In this case, it is the atmosphere of conquest and dispossession. Critically, one can easily isolate the time and place of the novel, but doing so with atmosphere is less easy because atmosphere is intimately intertwined with all aspects of the novel.
Lucy Lockwood Hazard, in The Frontier in American Literature , says: "The frontier affords the setting; it occasions the plot; it offers the theme; it creates the character. Previous Plot of The Last of the Mohicans.
Next Characters in The Last of the Mohicans. For the moment, however, these two bastions confronted each other inertly, even if defiantly, thirty three miles of disputed water apart. Meanwhile back in Massachusetts, English settlements along the Mohawk Trail were also pushing further in the face of the French. After much argument among the villagers as to whether Fort Massachusetts was sufficient to protect the community, another was built some four miles to the west called Fort Hoosac consisting mostly of a log blockhouse where now stands Williams Inn at the crossroads of routes 2 and 7.
The village of West Hoosac itself was expanding along Hemlock Brook. Things began to ramp up on Lake George in the summer and fall of Both sides were carrying out raids, but mostly to annoy and test each other.
The most effective of these were led by Captain Robert Rogers on the English side. He had converted a militia company of New Hampshire woodsmen into an band of guerrilla fighters. They dressed in buckskin britches and green jackets to blend with the forest, and were capable of sudden surprise attacks from behind trees in Indian fashion, over-running enemy positions and then fading back into the woods.
Finally the French decided to strike back in full force. A new commander appeared on the scene, Marquis Louis-Joseph de Montcalm, himself a legendary soldier in France. Collecting a large force of some six-thousand regulars and militia especially armed with heavy artillery plus sixteen hundred Indians, he planned a frontal assault and siege of Fort William Henry. When scouts reported this large force about to fall upon Fort William Henry, Colonel Munro sent a message to Fort Edward, begging for immediate reinforcements, Three thousand troops had just arrived there under command of Colonel Daniel Webb.
On August 3, Montcalm landed his army before the fort and deployed his heavy artillery. His plan was to bombard the fort day and night until the earthworks and log palisades were shredded, and then pour his infantry in through the breaches. Why not set a novel about wilderness adventuring somewhere else? Because The Last of the Mohicans isn't just about adventuring in the wilderness.
It's about American history at a crucial junction. It's about history being made. We'll answer the questions we posed above backwards. Because it was that war, more than even the Revolutionary War, that decided the fate and predominant cultural identity of the USA.
For the same reason—we see the Mohican people die out, essentially, in this novel. Cora has romantic feelings for Uncas, however, and angrily refuses Magua. Suddenly Hawkeye and the Mohicans burst onto the scene, rescuing the captives and killing every Huron but Magua, who escapes. After a harrowing journey impeded by Indian attacks, the group reaches Fort William Henry, the English stronghold.
They sneak through the French army besieging the fort, and, once inside, Cora and Alice reunite with their father. A few days later, the English forces call for a truce. Munro learns that he will receive no reinforcements for the fort and will have to surrender.
Munro accuses Heyward of racism because he prefers to marry blonde Alice over dark Cora, but Heyward denies the charge. During the withdrawal of the English troops from Fort William Henry, the Indian allies of the French indulge their bloodlust and prey upon the vulnerable retreating soldiers.
In the chaos of slaughter, Magua manages to recapture Cora, Alice, and Gamut and to escape with them into the forest.
0コメント