ENGL428A – Assignment #3 – Angry Jewish Indian

I’m going to go right out and say it: Cooper likes epigraphs – and they often seem out of context. He takes them out of their sources and places them in front of chapters in a mix that doesn’t always make sense. Sometimes you can draw conclusions, sometimes you can’t. Let’s see if we can, shall we?

“—’Cursed be my tribe, / If I forgive him.” (The Merchant of Venice, I.iii.51-2) —> Epigraph to Chapter XI

Now. If we look solely at the ‘tribe’ word, we can see how easily Cooper works to apply his epigraphs without context. ‘Tribe’ in The Last of the Mohicans has obvious connotations; it brings about images of Indian nations such as the Mohawks, Oneidas, and Huron. However, in the context of Shakespeare’s Merchant, it is referring to Shylock’s religion and its ‘exiled’ community in Venice.

So, what the hell is the connection between the two? Or does Cooper just have an unnatural hard-on for epigraphs? Well, as much as I’d love to argue the latter (he does – he uses epigraphs in every damn book he ever wrote), let’s look at the former.

To quickly recollect the events of Chapter XI: Everyone but awesome Hawkeye is captured, ra-ra-ra Heyward whines about letting people go – “Please Magua, please” something or other, Magua says no no no, that’s my porridge – “I’m going to marry the boss’s daughter as revenge for him beating me because I came to work drunk” (lots of logic here, Magua… or should I say, Ma-sucks-a-lot?). Anger anger anger testosterone, someone gets shot by awesome Hawkeye coming to the rescue. End scene.

I wish I could write about how cool Hawkeye would look with a cape, or how much Cooper failed in calling him Natty Bumppo (because it makes him sound like a wiener).

Meanwhile, the line from Merchant comes from Shylock’s rant on his hatred of Antonio; – oh, what is this? Could it be? A connection? It must be!  – Shylock wants revenge on Antonio for decreasing the amount of money Jews are making on their business of lending money, as Antonio often will lend money for free (the only jobs Jews were allowed to hold in Venice, were as usurers – money-lenders). Oh, and Antonio also spit on him.

Essentially, Cooper has not entirely pulled his quote out of context. He prepares the reader for the chapter by acknowledging that Magua’s desire for revenge is equivalent to Shylock’s. It’s important to note that the sympathetic reading of Merchant did not start until the great actor Edmund Kean put his stamp on it (he first acted it in 1813 in London, and I doubt it caught on enough that Cooper would’ve been affected by it in America by 1826). If you’re reading this, you might be all like “wtf?”, because you don’t like Shakespeare, or you forgot this is a fourth year course (oooo low blow, sorry. I’m not that pretentious, I swear!), so let me clear that up: The Merchant of Venice is a comedy. In the early 19th Century, Shylock is a clown of a villain.

What does this mean? This means that Magua, the evil sonofabitch he is, is pretty identical to Shylock.

Shylock, separated by race and religion from the White Christian majority, has been wronged by Antonio. He now has Antonio at his bidding when he comes to borrow money for his good friend Bassanio, and so he tells us how he will get revenge on Antonio if given the chance. Magua also plans to get his revenge, by marrying Cora.

• Both plan revenge.
• Neither of their plans work out.
• Both are separated from the White Christian majority and seen as lesser beings as a result of their race.
• Magua loses his wife, Shylock his daughter.
• Both are lonely and angry at rich white men.
• Both of their hatreds lead to their downfall.
• Maybe Cora is equal to a pound of flesh – I don’t know. That might be drawing similarities in the wrong places.

So, to wrap that up there – Cooper is saying that Magua is Shylock.

Now, while that may seem like a crazy thing to say – and I admit, it would be a hard essay to write. However, Cooper uses epigraphs referencing Merchant in three other places. Two of those are not referring to Magua, but the third? The third is chapter XXX, which is most certainly referring to Magua’s desire for revenge and how the chapter leaves it up in the air whether he’s going to get it or not.

I would like to take this moment to point out that my favourite part of this blog post was researching at 4:00am whether or not ‘hard-on’ had a dash in it, because WordPress told me it was spelled wrong.