Frienship and Heterosexual Love in Cooper's The Deerslayer

James Fenimore Cooper is often considered to be the "father" of the western genre. Cooper's novel, The Deerslayer, addresses numerous themes, among them the act of friendship versus heterosexual love. The plot does not follow a strict linear scheme, although it conveys a message concerning the social mores of life in the west during the ninteenth century. Cooper depicts his protagonist,Natty Bumppo, also known as the deerslayer, as a a man who is caught …

…the divider between the white man and native Indian. Bumppo character portrayed that friendship can bloom in the most unexpected places if people chose to set their differences aside. Bumppo watched love rejected and grow. He remained loyal to his friends, but in the end found never to have loved because he allowed to pass to pass him by. Although he himself did not love, he was not alone because of his bonds of friendship.