Romanticism in the Last of the Mohicans

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Romanticism in The Last of the Mohicans
James Fenimore Cooper sets The Last of the Mohicans in 1757 western New York, pitting the Indian and French war that ravaged the city's wild forest frontier. It is the most popular and second novel in Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales series with Natty Bumppo (Hawkeye), a middle-aged man at the peak of his powers as the principal character. The book narrates brutal conflicts about Iroquois and their French allies, revenge, narrow escapes, and vicious captures, elements that are central to the Romanticism movement.
The Last of the Mohicans is classic American literature that conforms to the Romanticism movement's essential elements. It is a thriller that chronicles the dangers of the unseen enemies in the dense American thicket and the unexpected hero's tragedy to highlight romanticism usage and its impact in the novel. The Romanticism movement was an 18th-century concept characterized by nature appreciation, glorification of the past, imagination, beauty, emphasis on emotions, love, and irrationality (Craig). In this novel, romanticism is depicted to oppose the rationalization of nature, the conflicts in the Americas, and the relationships between different ethnic groups and races, particularly between the settlers and the native Americans.
The immediate sign of romanticism usage is nature's portrayal by the author as he sets the story's plot in the frightening New York forests. Illustrations of the fictitious journeys to Fort William Henry and the tribal villages depict the unforgiving terrains that the colonizers have to make peace with while in America. They are met with opposition and hostility from the natives and the unforgiving wilderness as they try to conquer the new lands to become their homes. Cooper achieves this vivid visual depiction by highlighting the North American conflict by describing the terrain as an actual battlefield and the various local nature's attributes to the war (10). The unexplored and terrifying American landscape is critical in the story's narration as it continuously casts the characters in the backdrop of the numerous challenges they face. Nature obscures their movements as they have to be constantly wary of the unseen dangers from unexplored terrains. Additionally, the author describes nature in its most aesthetic form to give the desired visual impression to the readers to conform to romanticism standards.
Another distinctive romanticism usage is the depiction of heroic individualism through the character of Hawkeye. He surprisingly becomes the novel's starring hero since he defends the Americans and guides them to their destiny of freedom. Hawkeye detours from the Indian rhetoric since he self-restrains from murderin...