In Heaven, all the interesting people are missing.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
A Cry of Silence: Cooper's Epigraph in Chapter III
Before these fields were shorn and tilled,Full to the brim our rivers flowed;The melody of waters filledThe fresh and boundless wood;And torrents dashed and rivulets played,And fountains spouted in the shade.
These 6 lines, drawn from William Bryant's poem, "An Indian At The Burial Place Of His Fathers," are the components of the epigraph preceding Chapter III of James Fenimore Cooper's, The Last of the Mohicans. In this case, Cooper's use of this particular piece of writing is meant to elucidate or foreshadow what the chapter is about.
Bryant's poem was written in 1824, which is around the time when The Last of the Mohicans was published. Because of this, it would seem as though Cooper was assuming that his audience would be familiar with the work, if not with the author. The poem is written in rhyming iambic pentameter, which gives it a musical and "pretty" sound. However, this acts in sharp contrast to the idea the poem puts forth. The main message in this poem is that the sounds of nature and the land which the Natives inhabit are slowly dying away and being crushed by the sounds of a new country, by the sounds of progress.
This theme is strongly supported in Cooper's third chapter. Most notably, when Chingachgook speaks to Hawkeye, "...and when Uncas follows in my footsteps, there will no longer be any of the blood of the sagamores, for my boy is the last of the Mohicans," (32) it hammers home the idea of Bryant's poem. The blood of the Mohicans is being smothered, just like the sounds of nature in the epigraph. This point is also emphasized with the description of Hawkeye and his later words to Chingachgook: "...the other exhibited, through the mask of his rude and nearly savage equipments, the brighter, though sunburnt and long-faded, complexion of one who might claim descent from European parentage." (27) & "What do you hear, Chingachgook? For to my ears the woods are dumb." (35) Here, the dying sounds of the woods are linked directly to Hawkeye and his apparent "European Parentage," just another affrimation of the epigraph's place at the beginning of Chapter III.
-Riannon S.
The use of epigraphs in Last of the Mohicans is sketchy at best and I am having a difficult time finding how this epigraph fits with anything in Chapter 3. If the reader didn't know the context of the lines or the overarching theme of the poem, it was be almost impossible to say what, if anything, this epigraph has to do with the novel and specifically this chapter. It seems to me like Cooper just picked a random few lines out of a poem that happened to be about nature because that's where this chapter takes place? Hawkeye and Chingachgook do talk about the direction the stream flows and Hawk-eye tries to explain the phenomenon with science and asserts that the direction of the water flow depends on how you look at things. Chingachgook does allow that he is like the stream; he is "on the hilltop, and must go down into the valley". I guess this is Chingachgook's way of saying that he knows his time and the time of his people is coming to an end but the metaphor of the water is not fully elaborated on enough to draw any kind of conclusion. I think that Cooper was just overreaching when he placed the epigraph in front of this chapter, as is the case with many of his other chapters, but nice job finding something to link together.
ReplyDeleteRiannon, I really liked your formal analysis of Bryant's poem, specifically what you said about how the meter contrasts with the content. Your analysis allowed you to make some interesting connections to the oppresion of the natural world in The Last of the Mohicans. I had not thought of Cooper's description of the wilderness in the terms you use. While I agree with Chelsea that Cooper's epigraphs are mostly unfocused, I think analysing a novel as though it were well-crafted is much more interesting than disregarding it for the mess it may be. It's hard to say if Cooper had all your ideas in mind when he chose the epigraph, but your analysis is interesting and enrichess the reading experience; I like what you have to say here.
ReplyDeleteI mostly agree with you two in that the epigraphs are often more random than planned, but, at the same time, it seems like you both want to dismiss "The Last of the Mohicans" as a piece of crap. It has its flaws, definitely, but it is a classic and I think it has more to offer than you give it credit for.
ReplyDeleteRiannon, thank you for using rhetoric well; it's a fine and even-handed response/investigation to the question.
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