It should be noted, however, that Cooper’s pentalogy is a kind of synthetic narrative, for it also absorbs the features of historical, social, moral, descriptive and adventure novels and an epic novel, which is fully consistent with the actual significance of the frontier in the national history and life of the 19th century.

James Cooper was born into the family of a prominent political figure, congressman and large landowner Judge William Cooper, a glorious descendant of quiet English Quakers and stern Swedes. (Fenimore was the maiden name of the writer’s mother, which he added to his own in 1826, thus marking a new stage in his literary career). A year after his birth, the family moved from New Jersey to New York State to the uninhabited shores of Lake Otsego, where Judge Cooper founded the village of Cooperstown. Here, on the border between civilization and wild, undeveloped lands, the future novelist spent his childhood and early adolescence.

He was educated at home, studying with an English teacher hired for him, and at the age of thirteen he entered Yale, from where, despite brilliant academic success, he was expelled two years later for “provocative behavior and a tendency to make dangerous jokes.” Young Cooper could, for example, bring a donkey into the classroom and seat it in the professor's chair. Let us note that these pranks fully corresponded to the morals prevailing on the frontier and the very spirit of frontier folklore, but, of course, went against the ideas accepted in the academic environment. The measure of influence chosen by the strict father turned out to be pedagogically promising: he immediately gave his fifteen-year-old scoundrel son as a sailor on a merchant ship.

After two years of service, James Cooper entered the navy as a midshipman and spent another three years sailing the seas and oceans. He resigned in 1811, immediately after his marriage, at the request of his young wife, Susan Augusta, née de Lancie, from a good New York family. Soon after, his father died from a stroke suffered during a political debate, leaving his son a decent inheritance, and Cooper lived the quiet life of a country gentleman squire.

He became a writer, as family legend says, completely by accident - unexpectedly for his family and for himself. Cooper's daughter Susan recalled: “My mother was unwell; she was lying on the couch, and he was reading aloud to her a recent English novel. Apparently, the thing was worthless, because after the very first chapters he threw it away and exclaimed: “Yes, I would write to you myself.” a better book than this!" Mother laughed - this idea seemed so absurd to her. He, who hated even writing letters, would suddenly sit down to a book! Father insisted that he could, and indeed, he immediately sketched the first pages of a story that still there was no title; the action, by the way, took place in England."

Cooper's first work, an imitative novel of morals, Precaution, was published in 1820. Immediately after this, the writer, in his words, “tried to create a work that would be purely American, and the theme of which would be love for the motherland.” This is how the historical novel “The Spy” (1821) appeared, which brought the author widespread fame in the USA and Europe, marking the beginning of the development of the American novel and, along with V. Irving’s “Book of Sketches,” distinctive national literature in general.

How was the American novel created, what was the “secret” of Cooper’s success, what were the features of the author’s storytelling technique? Cooper based his work on the main principle of the English social novel, which came into particular fashion in the first decades of the 19th century (Jane Austen, Mary Edgeworth): stormy action, free art of creating characters, subordination of the plot to the affirmation of a social idea. The originality of Cooper's works created on this basis lay, first of all, in the theme, which he found already in his first not imitative, but “purely American novel.”

This topic is America, which was completely unknown to Europeans at that time and always attractive to the patriotically minded domestic reader. Already in “The Spy,” one of the two main directions in which Cooper further developed this topic was outlined: national history (mainly the War of Independence) and the nature of the United States (primarily, the frontier and the sea, familiar to him from his youth; 11 is dedicated to navigation from 33 Cooper novels). As for the drama of the plot and the vividness of the characters, national history and reality provided no less rich and more recent material for this than the life of the Old World.

Absolutely innovative and unlike the style of English novelists was the style of Cooper's nativist narrative: the plot, the figurative system, landscapes, the very method of presentation, interacting, created a unique quality of emotional Cooper's prose. For Cooper, writing was a way of expressing what he thought about America. At the beginning of his career, driven by patriotic pride for his young fatherland and optimistically looking to the future, he sought to correct certain shortcomings of national life. The “touchstone” of democratic beliefs for Cooper, as well as for Irving, was a long stay in Europe: a New York writer at the zenith of world fame, he was appointed American consul in Lyon. Fenimore Cooper, who took advantage of this appointment to improve his health and introduce his daughters to Italian and French culture, stayed abroad longer than expected.

After a seven-year absence, he, who had left John Quincy Adams's USA, returned in 1833, like Irving, to Andrew Jackson's America. Shocked by the dramatic changes in the life of his country, he, unlike Irving, became an implacable critic of Jacksonian vulgarization of broad frontier democracy. The works written by Fenimore Cooper in the 1830s earned him fame as the first “anti-American,” which accompanied him until the end of his life and caused many years of persecution by the American press. "I'm at odds with my country," Cooper said.

The writer died in Cooperstown, in full bloom of his creative powers, although his unpopularity as an “anti-American” overshadowed the brilliant glory of the singer of his native land.

Fenimore Cooper's most famous and beloved novel in the United States and abroad, The Last of the Mohicans (1826), is part of the so-called Leatherstocking pentalogy - a cycle of five novels created at different times. These are "The Pioneers" (1823), "The Last of the Mohicans" (1826), "The Prairie" (1827), "The Pathfinder" (1840) and "Deerslayer" (1841). All of them are united by the image of the central hero - pioneer Nathaniel (Nutty) Bumppo, who acts under the nicknames St. John's Wort, Pathfinder, Hawkeye, Long Carbine, Leather Stocking and is shown in different years of his life. He is a twenty-year-old youth in "Deerslayer" (set in 1740), a mature man in "The Last of the Mohicans" and "The Pathfinder" (1750s), an old man in "The Pioneers" (late 18th century) and a very old man in "The Prairie" "(1805).

The fate of Natty Bumppo is dramatic: the tracker-scout, once without equal, in his declining days observes the end of the free and wild America he so loved. He gets lost among unfamiliar clearings, does not understand the new laws introduced by landowners, and feels like a stranger among the new owners of the country, although he once showed them the way and helped them settle here.

Arranged not by the time of creation, but by the chronology of events, the novels of this cycle cover more than sixty years of American history, presented as an artistic history of the development of the frontier - the gradual movement of the nation from the northeast of the continent ("St. John's wort") to the west ("Prairie"). This is romantic historiography. The fate of Natty Bumppo, like a drop of water, reflected the process of development of the mainland and the formation of American civilization, which included both spiritual ups and moral losses. Admittedly, the Leatherstocking pentalogy is the best that Cooper has written; it was she who brought posthumous fame to her creator.

At the same time, one cannot help but notice some inconsistencies in the plots of the novels, as well as their stereotyping. In each of them, Leather Stocking helps someone, rescues someone from trouble, saves them from death, and then, when his mission is over, he goes alone into the forests, and when there are no forests left, into the prairie. However, if in “Pioneers” the narrative is still somewhat spasmodic and seems to stagnate between intense action and boring moralization, then in the subsequent novels of the cycle action determines everything. The course of events is rapidly accelerating, the intervals between the fatal shots of the Long Carbine are so short, the moments of relative safety are so precarious, the rustling in the forest is so ominous that the reader knows no peace. The mature Cooper is an excellent storyteller, and the very fact that he talks about very serious subjects in such an entertaining way - exploring the foundations of American society and national character - does him great credit.

“The Last of the Mohicans” is the second novel in the pentalogy. It was written by a mature author, at the peak of his creative powers and talent, and at the same time even before his departure to Europe, which marked the beginning of Cooper’s life drama. The plot of the novel is based on the “story of captivity and deliverance”, traditional for American literature, but romantically rethought by the author. This is the story of the treacherous capture of Colonel Munro's virtuous daughters - the beautiful and brave black-eyed Cora and the blond, fragile and feminine Alice - by the cunning and cruel Huron Magua and the repeated attempts of Hawkeye (Natty Bumppo) with the help of his faithful friends - the Mohican Indians Chingachgook and his son Uncas - to save the captives. The twists and turns of the novel: persecution, traps and brutal battles - noticeably complicate, but also decorate the plot, make it dynamic and allow the characters to be revealed in action, introduce various pictures of American nature, show the exotic world of the “redskins”, and give a description of frontier life.

In Cooper's artistic exploration of the character of the courageous pioneer, The Last of the Mohicans is an important milestone. Natty Bumppo is shown here at the zenith of life: his personality is already fully formed, and he is still full of strength and energy. The author's writing skills have also taken shape: the romantically isolated character of the hero appears alive and natural. He is immersed here in his true environment - the element of untouched American forests, and therefore his constant properties are clearly manifested: simplicity, selflessness, generosity, fearlessness, self-sufficiency and spiritual power. They reflect his organic connection with nature; they define the hero’s uncompromising rejection of a civilization that is opposite to him in spirit.

Natty Bumppo is the first and ideal original hero of national literature, and his love of freedom, independence, self-sufficiency and uncompromisingness, associated with the natural principle, will constantly resonate in the characters of US literature - in Melville's Ishmael, Twain's Huck Finn, Faulkner's McCaslin, Hemingway's Nick Adams, Salinger's Holden Caulfield and many, many others.

Fenimore Cooper's full-fledged protagonist is the powerful and majestic nature of America. In "The Last of the Mohicans" it is the diverse landscape of the Hudson River region. In addition to the purely artistic, aesthetic, it also has another very important function, which is different from the function of landscape in the works of European romantics, where nature is the personification of the hero’s soul. Cooper, like other American nativist romantics, gravitates not toward a lyrical, but toward an epic depiction of nature: for him, landscape becomes one of the means of establishing national identity, a necessary component of an epic story about a young country.

An equally, if not more effective means of revealing national specificity is the depiction of Indians, their exotic way of life, their colorful rituals, and the incomprehensible and contradictory Indian character. Fenimore Cooper brings out in “The Last of the Mohicans” (not to mention the entire pentalogy) a whole gallery of images of Native Americans: on the one hand, this is the cunning, treacherous, “evil and ferocious” Huron Magua, on the other hand, Natty’s brave, persistent and devoted best friends Bumpo, the former leader of the exterminated Mohican tribe, the wise and faithful Chingachgook and his son, “the last of the Mohicans,” the young and ardent Uncas, who dies trying in vain to save Cora Munro. The novel ends with a colorful and deeply touching scene of the funeral rites over Cora and Uncas, the death of which symbolizes the tragedy of the Indian people, the “vanishing race” of America.

The polarization of the characters of the Indians (the concentration of their positive or negative properties) is associated in “The Last of the Mohicans” with the features and conventions of romantic aesthetics.

Fenimore Cooper, with his conventional “good” and “evil” Indians, helping or opposing the white man, laid the foundation for a new, although also largely mythologized, perception of the Native American in national literature and had a huge impact on US culture by developing the genre parameters of the Western. helping or opposing the white man, laid the foundation for a new, although also largely mythologized, perception of the Native American in national literature and had a huge impact on US culture by developing the genre parameters of the Western.

Thus, life on the frontier and the image of the “redskin” so impressively and artistically depicted by Cooper appear less aesthetically perfect, but more reliable and not at all conventional, in the prose of Native Americans.

In the 19th century, largely relying on the traditions of “white” literature in the United States, a fictional line took shape in it. The leading genre here remains for a long time autobiography: “Son of the Forest” (1829) by W. Eins, from the Picot tribe, “Autobiography” (1833) of Black Hawk, the former leader of the Sauk tribe, etc. The authors poetically describe the life of their tribe and the joys of a free Indian adolescence, stoically and restrainedly talk about the grievances inflicted on their people by the whites: about injustice public policy, about the hardships of modern civilization, about the philistine prejudice of white Americans, who see them only as “savages” and “subhumans.” Among these autobiographies there are some very interesting ones in their own way. outstanding works.

Development itself literary prose(as well as poetry and drama) of Native Americans was hampered by internal political conflicts of the 19th century: the Seminole War of 1835-1842, Civil War, numerous and contradictory government laws regulating the life of the Indians, who were either evicted and resettled, then driven to reservations, or these reservations were cancelled.

Thus, the first “Indian” novel - “Poor Sarah, or Indian” by Elias Bodino, from the Cherokee tribe, was published in 1833, the next one - only in 1854. It immediately brought the author - John Rollin Ridge (from the Cherokees) the widest fame and to some extent influenced the development of American literature as a whole. The novel was called "The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Famous California Bandit" and was a fictional biography of a certain noble robber- an avenger for the desecration of his family and his people. The reason for the creation of the book was a not so long ago series of raids to capture Chicano bandits, who at the beginning of the century, not at all noble, terrorized the entire area and who were simply called “Joaquins.”

Ridge made a name out of this nickname, gave the hero a surname and portrayed him as a local Robin Hood, irresistible and fearless, always ready to help the poor, gallant with the ladies and faithful to his beloved. In this capacity, Joaquin Murrieta migrated to numerous stories, dramatizations, and then films, which made him an incredibly popular figure in the local folklore of California and Mexico. The style and figurative system of Ridge's book is a mixture of the traditions of the English and American Gothic novel and the American "frontier novel" (or "frontier novel"); central image very reminiscent of the heroes" oriental poems" Byron. In general, "The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murrieta" is one of the first examples of the popular western genre, which later, at the turn of the century, flooded the American book market, and then cinema.

The connection with popular culture, however, does not exhaust the influence of this novel on Russian fiction. More important is his contribution to the development of "regional storytelling" in US literature. Based on recent events in local history, vividly recreating local customs and life, full of beautiful Californian landscapes, it anticipated and pushed the development of the Western "school" local color". In subsequent decades, she declared herself with the work of such writers as Francis Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller (who took this literary pseudonym in honor of the hero of the novel Ridge), Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain.

In the wars between the British and French for the possession of American lands (1755-1763), opponents more than once took advantage of civil strife between Indian tribes. The times were difficult and cruel. Dangers lurked at every step. And it is not surprising that the girls, who were traveling, accompanied by Major Duncan Hayward, to the father of the commander of the besieged fort, were worried. Especially disturbing to Alice and Cora - that was the name of the sisters - was the Indian Magua, nicknamed the Sly Fox. He volunteered to lead them along a supposedly safe forest path. Duncan reassured the girls, although he himself was beginning to worry: were they really lost?

Fortunately, in the evening the travelers met Hawkeye - this name was already firmly attached to St. John's Wort - and not alone, but with Chingachgook and Uncas. An Indian lost in the forest during the day?! Hawkeye was much more wary than Duncan. He invites the major to grab the guide, but the Indian manages to slip away. Now no one doubts the betrayal of the Magua Indian. With the help of Chingachgook and his son Uncas, Hawkeye ferries travelers to a small rocky island.

Continuing the modest dinner, “Uncas renders all the services in his power to Cora and Alice.” It’s noticeable that he pays more attention to Cora than to her sister. However, the danger has not yet passed. Attracted by the loud wheezing of horses frightened by wolves, the Indians find their shelter. Shootout, then hand-to-hand combat. The first onslaught of the Hurons was repulsed, but the besieged ran out of ammunition. Salvation is only in flight - unbearable, alas, for girls. It is necessary to sail at night, along a rapid and cold mountain river. Cora persuades Hawkeye to run away with Chingachgook and bring help as soon as possible. She takes longer than other hunters to convince Uncas: the Major and sisters end up in the hands of Magua and his friends.

The kidnappers and captives stop on a hill to rest. The cunning Fox reveals to Kora the purpose of the kidnapping. It turns out that her father, Colonel Munro, once cruelly insulted him, ordering him to be whipped for drunkenness. And now, in revenge, he will marry his daughter. Cora indignantly refuses. And then Magua decides to brutally deal with the prisoners. The sisters and the major are tied to trees, and brushwood for the fire is laid out nearby. The Indian persuades Cora to agree, at least to take pity on her sister, who is very young, almost a child. But Alice, having learned about Magua’s intentions, prefers a painful death.

Enraged, Magua throws his tomahawk. The hatchet pierces the tree, pinning the girl's voluminous blond hair. The major breaks free of his bonds and rushes at one of the Indians. Duncan is almost defeated, but a shot is fired and the Indian falls. Hawkeye and his friends arrived in time. After a short battle, the enemies are defeated. Magua, pretending to be dead and seizing the moment, runs again.

The dangerous journeys end happily - the travelers reach the fort. Under the cover of fog, despite the French besieging the fort, they manage to get inside. The father finally saw his daughters, but the joy of the meeting was overshadowed by the fact that the defenders of the fort were forced to surrender, however, on conditions that were honorable for the British: the vanquished retained their banners, weapons and could freely retreat to their own.

At dawn, burdened with the wounded, as well as children and women, the garrison leaves the fort. Nearby, in a narrow wooded gorge, the Indians attack the convoy. Magua kidnaps Alice and Cora again.

On the third day after this tragedy, Colonel Munro, together with Major Duncan, Hawkeye, Chingachgook and Uncas, inspect the scene of the massacre. Based on barely noticeable traces, Uncas concludes: the girls are alive - they are in captivity. Moreover, continuing the inspection, the Mohican reveals the name of their kidnapper - Magua! After consulting, the friends set off on an extremely dangerous journey: to the homeland of the Sly Fox, to areas inhabited mainly by Hurons. With adventures, losing and finding traces again, the pursuers finally find themselves near the Huron village.

Here they meet the psalmist David, who, taking advantage of his reputation for being weak-minded, voluntarily followed the girls. From David, the colonel learns about the situation of his daughters: he kept Alice Magua with him, and sent Cora to the Delawares living next door, on the lands of the Hurons. Duncan, in love with Alice, wants to penetrate the village at any cost. Pretending to be a fool, changing his appearance with the help of Hawkeye and Chingachgook, he goes on reconnaissance. In the Huron camp, he pretends to be a French doctor, and he, like David, is allowed by the Hurons to go everywhere. To Duncan's horror, the captive Uncas is brought to the village. At first, the Hurons take him for an ordinary prisoner, but Magua appears and recognizes Swift Deer. The hated name arouses such anger among the Hurons that, if not for the Cunning Fox, the young man would have been torn to pieces on the spot. Magua convinces his fellow tribesmen to postpone the execution until the morning. Uncas is taken to a separate hut. The father of a sick Indian woman turns to the doctor Duncan for help. He goes to the cave where the sick woman lies, accompanied by the girl’s father and a tame bear. Duncan asks everyone to leave the cave. The Indians obey the “doctor”’s demands and leave, leaving the bear in the cave. The bear is transformed - Hawkeye is hiding under the animal skin! With the help of a hunter, Duncan discovers Alice hidden in a cave - but then Magua appears. The sly Fox triumphs. But not for long.

The “bear” grabs the Indian and squeezes him in an iron embrace, the major ties the villain’s hands. But from the excitement she has experienced, Alice cannot take a single step. The girl is wrapped in Indian clothes, and Duncan - accompanied by a “bear” - carries her outside. To the father of a sick self-proclaimed “doctor”, citing power Evil Spirit, orders to stay and guard the exit from the cave. The trick succeeds - the fugitives safely reach the forest. At the edge of the forest, Hawkeye shows Duncan the path leading to the Delawares and returns to free Uncas. With the help of David, he deceives the warriors guarding the Swift-Footed Deer and hides with the Mohican in the forest. The enraged Magua, who is found in a cave and freed from his bonds, calls on his fellow tribesmen for revenge.

The next morning, at the head of a strong military detachment, the Sly Fox goes to the Delawares. Having hidden the detachment in the forest, Magua enters the village. He appeals to the Delaware leaders, demanding the surrender of the captives. The leaders, deceived by the eloquence of the Sly Fox, agreed, but after Cora’s intervention it turns out that in reality only she is the captive of Magua - all the others freed themselves. Colonel Munro offers a rich ransom for Cora, but the Indian refuses. Uncas, who unexpectedly became the supreme leader, is forced to release Magua along with the captive. In parting, the Sly Fox was warned: after enough time to escape, the Delawares would set foot on the warpath.

Soon military operations, thanks to the skillful leadership of Uncas, bring the Delawares a decisive victory. The Hurons are defeated. Magua, having captured Cora, flees. Swift-footed Deer pursues the enemy. Realizing that they cannot escape, the last of the surviving companions of the Sly Fox raises a knife over Cora. Uncas, seeing that he might not make it in time, throws himself from a cliff between the girl and the Indian, but falls and loses consciousness. Huron kills Cora. The fleet-footed Deer manages to defeat the killer, but Magua, seizing the moment, thrusts a knife into the young man’s back and takes off running. A shot sounds - Hawkeye settles with the villain.

Orphaned people, orphaned fathers, a solemn farewell. The Delawares have just lost a new leader - the last of the Mohicans (Sagamore), but one leader will be replaced by another; the colonel still has it youngest daughter; Chingachgook lost everything. And only Hawkeye, turning to the Great Serpent, finds words of consolation: “No, sagamore, you are not alone! We may be different in skin color, but we are destined to follow the same path. I have no relatives and I can say, like you, I don’t have my own people.”