| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| susquesus |
Posted - October 04 2003 : 01:05:18 AM
I just thought I'd open a topic that would allow anyone reading the novel to point out differences from the film version. If it goes well we could end up with a nice comparison, or it could be completely boring and no one will touch it. At any rate, let's see what happens. |
| 14 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| MoneminsCastle |
Posted - June 04 2009 : 09:29:07 AM
IMO, Balderston took it away from Cooper's central theme and turned it into an American love story. It wasn't really supposed to be a love story. In Cooper's story, Duncan was driven by his love for Alice, and Munro was driven for his love of his daughters, the story was about the loss of the heritical kings of the Lenape. For Cooper, the tradegy wasn't so much as loosing Cora so much as it was loosing Uncas. In the movie Uncas and Chingachgook weren't portrayed as Lenape royality as they were in the book.
Take for instance when Cooper wrote the scene were an northern Algonkin tribe has Uncas captive. They treat him with scorn and disrespect until they tear the shirt from his back and see a tortoise tattood on his chest. The tortoise being the totem of the Delawares, who were considered the grandfather tribe. At that point they realize that Uncas is a Delaware price. That is the very esscense of the book --- when Uncas dies, the bloodline of the tortise is broken. It was he who was "the last of the Mohicans".
Chapter XXX - Page 432, line 5 on. . .
Throughout the whole of these trying moments, Uncas had alone preserved his serenity. He looked on the preparations with a steady eye, and when the tormenters came to seize him, he met them with a firm and upright attitude. One among them, if possible, more fierce and savage than his fellows, seized the hunting-shirt of the young warrior, and at a single effort tore it from his body.
Then, with a yell of frantic pleasure, he leaped towards his unresisting victim and prepared to lead him to the stake. But, at that moment, when he appeared most a stranger to the feelings of humanity, the purpose of the savage was arrested as suddenly as if a supernatural agency had interposed in the behalf of Uncas. The eyeballs of the Delaware seemed to start from their sockets; his mouth opened, and his whole form became frozen in an attitude of amazement. Raising his hand with a slow and regulated motion, he pointed with a finger to the bosom of the captive. His companions crowded about him in wonder, and every eye was, like his own, fastened intently on the figure of a small tortoise, beautifully tattooed on the breast of the prisoner in a bright blue tint. For a single instant Uncas enjoyed his triumph, smiling calmly on the scene. Then motioning the crowd away with a high and haughty sweep of his arm, he advanced in front of the nation with the air of a king, and spoke in a voice louder than the murmur of admiration that ran through the multitude. " Men of the Lenni Lenape !" he said, " my race upholds the earth ! Your feeble tribe stands on my shell ! What fire that a Delaware can light would burn the child of my fathers ? " he added, pointing proudly to the simple blazonry on his skin ; " the blood that came from such a stock would smother your flames ! My race is the grandfather of nations ! "
" Who art thou ? " demanded Tamenund, rising at the startling tones he heard, more than at any meaning conveyed by the language of the prisoner. " Uncas, the son of Chingachgook," answered the captive modestly, turning from the nation and bending his head in reverence to the other's character and years; " a son of the great Unarms."
"The hour of Tamenund is nigh ! " exclaimed the sage ; " the day is come, at last, to the night ! I thank the Man- itou that one is here to fill my place at the council fire. Uncas, the child of Uncas, is found ! Let the eyes of a dying eagle gaze on the rising sun."
The youth stepped lightly, but proudly, on the platform, where he became visible to the whole agitated and wondering multitude. Tamenund held him long at the length of his arm, and read every turn in the fine lineaments of his countenance, with the untiring gaze of one who recalled days of happiness.
" Is Tamenund a boy ?" at length the bewildered prophet exclaimed. " Have I dreamt of so many snows that my people were scattered like floating sands of Yengeese, more plenty than the leaves on the trees ! The arrow of Tamenund would not frighten the fawn ; his arm is withered like the branch of a dead oak; the snail would be swifter in the race ; yet is Uncas before him as they went to battle against the palefaces ! Uncas, the panther of his tribe, the eldest son of the Lenape, the wisest sagamore of the Mohicans ! Tell me, ye Delawares, hasTamenund been a sleeper for a hundred winters ? "
The calm and deep silence which succeeded these words sufficiently announced the awful reverence with which his people received the communication of the patriarch. None dared to answer, though all listened in breathless expectation of what might follow. Uncas, however, looking in his face with the fondness and veneration of a favored child, presumed on his own high and acknowledged rank to reply.
" Four warriors of his race have lived and died," he said, " since the friend of Tamenund led his people in battle. The blood of the turtle has been in many chiefs, but all have gone back into the earth from whence they came except Chingachgook and his son."
" It is true it is true," returned the sage a flash of recollection destroying all his pleasing fancies and restoring him at once to a consciousness of the true history of his nation. " Our wise men have often said that two warriors of the unchanged race were in the hills of the Yengeese ; why have their seats at the council fires of the Delawares been so long empty ? "
At these words the young man raised his head, which he had still kept bowed a little in reverence ; and lifting his voice so as to be heard by the multitude, as if to explain at once and forever the policy of his family, he said aloud, " Once we slept where we could hear the salt lake speak in its anger.
Then we were rulers and sagamores over the land. But when a paleface was seen on every brook, we followed the deer back to the river of our nation. The Delawares were gone. Few warriors of them all stayed to drink of the stream they loved. Then said my fathers, ' Here will we hunt. The waters of the river go into the salt lake. If we go towards the setting sun, we shall find streams that run into the great lakes of sweet water; there would a Mohican die, like fishes of the sea in the clear springs. When the Manitou is ready, and shall say," Come," we will follow the river to the sea, and take our own again.' Such, Delawares, is the belief of the children of the Turtle. Our eyes are on the rising, and not towards the setting sun. We know whence he comes, but we know not whither he goes. It is enough." |
| Jo |
Posted - June 04 2009 : 02:31:35 AM
NO, NO,Kay, but yet another
hysterical part of the book not/different from the movie is the "dancing bear" part....I read this book after I saw the movie, way back in the stone age of 1999? So I can't, because I threw the book against the wall before I finished it, so can't actually relate here who was in the bear costume, but it had to do with, I think, freeing someone? The book was SO different. And I wish I could admire Mr. Cooper's writing style...
However, a good topic. On the "old boards", there were several real stanch Cooper supporters, so it was quite fun to poke at the book vs the movie. But that is in the archives.
Jo |
| Kay |
Posted - May 18 2009 : 10:55:17 AM
quote:
Originally posted by susquesus
There is an additional main character, David, a singing master, played a flute, provided comic relief.
The ambush scene as they are evacuating the fort(I'm talking in the book) is, I think, actually pretty hysterical in some parts. At one point I laughed out loud and my sister wanted to know what could possibly be funny. I could just picture the part in my head where Magua made off with Alice, Cora is chasing them, and David is chasing her babbling at the top of his lungs. It sounded like something out of a cartoon or comedy. The part about Hawkeye as a bear was hilarious too- could you just see him groveling about on all fours making noises and no one- not even the indians supposedly in tune with their surroundings and their nature could tell he wasn't a real bear? Come on!
Kay |
| MoneminsCastle |
Posted - May 18 2009 : 09:35:23 AM
Cora never locks lips with Hawkeye.
Munro and Duncan don't die.
Duncan loves Alice, not Cora.
Alice doesn't die and is rescued.
Magua is called "The Sly Fox" and has the hots for Cora. |
| Dillon1836 |
Posted - March 23 2005 : 2:33:57 PM
Wow, I see the differences already. Thanks for pointing it out susquesus. |
| susquesus |
Posted - December 16 2003 : 6:12:53 PM
In the novel Hawkeye is a scout/ranger for the Royal Americans. He is proud of his military service and speaks of it often. |
| susquesus |
Posted - October 04 2003 : 11:07:17 PM
Or when Hawkeye dresses like a bear and wanders through the Huron village unmolested.
And Mr. MacDougall- one of the most exciting points in "The Prairie" is when Natty discovers that he has fallen in with the progeny of his old friend. The conversation, (over a meal of Buffalo hump?) brings old Natty to life again, he regains the old wit bares the toothless grin and laughs in that silent way he has. |
| Kurt |
Posted - October 04 2003 : 10:58:33 PM
I liked the scene in the book where Mauga pauses at the beaver pond and is bragging how much he is doing for his totem the beaver and how the beaver should assist him in his search for the fugatives and it turns out to be Chingachgook in a mask of fur. |
| hmacdougall |
Posted - October 04 2003 : 9:21:17 PM
quote:
Originally posted by susquesus
And regarding Duncan- he survives the novel. No heroic sacrifice in the flames of a Huron fire.
He sort of has to -- his grandson, Duncan Uncas Middleton -- is the hero of Cooper's next novel, "The Prairie" (1827). |
| susquesus |
Posted - October 04 2003 : 8:25:46 PM
And regarding Duncan- he survives the novel. No heroic sacrifice in the flames of a Huron fire. |
| hmacdougall |
Posted - October 04 2003 : 10:41:03 AM
quote:
Originally posted by susquesus
In the novel Cora is half black.
Not quite -- Cora's father, Major Munro, says that her West Indian mother was "descended, remotely, from that unfortunate class, who are so basely enslaved to administer to the wants of a luxurious people." (Chapter 16). Her partially African ancestry is not obvious to casual acquaintances. Nevertheless, she is acutely conscious of it herself, as a whole series of remarks, as well as her final conversation with Chief Tamenund, make clear. And Duncan Heyward the American hero (in the novel, of course, he is not English), when he learns of this from Col. Munro, is acutely conscious of his own ingrained racial prejudice, learned from childhood as a Virginian.
The ignoring of this racial aspect of "Mohicans" in every movie version of it, and in all but one of the comic book versions of it, seriously dilutes the serious discussion of America's three-way race dilemma (White, Black, Indian) with which Cooper is so deeply concerned in this and other novels.
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| susquesus |
Posted - October 04 2003 : 01:13:32 AM
Hawkeye and Chingachgook were like brothers to each other, they raised and taught Uncas together after Chingachgook's wife passed. |
| susquesus |
Posted - October 04 2003 : 01:10:04 AM
There is an additional main character, David, a singing master, played a flute, provided comic relief. |
| susquesus |
Posted - October 04 2003 : 01:07:39 AM
In the novel Cora is half black.
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