What Mark Twain Said
When discussing imagery in The Deerslayer, it verges on the impossible to avoid bringing Mark Twain’s notorious critique of Cooper’s writing abilities into the mix. One of Twain’s central arguments is that a good writer knows well enough that when a character speaks in a crude fashion routinely, it is going to stand out like a sore thumb when that character suddenly is revealed to be in possession of a fine-tuned elevated English. What Twain seems to conveniently overlook, however, is that whether Bumppo is speaking a kind of difficult-to-translate dialect or like a Romantic poet-peer of Shelley and Byron, he retains a mastery of imagery:
“She's in the forest, Judith—hanging from the boughs of the trees, in a soft rain—in the dew on the open grass—the clouds that float about in the blue heavens—the birds that sing in the woods—the sweet springs where I slake my thirst—and in all the other glorious gifts that come from God's Providence!”
and
"If I was Injin born, now, I might tell of this, or carry in the scalp and boast of the expl'ite afore the whole tribe; of if my inimy had only been a bear"
What Balzac Said
The great French writer Honore de Balzac viewed Cooper’s literary talents in quite a different light than Twain. Of The Pathfinder, Balzac wrote that no writing had ever so closely approximated the effect of painting in bringing a scene to life. Perhaps inspired by this compliment, Cooper actually calls upon an allusion to one of the greatest of all painters at bringing realism to life on canvas in imagery describing the unspoiled beauty of the American wilderness:
“So rich and fleecy were the outlines of the forest, that scarce an opening could be seen, the whole visible earth, from the rounded mountain-top to the water's edge, presenting one unvaried hue of unbroken verdure…the trees overhung the lake itself, shooting out towards the light; and there were miles along its eastern shore, where a boat might have pulled beneath the branches of dark Rembrandt-looking hemlocks, `quivering aspens,’ and melancholy pines. In a word, the hand of man had never yet defaced or deformed any part of this native scene, which lay bathed in the sunlight, a glorious picture of affluent forest grandeur, softened by the balminess of June, and relieved by the beautiful variety afforded by the presence of so broad an expanse of water.”
What Martin Luther King Said
Publication of The Deerslayer preceded Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a Dream” speech by almost a century-and-a-quarter. And yet, Natty Bumppo—the deerslayer himself—seems to engage in imagery when conversing on the subject of racial differentiation and treatment of others based upon prejudicial biases that foresees King’s imagery in an almost eerily similar fashion:
“God made us all, white, black, and red; and, no doubt, had his own wise intentions in coloring us differently. Still, he made us, in the main, much the same in feelin's; though I'll not deny that he gave each race its gifts…I look upon the redmen to be quite as human as we are ourselves, Hurry. They have their gifts, and their religion, it's true; but that makes no difference in the end, when each will be judged according to his deeds, and not according to his skin.”
What White Supremacists Still Say
On the other hand there is Hurry Harry. One cannot even begin to question the argument that Hurry Harry’s views on the subject of race relations was the norm of the time whereas Bumppo is clearly the outlier here. What makes the imagery which Harry engages in an attempt to make his point so demoralizing for modern readers is that the very same nonsense has routinely been spouted as justification for racism over the course of the century since publication. Even sadder: the argument remains fundamentally unchanged (just exchange “red” for, say, “Muslim”) as the centerpiece of 21st century white supremacist propaganda:
“Here's three colors on 'arth: white, black, and red. White is the highest color, and therefore the best man; black comes next, and is put to live in the neighborhood of the white man, as tolerable, and fit to be made use of; and red comes last, which shows that those that made 'em never expected an Indian to be accounted as more than half human.”
