Matt Lynch
11-11-98
Per.4
English

A Reflection on the First Half of:
The Deerslayer

In the novel The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper, the author uses a historical setting to further enhance the relationships and development of its main character Natty Bumppo. The Deerslayer is chronologically the first book in a series of seven that follow Natty from his adolescence to his death. The book is set in early 1740’s in and around the then colony of New York. Natty Bumppo is a young white man who has been raised as a member of the Delaware tribe of Indians.When we meet him in this book he is roughly twenty and seems oddly wise and mature for his age. This knowledgeability is just one of the many traits that Cooper will develop over the course of this novel and the other six that follow.
The book begins with a two page narrative by Cooper that thoroughly explains the area in which the book takes place. He also explains that the events take place between the years of 1740 and 1745. This attention to setting proves that one of his main focuses of this book will be the setting in which the accounts take place. This is proven even more so when in the following pages he devotes an entire half page paragraph to describing the environment in which Natty and his friend Hurry are currently in. This environment happens to be a deep wood where Bumppo and his friend have been searching just for daylight. This would be hard for the modern reader to grasp. A wood so thick that one cannot see daylight? It seems impossible. But the reader has been prepared by Cooper’s previous description of the continent at this period in history. Cooper then begins to describe Natty himself. He is described as about six feet with a skinny frame and a muscular body. What is even more interesting about Natty is how Cooper his face and by doing so describes his character. He says that his face has a, “guileless truth, sustained by an earnestness of purpose and a sincerity of feeling that rendered it remarkable”.
Cooper’s description of Natty’s face is remarkably similar to his previous descriptions of the setting thus far. This seems to be done purposely to draw a comparison between the innocence and youthfulness of Natty to the pureness of the environment in which he lives. This is backed up when we learn that Natty or Deerslayer as he is called by Henry “Hurry Harry” March has never killed an enemy or even been in battle. This sets up an odd almost dramatically ironic moment, because the reader knows how the continent will soon be robbed of its beautiful forests and how it will soon be the site of bloody conflict, does that necessarily mean that Natty will soon be robbed of his purity and innocence? Perhaps Cooper wanted the reader to think this as he or she begins to get into the real details of the book because in the events that will follow, Natty will be tested by the physical pain of torture,the love of woman, and the horrors of tribal warfare in which he will be forced to kill his first adversary.