history and criticism

In The Pioneers (1823) James Fenimore Cooper, who created the forerunner of backwoods heroes, depicts the clash between individualistic and communal impulses of people in the early development of a frontier settlement in upstate New York. The founder of the settlement, Judge Temple, is the personification of a bourgeois planned and stable society. He believes that laws imposed on individuals separate people from savages and are prerequisites for a civilized society. By trying to educate his settlers in practical approaches to farming and building and conservation of natural resources for practical use, he wishes to establish social and economic relations which are essential for a firmly structured society. Richard Jones, business assistant to Judge Temple and, later, the Sheriff of the county, is an egotistical jack-of-all-trades and represents a spirit of restless competition by which one pursues riches in order to climb the ladder of success. In contrast, the old hunter, Natty Bumppo, the solitary individual who lives in harmony with nature, is a frontier individualist who has a vision of a frontier society coexisting with nature. He craves traditional attitudes while fearing and despising civilization and its wasteful ways. His individualism is considered as a threat to Templeton and his natural laws eventually bring him into conflict with the "civilized" Judge and the people who are destroying the wilderness, a conflict that ultimately makes him escape the encroaching civilization and the lawless settlers.

I give this 3 stars, because LotM is included here, but the other 2 novels are slow, tedious and well, I've never finished them. Volume 2 of these nice volumes includes The Deerslayer and the Pathfinder, two exciting novels that I recommend, perhaps even before LotM. My favorite is the Pathfinder. Natty Bumpo is awesome in that adventure!

I strongly believe that James Fenimore Cooper belongs to the American and the world history. I learned the history reading his books. I have all of them and I still open them once in a while even now, forty years later.