The Pioneers Literary Elements

Historical Fiction

Set in a fictional town, Templeton in the 18th century.

Narrated in third-person.

Critical and scornful

Natty Bumppo is the protagonist who is against wastefulness in civilization, and the settlers’ civil law is the antagonist.

The conflict is between nature and civilization as the settlers wish to disrupt the natural order while the natives want to maintain it. Though one of the settlers, Natty sides with the indigenous tribes in holding onto the natural laws to avoid the wastefulness of the new civilization.

In the woods when a mountain lion attacks Elizabeth and Louisa, but they are saved by Natty though their dog Brave dies in the process

The narrative foreshadows the settlers’ incapacity to contain the self-sufficiency in the natural order through restrictive civil laws.

N/A

The author alludes to the civilization created by the pioneers following the American Revolutionary War, deriving his characters from his family members. The Judge and Elizabeth both parallel his father and sister, respectively, with Templeton modeled after Cooperstown, New York.

“There was glittering in the atmosphere, as if it was filled with innumerable shining particles; and the noble bay horses that drew the sleigh were covered, in many parts with a coat of hoar-frost. The vapor from their nostrils was seen to issue like smoke; and every object in the view, as well as every arrangement of the travellers, denoted the depth of a winter in the mountains. The harness, which was of a deep, dull black, differing from the glossy varnishing of the present day, was ornamented with enormous plates and buckles of brass, that shone like gold in those transient beams of the sun which found their way obliquely through the tops of the trees.”

The paradox is in Natty’s identity; though he is a white settler, his ideologies align with those of the natives in preserving the land. While he favors preservation over the civil laws brought on by imperialism he still barely subscribes to the natives' culture.

The narrative creates a parallel between the settlers and the natives to illustrate the rift between civil law and natural law. Natty shares the same ideals as the natives in maintaining the natural law that manages the unexplored wilderness in the frontier. On the other hand, the settlers wish to impose civil law that will allow civilization to spread across.

“…returned to her father’s door, a few rough wedges were driven under the pillars to keep them steady”

Wedge is a synecdoche for wedge-shaped blocks.

“…occasionally, by the ruin of a pine or a hemlock that had been stripped of its bark, and which waved in melancholy grandeur its naked limbs to the blast, a skeleton of its former glory.”