Posted by Victoria on January 24, 1999 at 18:04:35:
In Reply to: Re: Renegades posted by Victoria on January 24, 1999 at 16:38:21:
At the risk of reaching a bit too far right in the beginning, Hawkeye
was a fictional character based on real people of large proportions,
and Girty was a real person who has been enlarged to almost fictional
proportions. I think he had ascribed to him a more evil persona than
was actually the case. There were other white captives who were
there to give us a somewhat larger idea of Girty’s lack of succor to
Crawford. I am sure I read somewhere that he in fact was unable to
do anything because of protocol, what was earlier termed usage.
Girty was dramatic, emotional, volatile, mean, the dark product of the two
cultures. He was recognizably human in all his flaws, seemingly
possessed with every vice one could account. You get the idea that he
was a man of few words, and when he talked everyone took care to listen,
and not because of his philosophical musings. Hawkeye was squeaky
clean, the Tony Curtis of the frontier, the teflon natural man,
stoic, unemotional, extremely talkative. He didn’t drink, swear or consort
with women of any hue. Zero vices, nada. A construction of Cooper’s
imagination. (Kinda gets on my nerves)
Both together represent mirror images of the American Myth.
?,
Victoria