The Last of the Mohicans: Metaphors 5 key examples

Duncan is right that the party is not safe while Magua is "at large," but Hawkeye's metaphor makes clear that it is a moot point. Telling a cloud to chase the wind would be impossible because it is the wind that propels clouds. Likewise, it would be impossible for the party to chase Magua, even if they know he is nearby. Magua's actions will determine what the band of travelers does for the rest of the novel. Magua is the wind, and the travelers are a cloud.

Hawkeye could just as easily have told Duncan more straightforwardly that Magua is practiced at moving stealthily through the woods, and that a large party is unlikely to catch up with him. His use of a metaphor echoes the way the Mohicans speak, through a great deal of figurative language. Cooper has already established that metaphors are the building blocks of their language, and that he has attempted to preserve this style in his "translation" of their dialect. Hawkeye's liberal use of metaphors signifies that despite his whiteness, he is a product of Mohican culture.

By comparing white people to "prattling women" in this context, Magua means that they talk too much, to the point of obscuring what they really mean. They should not have so many words to describe the same thing. Part of what Magua is noticing is that the white colonists have multiple languages, English and French, and sometimes direct translation is difficult. There was also linguistic diversity among American Indian groups in this region, but Cooper tends to gloss over it. Sexist as it may be, the association between women and wordy, manipulative speech would have been familiar to Cooper's readers. This association was in fact a much bigger part of European cultures than American Indian cultures: many white readers would have been somewhat compelled by Magua's critique of white people's wordiness because they associated this quality with femininity, and femininity with dishonor.

By contrast, Magua claims that an American Indian "will make the sound of his voice speak for him." Throughout the novel, American Indians are associated with sound. The sounds they make may not always have linguistic meaning, but they are nonetheless clear and direct. For instance, Chingachgook regularly exclaims "Hugh!" rather than describing his feelings in a more roundabout way. The band of travelers also regularly listens for shrieking, which denotes the near presence of an enemy. At the end of the novel, the Lenape people use music to plainly convey their profound grief at Uncas and Cora's funeral. White people regularly use language and doublespeak to mislead one another. For instance, Duncan uses his knowledge of French to convince a French soldier that he has captured Cora and Alice and is taking them back to Montcalm. Even if American Indians are screaming as they attack the heroes of the novel, they are usually clear about their intentions.

Magua is being somewhat hypocritical. He has been just as treacherous as any of the white characters, passing himself off as an ally when really he was working against them. But in general, he is right that there is a pattern in the novel by which white characters use far more words to express themselves than American Indian people. Cooper is tapping into a cultural association between American Indian people and sound, an association that stems from white colonists' tendency to exoticize cultural practices they did not understand.

Munro tells Duncan that he is about to "open to [him] the wounds of a seared heart." He is not opening any physical wounds, but the metaphor makes clear to Duncan and the reader that Munro is about to reveal some intense emotional baggage. As he goes on to tell Duncan, he once fell in love with an Englishwoman named Alice Graham, but he gave up the chance to marry her because the marriage would not have been financially or socially advantageous for her. Instead, he went to the West Indies and married a woman descended from enslaved people. Cora is the child of his first marriage. After that wife died, he returned to England and found Alice Graham still unmarried. He married her and had a daughter, also named Alice, before losing this wife as well. Alice Munro is the image of her mother and the only reminder Munro has of the love of his life.

Munro's intense attachment to his daughter Alice does not seem all that healthy by modern standards, but it explains why he is taken aback by Duncan's announcement that he wants to marry her, not Cora. It is important to note the context in which this vulnerable flashback comes up. Munro only opens up his emotional "wounds" as a practical matter, when they are relevant to the business of marrying off his daughters. In the context of the novel and colonial culture, this display of emotion would not be appropriate for one man to offer another out of the blue. Discussing the women as daughters and potential wives gives Munro and Duncan the opportunity to share their feelings and biographical details, and to grow as characters.

Hawkeye's epithet of "a man without a cross" has typically referred to his lack of Christian religion, but here it is a metaphor for his whiteness. "There is no cross in my veins," he claims, meaning that he does not have American Indian blood. This is what truly makes Hawkeye a unique case study, according to the novel. He is racially white, but he has been brought up among American Indians and has adopted their customs. For the most part, he is evidence that nurture, not nature, is responsible for the things people believe and the way they behave. Cooper sometimes has a reputation as a progressive writer because he did not believe that racial categories determined everything.

And yet Hawkeye's vow for revenge betrays that even Cooper believes in some characteristics that are inherent to different racial groups. Hawkeye claims that "revenge is an Indian feeling." He suggests that it is out of character and even counter to his biology for him to desire revenge. Hawkeye seems to think that because he only has white blood in his veins, he is an inherently forgiving person. Many modern readers may be thrown by the idea that Hawkeye's race has anything to do with his capacity for vengeance. In the context of the novel, though, his desire for revenge in spite of his whiteness underlines the severity of the moral injury the massacre has wrought on him.

Chingachgook compares himself to a single burned tree in a clearing occupied by white people. He goes on to say that he is entirely alone now that his only descendant and living relative has died. Hawkeye refutes the claim, assuring Chingachgook that he stands with him. But if we take Cooper's word for it that Uncas was the last of the Mohicans, Chingachgook really is the only one of his people left. Cooper leaves the reader with the melancholy sense that Chingachgook and Hawkeye's metaphorical brotherhood will have to be enough to replace the biological family Chingachgook managed to hang onto until now. The Mohicans will live on in spirit, the novel suggests, but they are dying out in fact. The novel sidesteps the responsibility white colonists bear for the Mohicans' demise. Chingachgook compares himself to a burned tree, as though a natural wildfire has burned through the forest and left him alone standing. Hawkeye stands beside him in solidarity, and the white people in the clearing look around as though they have no idea what happened.

The idea that entire nations of American Indians are dying out or have died out has prevailed for much of American history. Cooper has a lot to do with the enduring nature of this myth. Genocide has had a devastating effect on American Indian nations, but to say that they have died out renders invisible the many American Indian people still living. This invisibility is not only emotionally painful, but it also makes it extraordinarily difficult for American Indians to access legal rights and remedies. Chingachgook's metaphor turns violence against American Indian peoples into a tragedy without a clear perpetrator or recourse.