The Pathfinder

Description

The Pathfinder is James Fenimore Cooper’s fourth novel in the Leatherstocking Tales series. It is set before the time depicted in The Last of the Mohicans and it features the beloved popular character Natty Bumppo.

To anyone who has read Cooper’s previous books, Natty’s resurrection might come as a surprise. However, this hero is not back in action, doing his old tricks of guiding damsels in distress thorough treacherous forests and helping defenseless forts. Only this time, his adventures are paused by meeting a beautiful young woman who he falls in love with. He gets more talkative and readers will find another Bumppo with moral traits and reflections they had never known about.

The story takes place 13 years after he ends his career in The Prairie. He is still the good-natured man who calls the forest his home. But this time he will have a hard time choosing between staying with his true love and becoming distracting from his trapping and nature-protecting activities and staying with the forest he gets his spirit and beliefs.

The Pathfinder features plenty of adventures taking place in the old West of North America. This time, Cooper also made innovative use of the Great Lakes, as it is also suggested in the full title of the novel: The Pathfinder, or the Inland Sea. The inland sea here is actually Lake Ontario. Cooper himself served in the army and navy and many of his stories have been inspired by his adventures while serving under the US army.

In this novel, Bumppo has to decide between his scouting activities and more romantic affections and domestic occupations. However, the narrator has other plans for Bumppo, who will eventually be restored as the protector of the wilderness in The Pathfinder.
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