Customer Reviews

The Last of the Mohicans (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Last of the Mohicans was the first successful American novel and Cooper the first major american novelist. His desriptions of the New York wilderness and the Indian tribes that inhabit them are beautiful. They also are for the most part accurate. There are romantic themes running thorough the story. The reader feels the loss of a dying people and a dying way of life. The settlement of indian territories by colonists and native American tribal warfare are also rendered in deft prose.

This certainly is not an easy read, but one that is well worth the effort.

This book is a very well-written and amazing book. To be honest, it was hard to start out (because I didn't get used to Cooper's method of writing), but once I was a chapter or two into it, it was quite excellent. The portrayal and story and characters were all admirably well designed and I am glad I bought it.

Back in the early 1800s, there was a writer who lived in New York State and loved its natural beauty. He began writing a series of novels describing the life of a wilderness man - Hawkeye - and his two Mohican indian companions. The indians were father and son, Chingachgook and Uncas. The books, known as the Leatherstocking Tales, became a world-wide sensation. Set in the wilds of the 1757 French-Indian War, the stories were near enough in time that they seemed familiar, but wild enough in characters, locations and situations that people all around the world ate them up.

Because the book was one of the first created by an American about a uniquely American topic, it's often taught in literature classes - and because it's about wild "cowboys and indians" without sex or explicit violence, it's often red by young kids. How does this story hold up in modern times?

First, if you've seen any movie version, you are only seeing one eighth of the story. The book was long and dense. To cut that down to two or less hours is to cut out a TON of plot line. Much of the intricacies of the various indian tribes and their relationships to each other is lost, and usually they cut out several key characters as well.

In many ways the book is interesting and progressive for something written in the 1800s. Remember, even in the 1900s, Irish were being ostracized and native Americans were treated far worse. So back in 1826, James set his story around a Scotsman - Munro - and his two daughters, Cora and Alice. Not only that, but Cora was a quarter black - Munro had married a mixed-blood woman during his youth, then remarried a Scotswoman later to have Alice. So there are discussions where Munro strongly defends his daughter, where Hawkeye strongly defends his native friends, and where there are discussions about what a person is worth vs the color of their skin.

On the other hand, though, there are a lot of wild generalities made about native Americans. The book throws around terms such as 'barbaric' and 'devious' and 'lying' quite freely. You could say that they are the incorrect misconceptions of the main characters - but that doesn't make sense. Cora, mixed-blood herself, is quick to defend and speak up for the natives. Hawkeye certainly appreciates them. Maybe it is more like the gross generalizations made in many action-adventure movies where, for example, Indiana Jones fights off hordes of faceless "evil Arabs". You don't ask those movies to be accurate or understanding of the enemies. Maybe it's unfair to have asked this book to give accurate, well rounded descriptions of the "bad Indians". The problem is that the book became so popular, in lands where this book was their only glimpse of American Indian life, that they created very inaccurate portrayals that took a long time to dismiss.

The book was written very formally. I am generally a fast reader and can zip through books, but this one really makes you slow down and pay attention. If you like to skim books you might find this extremely troublesome. It's not just that it's an "old book" - even people back when it was written found the style difficult. You can say that it should have been written to read more smoothly - but on the other hand, it's not necessarily a bad thing to slow down and pay attention to what you are reading. Think of it as speed bumps which force you to slow down and really admire the landscape around you. I didn't find the prose style difficult at all and quite got into the hang of it.

Really, in the end, you can appreciate this book for being a high adventure novel written in the early 1800s by an American, about Americans, that opened the world's eyes to some of America's beauty. In that sense it achieved its goal quite nicely. For that reason, it's important for modern day people to read it and to understand its place in history, just like we read the Odyssey.

But it's also important to understand this is not a treatise on the actual characters and natures of the native Americans described. While James F. Cooper was familiar with the lands of New York that he describes, he had very little familiarity with the indian tribes. Many of his descriptions are misguided at best, and downright harmful and nasty at worst.

This book has lost none of its flavor. The writing is wonderfully lyrical, and the plot is set at a breathless pace. It may be old, but it still reads as well as ever. It deserves the place history has given it.

The story has all the elements of a good adventure: well rounded characters, a solid plot, action, suspense, and a woman in need of help. Of course, it reflects some of the beliefs and stereotypes that prevailed in that time period, but I think that(to some extent) that is to be expected. It is true, as some other people pointed out, that Cooper can be a little bit long winded some times, but I think that is very typical of literature written before the 20th century. Overall, I think it is a very good story, and if you like adventures and early American literature then you will love this story.

Having read this classic many years ago, I had the opportunity to read it to my children again. It still raised my imagination, leaving the feeling of the deep woods and crafty, dangerous indians lurking about. It is a great adventure, with immortal characters, burdened with their own faults and fates. Cooper was a masterful storyteller if somewhat historically inaccurate, for his readers enjoyment. The noble savage as portrayed here swept the country's imagination for many decades.
George E. Miller, author of The Lone War Cry

Well, I'm glad I finished it, though I can't really say I enjoyed reading this book. I had such high hopes, and perhaps that was the problem. I remember when the movie came out and we watched it with my Grandpa (who is now 94!) he said that he had read the books when he was around 12 and that they were his favorite stories of all time. He was of course very angry that the movie didn't follow the book.

I am now 30 and finally getting around to reading it and for the life of me I cannot imagine a 12 year old both reading and enjoying this book. The story itself is fine, highly romanticized and inaccurate historical accounts of the Delaware and Hurons. And evil Huron kidnaps one of the English General's two daughters while the General, the fiancé of one of the daughters, and three men they come across - Uncas (the last of the Mohicans), his Father Chingachook and the white Scout who is called "Long Rifle" or "Hawkeye." The story consists mainly of this group saving the girls, then the girls getting captured again, then they save them again, and they are re-captured... all the while we are lectured on the surroundings and the trees and the moss, and the leaves... it is very verbose and tedious, and interrupts what should have been the more interesting parts of the book.

The characters are very weak, with almost no definition and the dialogue is atrocious. In all what should have been a very exciting romp through the North American wilderness is hindered by the execution of the story. There is perhaps a lot of background that I missed by not reading the rest of the "Leather Stalking Tales," but after reading this, I am not sure that I would be able to sit through much more of Cooper's style. It was frustrating because I wanted so badly to love this book. Unfortunately I ended up rather ambivalent to it all and will be forced to mark it as simply "Okay." Though I am glad that I read this, I really don't think I would recommend it to anyone other than those like myself who are determined to read through most of the Classics.

J. F. Cooper's classic Last of the Mohicans, is quite a read. This is the second time I have read it, last time was in college. Being older and more mature, I appreciated it more now. I realize, in our instant gratification society, that this eloquent and romantic style of expression may seem to most, verbose. To them I would direct to the movie. Frankly I was transported to another time when one could describe a single scene in several pages and not watch the clock. I enjoyed the expressive style, as well as the story.

This review is about the Barnes and Noble version of "The Last of the Mohicans" by James Fenimore Cooper. I would have given this book five out of five stars but it was very difficult to follow. If you set aside the fact that it is difficult to follow and that the characters speak in stilted English, it is a good book. The thing I remember about "The Last of the Mohicans" was that they made a great movie out of it starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe. I've always thought that since the movie was so good there must be something good about the book. I was warned after I saw the movie when I was a kid that the book was difficult to understand and now that I have read the book I know that this is true.

While the book is difficult to follow, the one thing I did like about it was that it made North America seem like a grand place of adventure.

For its time, Last of the Mohicans is among the best American literary pieces we have, but many contemporary readers will not appreciate it for this value. While the storyline is interesting, it does drag on at points by providing too much detail not vital to the storyline. The historical accuracy is in question, but historians disagree constantly based on their bias. Since I am not a big fan of this time period, I found it difficult to get through but this does not mean it was a poorly written book. It does have value in its representation of Native Americans, their interaction with the Europeans settlers as well as the relations between colonists and the British authorities. This book is a classic as has been said many times before but the 1992 movie adaptation ruined it for many readers.