Deerslayer and his Enormous Gun

Keeping in mind the American mindset in the early 19^th century, speculate about why people living in the new republic would have found the Leatherstocking character so appealing.  In answering this, you might recall Thoreau’s points about looking/walking West.  To the east, he said, is tradition, art, religion, Europe; to the West is nature, the future, the unknown, the new America.  Recall, too, that America was said to have something of an inferiority complex, especially when it came to art and literature. Given the cultural psychology of America in the 19^th century, why was Deerslayer such an enormously popular figure?  Speculate! 

Marauder Party

Here’s the topic of your first LATAW blog entry:

Note a specific moment, line, or scene – large or small – that was particularly memorable (for you).  In your entry explain why the moment carried so much weight for you.

I’ll start.

My first inclination would be to center my entry on something from late in the book – the prison fight, the last moments with Alejandra, returning for the horses, talking to the judge.  I love when battle scarred John Grady Cole walks into the jail and says to the corrupt captain, “I come for my horses” (without the quotation marks, of course).  All these moments had resonance and power for me.  But so as not to steal anyone’s thunder, I’m going to go back to the first third of the book and talk about the moment that they crossed the Rio Grande into Mexico, when they were “lined out behind one another and making for the alien shore like a party of marauders.”  While I was reading this section, I was following their route on my iPad with Google Earth, and based on the various place names given, it wasn’t too difficult to pinpoint the general area of their crossing – which was pretty cool.  The reason it was so memorable for me, though, was because it was easy to imagine the symbolic importance of the crossing.   Here are two guys – three if we count Blevins – who are riding backwards in time, searching for a life that is more authentic, more exciting, more passionate.  Crossing the Rio Grande would have been the portal into that lost and perhaps romanticized world for which they were searching.  I love how, once they reach the Mexico side, they gallop along the beach “fanning with their hats and laughing and pulling up and patting the horses on the shoulder.”   They’re like unrepentant prisoners emerging from a dungeon into a world about which they know nothing but have dreamed about in their dark souls. (That last line was my attempt at a Cormac McCarthy imitation J) .  It keys into some of the discussions we’ve had about the perfectly chalked frontier line in 19^th century America.  On one side is the social world, filled with complicated relationships (mother, father, girlfriend) and the obligatory sense of responsibility that goes along with living in society – and on the other is simplicity, freedom, and rugged individualism.  It didn’t turn out that way exactly, but I imagine that’s how they would have felt as they waded naked across the river.