Last Of The Mohican Character Analysis

In his novel, Last of the Mohican’s, James Fenimore Cooper illustrates a broad scope of human behaviors and types through a cast of characters ranging from the savage Huron warrior Magua to the fiery and courageous half-sister Cora Munro and her fair and meek sister Alice the passionate and noble Uncas, his wise father Chingachgook and their adopted ally and family member Hawkeye. The relationships between these characters are rich and in many ways as similar as their fates are intertwined.

The Last of the Mohican’s is set during the French and Indian war between France and England for control of North America. The English Colonel Munro commands the doomed Fort William Henry in New York State. He calls upon a trusted officer, Major Duncan Heyward, to bring his daughters Cora and Alice from at Fort Edward Heyward’s expedition where upon they were betrayed by
The Munro sisters, Cora and Alice, are as different as their mothers. Cora has her mother’s West Indian fire, her father’s courage, and the independence and strength of having grown up bridging two worlds, English and west-Indian,, old world and new. She is passionate like Uncas; and like him she also loves and respects her father both as a man and as a soldier. Her clever manipulation of Magua and her concern for everyone in her captured party, shows her father’s influence. Just as Hawkeye is more like Chingachgook than is Uncas, Cora is far more like her father than Alice, who is an outlier in the new world, frail and nervous, as unlike her father as Uncas, with his ranging and impetuous warrior nature, is unlike his. Yet Alice also grows up influenced by her father and so she soldier’s on despite her fears. Chingachgook and Colonel Munro both suffer the loss of a beloved child. Munro is left with Alice and Chingachgook with Hawkeye. All are forever bonded by war and