James Fenimore Cooper's Last of the Mohicans: Book and Movie
The book Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper was very
different from the movie Last of the Mohicans in terms of the storyline.
However, I feel that the producer and director of this movie did a good job
of preserving Cooper's original vision of the classic American man
surviving in the wilderness, while possibly presenting it better than the
book originally did and in a more believable fashion to a late twentieth
century reader.
The makers of the movie Last of the Mohicans preserved Cooper's central
ideas and themes very well, the most important of which is the question,
what makes a man? Very few books that I
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This I think was a wise choice because it gave the viewer more
things in common with the hero and thus made Hawkeye a more human hero and
therefore more comprehensible to the late twentieth century viewer.
One thing the makers of the movie attempted to keep was the vision
portrayed in the book of sweeping landscapes, gigantic trees, dark forests,
crashing waterfalls, and other impressive features of nature. This again
was a wise choice, seeing as how part of Cooper's vision was the goodness
and power of nature. However, once again I think the film presented this
facet better than the book did, although this time it was not due to a
feature Cooper left out but instead was simply due to the fact that film
presents such features in a more vivid, more appealing way than pages of
descriptive passage. (This again may be the bias of a late twentieth
century viewer/reader, as we are used to having our images presented in a
graphic, immediate way, rather than allowing our imaginations to conjure up
pictures from the written word.)
One thing the makers of the movie left out that was originally in the
book was the character of David Gamut, the psalmist. Of all the characters
in the book I felt his was best developed by Cooper; almost all of the
others were cardboard characters with no depth. Gamut, however, is at the
beginning portrayed as anything but a hero He
view? I think it was a good movie from an entertainment standpoint, but it fell short in
not mean that it was poorly done. Just the contrary is true, it is one of the
In my opinion, I feel that this movie, compared to today’s standards, is poor quality. From the 1980’s to the current time, the Hollywood industries and other movie producers have made astronomical improvements with every film released, and ever since
With the settlement of the American West, I discern that it was not nice to force Native Americans off their land onto reservations. There was a treaty given to the Sioux for the rights to the Black Hills until gold was discovered in the area. The white miners flocked to the territory to get the gold. I don’t think it was right that with the treaty the U.S. government still ordered the Native Americans back to their reservations. With the conflict that occurred between the U.S. Government and the Native American Indian in Battle of the Little Bighorn, also called Custer’s Last Stand, marked a significant victory for the Native Americans and unfavorable for U.S. Army’s defeat. The Native Americans would have to remain in government-controlled reservations.
During the nineteenth century America’s population saw its largest increase, in which mass immigration occurred. This saw an increase in culture and racial differences as movement was commonly based on those wanting to move away from war, starvation or other forms of oppression. It is how writers of the nineteenth century presented the ‘objective history through literature and turned it instead to the business of myth-making’ (Wardrop, 1997, p. P2) which is an interest of mine. My aim is to focus on the emergence and portrayal of women in sentimental fiction during the nineteenth century, through Coopers novel The Last of the Mochicans (Cooper, 1826) and Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe, 1999). The framework of my discussion will be
“The Indian presence precipitated the formation of an American identity” (Axtell 992). Ostracized by numerous citizens of the United States today, this quote epitomizes Axtell’s beliefs of the Indians contributing to our society. Unfortunately, Native Americans’ roles in history are often categorized as insignificant or trivial, when in actuality the Indians contributed greatly to Colonial America, in ways the ordinary person would have never deliberated. James Axtell discusses these ways, as well as what Colonial America may have looked like without the Indians’ presence. Throughout his article, his thesis stands clear by his persistence of alteration the Native Americans had on our nation. James Axtell’s bias delightfully enhances his thesis, he provides a copious amount of evidence establishing how Native Americans contributed critically to the Colonial culture, and he considers America as exceptional – largely due to the Native Americans.
Having little knowledge of the Cherokee removal and the history that took place in this moment in America’s past, the book Trail of Tears: Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation by John Ehle, offers an insight to the politics, social dynamics and class struggles the Cherokee Nation faced in the late 1830s. The book was very comprehensive and the scope of the book covers nearly 100 years of Native American History. Ehle captures the history of the Native American people by showing the readers what led to the events infamously known as the Trail of Tears. The author uses real military orders, journals, and letters which aid in creating a book that keeps
As a whole, I think that the creators of the film had a good grasp on what they wanted to portray to the audience since everything was rather simple to follow along and understand where the creator was coming from.
Discuss the pioneer experience of the frontier settlers and how this relates to your understanding of the period in which the book was written. Include the geography, the wildlife, and the terrain.
One example of the imagery being better in the book is the forest. In the book the forest sounds big and beautiful. But, in the movie the forest is quite overgrown and there was not as much wildlife as I expected. Even though the forest wasn’t as beautiful as the book portrayed it, it is still quite an amazing sight.
I believe that this action packed blockbuster that gave Leonardo DiCaprio an Oscar is boring. I believe this not because it has a poor scenery or bad acting, the acting is phenomenal and the scenery and special effects are very detailed and
Hawkeye was very brave and kind to the Mohicans Chingachgook was the one that taught him all the principles of the five nations. The love that he had for nature and the natural world showed a lot
all which I think was a big mistake by the director. I did not feel
This chapter, set in another part of the woods, introduces three more characters. Two of them are familiar; that is, they are familiar if the reader is familiar with other works by James Fenimore Cooper. Hawkeye (or Natty Bumppo) and Chingachgook have been serialized in several of the author's books. This chapter not only shows the close ties of these characters as they discuss familiar subjects but also shows the knowledge of the author about Indian customs and the historical background of America. It also depicts his sympathy for the Indians who were colonized and driven off their lands by European settlers. Cooper depicts his Indians as having keen senses and extensive skills. Hawkeye, for all his woodcraft, cannot match them; he cannot
The main difference between, The Last of the Mohicans, book by James Fenimore Cooper and the last of the Mohicans movie, is that the book has a more adventurous theme and the moive has a more romantic and love them. I felt that both stories were extremely interesting.