The Last of the Mohicans: Similes 6 key examples

Alice, Uncas, and the rest of the party are in a cavern in the wilderness, but Alice looks at Uncas as though she is in an art museum or amidst the ruins of an ancient Greek civilization. The idea that Uncas looks to Alice like an ancient Greek statue come to life has two main effects in the book. First, it suggests that Alice appreciates Uncas's beauty. Alice is a young white woman who has grown up in a society that reveres classical art. She is not quite as cultured as her sister (for instance, she does not seem to know French), but she is nonetheless a representative of white society's artistic taste. Cooper uses Alice's appreciation of Uncas's beauty to suggest to white readers that they, too, should appreciate the beauty of American Indian people and culture.

At the same time, the simile also dehumanizes Uncas and turns him into a relic of an ancient civilization. Alice looks at him like she would look at a statue come to life, as though it is strange to see this "last of the Mohicans" living and breathing. Alice's default view of Uncas's people seems to be that they are all long gone and that Uncas is defying nature by coming back to life.

Cooper often repeats the comparison between American Indians and stone or statues. For example, later in Chapter 6, he writes that Uncas and Chingachgook "seemed to turn [...] into stone" while listening to David Gamut's song:

The Indians riveted their eyes on the rocks, and listened with an attention that seemed to turn them into stone.

Cite this Quote

The American Indians' tendency to seem like rocks or statues is connected to Cooper's notion that Uncas is "the last of the Mohicans." In this novel and many other works published by 19th-century white writers, American Indians are figured as an all-but-extinct race. This inaccurate narrative about American Indians helped white writers and readers grapple with the discomfort of colonial politics. In fact, the United States government was actively perpetrating violent campaigns against American Indians throughout the 19th century and beyond in order to claim more land. By figuring Chingachgook, Uncas, and other American Indian characters as ancient statues or petrified pieces of the landscape, Cooper associates them with ancient civilizations that have long since died out. He thus suggests that their genocide is a depressing but foregone conclusion that modern readers should mourn rather than mobilize against.

By comparing Hawkeye to a deer, Cooper suggests that he is highly adapted to the wilderness. He knows his way around and is as adept at evading "predators" as he is at stalking prey with his rifle, "Kildeer." But whereas Cooper leans on this simile to help the reader imagine Hawkeye's graceful movement, he describes Duncan as simply "active." Duncan, who did not grow up in the wilderness, does not have the animal-like adaptations of Hawkeye.

Throughout the novel, although animal comparisons are frequent, they mostly describe American Indian people. For instance, Chingachgook's name refers to a serpent because he is, once again, very good at navigating the forest with stealth. Magua is "Le Renard Subtil," or the sly fox. Hawkeye is the only white character Cooper regularly describes in terms of his animal traits, and that is because he has lived his life alongside American Indians. White people in the 19th century (and also today in some cases) often discussed American Indian people as though they were part of the natural world rather than part of "civilization." Many American Indians did have more generational knowledge about the natural world than white colonists did, and the natural world occupies a place of particular significance in many American Indian worldviews. But the association between American Indian people and animals has often been used to dehumanize them and to suggest that they are part of a wilderness that must be cleared to make way for modern civilization. Cooper's novel about the "extinction" of the Mohicans plays into this idea, however mournfully.

The waterfall sounds to him like a "melody." He draws on the sense of taste to describe the sound as "sweet," suggesting that the waterfall is so pleasing to the ear that it spills over into other senses. It is disorienting to him to encounter this pleasurable sound when he has lately been listening to the Mohawks' "shrieks and cries" as they pursue the travelers. He uses a simile to compare the sound of all this shrieking to the sound of "the departed spirits of the damned." His ear has been trained to hear the hell-like sound of the Mohawks' battle cries, so it throws him off when instead he encounters the heaven-like sound of the waterfall. Duncan goes on to confirm, impatiently, that the Mohawks have fallen silent for a time. David often seems like a foolish character, but here he demonstrates that of everyone, he is perhaps most in tune with what the sounds of the forest mean. His disorientation at the sudden sound of peace helps emphasize that in the forest, discordant as it might be, danger and peace lie right around the corner from one another.

Hawkeye compares the scalp to "the leaf [page] of a book, and each hair a letter." One of the racist arguments against Indigenous rights in the United States and around the world was that their illiteracy meant that they lacked intelligence. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the emerging field of anthropology claimed that reading and writing (technologies that were much more common in Europe than in many other societies around the world) signified a more evolved species of human. Hawkeye's simile allows him to reframe the practice of "reading" a scalp as a form of literacy. Using logos, or a persuasive appeal to logic, he suggests that, in fact, American Indians are better readers than "Christian whites" in certain contexts.

Hawkeye's argument still depends on the Euro-centric assumption that literacy is a sign of evolved intelligence. Furthermore, Cooper does not necessarily provide an accurate view of the complex cultural customs surrounding the removal of scalps and other body parts from enemies' bodies. Still, Cooper seems to be speaking through Hawkeye to implore white readers not to dismiss American Indians' intelligence and humanity outright.

The moss-covered piles of dead wood remind Hawkeye of "the memorials of a former and long-departed generation." The trees all seem to be bound for the same fate: every one of them will eventually shed its leaves for the last time, losing their "principle of life." They will "groan and totter" until their dead trunks can no longer support their own weight. Then, they will fall to the ground and decay into the earth, just like the dead bodies of a generation of people that has passed out of existence.

By likening the piles of dead wood to a human graveyard, Cooper foreshadows the funeral and burial that will take place in the final chapter. Cora and Uncas both die in battle and are buried near each other in Lenape fashion, as if they are married. Cooper describes Uncas's burial as especially significant because he is the "last of the Mohicans." Although Chingachgook still lives, his only son has died without producing an heir. The Mohicans thus become "a former and [...] departed generation." The fact that Cora is buried alongside Uncas instead of in an English settlement adds additional significance to this "departure." Uncas and Cora are never married when they are alive, and they never have children. Had they done so, not only would they have carried on the Mohican line, but they also would have given birth to a new, multi-ethnic generation with American Indian, English, and Creole ancestry. Unlike Hawkeye, who is a white "man without a cross" (referring to religion but also race), Cora and Uncas's descendants would have been people with a cross. With these would-be ancestors, the dream of a multi-ethnic American people dies. Their joint graves, near each other and yet not shared, become the memorial of a future than never came to be. Cooper depicts their burial as the moment when racial stratification becomes a permanent part of American life.

It is important to note that this melancholy ending is highly romanticized. By imagining that not only the Mohicans but also a multi-ethnic American people are dead and buried, Cooper invites readers to mourn a more just world. But he also closes the door to that more just world, leaving readers with the sense that white people are destined to rule the continent with a guilty conscience.

Cooper admits that the song is less favorable toward Alice than her dead sister, but it seems that the Lenape nonetheless feel obliged to show extreme reverence for Alice's "rare charms." They compare her hair to "the exuberant tendrils of the vine," her eyes to "the blue vault of the heavens," and her blushing cheeks to a spotless cloud glowing with the reflection of the sun. In fact, they "admit" her to be more beautiful than this glowing cloud. These similes are hyperbolic. For a people who consider nature divine, it would be next to impossible for a single human to exceed nature's beauty. If Alice is this perfect in their eyes, there is hardly room for them to show even more reverence to Cora.

The hyperbolic similes allow Cooper to call attention to Alice's pure whiteness. Her blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and soft ringlets are all markers of her whiteness. Throughout the novel, she is figured as an angelic and innocent white woman, as opposed to the more worldly Cora. Cooper heavily hints that Cora's Creole ancestry makes her an imperfect daughter who is outspoken, unpredictable, and more corrupt than Alice. Alice is Munro's ideal daughter, whom he waited many years to have; he loves Cora, but she was the consolation prize he got in the meantime, when Alice's grandfather would not allow his daughter to marry Munro. The Lenape recognize Alice as a living symbol of whiteness and purity who has outlasted both Uncas (the "last of the Mohicans") and Cora (a symbol of hybrid identity).