Beginning of Essay
James Fenimore Cooper was born on September 15, 1789 in Burlington, New Jersey. He was the son of William and Elizabeth (Fenimore) Cooper, the twelfth of thirteen children (Long, p. 9). Cooper is known as one of the first great American novelists, in many ways ....

Middle of Essay
.... the book is in the passage in which the two hunters find each other. "The calls were in different tones, evidently proceeding from two men who had lost their way, and were searching in different directions for their path" (Cooper, p. 5). Bewley states that this meeting is symbolic of losing one's way morally, and then attempting to find it again through different paths. Says Bewley, "when the two men emerge from the forest into the little clearing we are face to face with... two opposing moral visions of life which are embodied in these two woodsmen" (cited in Long, p. 121). Critic Donald Davie, however, disagrees. His contention is that the pl ....