Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Hope Leslie, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Religious Conflict and Tolerance
Interracial Relationships
Violence and Historical Memory
Women’s Roles
The Puritan Heritage
Summary
Analysis
The next day, Mononotto’s group progresses into mountainous country. By the end of the third day, they reach the valley of the Housatonic. Mononotto admires Everell’s fortitude during this long march. They emerge into a little village, and the sight of smoke rising from the huts brings tears to Everell’s eyes.
The Housatonic River flows through present-day western Massachusetts and Connecticut. Its valleys were primarily inhabited by Mohicans before English settlement began. The sight of a community, even a non-white one, moves Everell to grief.
Themes
When Mononotto looks at the tribe’s sacrifice rock, Magawisca gives him an entreating look. Mononotto tells her that he cannot be swayed from his purpose, and asks her why she has gotten entangled with an English boy. He talks with the village’s Mohawks about his plan, and Everell, resigned up until now, begins to dread his fate.
Mononotto perceives that his daughter’s loyalties are divided and cannot understand her feelings; Magawisca continues to feel helplessly torn between her father’s steadfast purpose and her love for Everell.
Themes
Literary Devices
Mononotto consults with the local chief and separates Everell and Magawisca for the night. Everell tries to reassure her that even if he dies, they will meet again. In solitude, he prays, recalls Mrs. Fletcher’s patient teachings, and he finds peace.
Magawisca and Faith Leslie are taken into a hut belonging to a sick, elderly woman. A Mohawk guard, with a pipe and a liquor-filled gourd, bars the door. Magawisca gives the suffering woman a drink from the sleeping medicine that’s simmering on the fire. She stays awake all night until, near morning, she hears the sound of many footsteps in the distance. When the guard is briefly distracted by the woman’s cries, Magawisca quickly pours some of the sleeping aid into his liquor. She watches out the door of the hut as Mononotto, the Mohawk chief, Everell, and others ascend the nearby hill toward the sacrificial rock. She waits helplessly for the guard, having drained his liquor, to fall asleep.
Magawisca is resourceful to the last, looking for any opportunity to disrupt her father’s plans and rescue Everell, even when things appear to be hopeless.
Themes
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At the sacrifice rock, Everell waits with dignity and calm. While some of the onlookers might feel compassion for him, their “interpretation of natural justice” stops them from intervening, much as “artificial codes of laws [control] […] us.” Others are hostile, but Mononotto restrains them, saying that while Everell might have white skin, his soul is different from most white people’s. After speaking further words in praise of Everell’s courage, Mononotto motions to him to lie face down on the rock, so that he won’t see the approaching blade.
Sedgwick shows sympathy for both Everell and his captors. Everell’s impending fate is horrifying, yet Sedgwick suggests that his would-be killers operate according to a code of justice—even if it’s one that would be unrecognizable to white American society. Mononotto again shows mercy, stopping others from striking Everell in anger and trying to make his execution as humane as possible.
Themes
The sun shines on Everell’s head, giving him an angelic glow. This is taken as a sign of the sacrifice’s acceptance, and a cheer goes up. After a last prayer, Everell lies down on the rock. Suddenly, Magawisca appears, climbing up the other side of the rock and screaming, “Forbear!” She flings her arm over Everell, but it’s too late. The hatchet lops off Magawisca’s arm. She tells Everell that she has bought his life with her own and urges him to flee. Momentarily in shock, he embraces her “like a sister” and disappears, unpursued.
Everell is portrayed as an innocent sacrifice who, whatever the provocations other settlers have created, does not deserve his fate. Magawisca’s shocking intervention—and her own violent fate—is the culmination of what she’s endured so far, being pulled between her loyalties to her people and to the Fletchers. Sedgwick suggests that this conflict must ultimately tear Magawisca apart. She cannot survive it intact.
Themes
Literary Devices
Magawisca fled the old woman’s hut the moment her guard succumbed to the sleeping potion. She knew that if she tried to break through the crowd, she would never get through, so she decided to stealthily climb up the rock. Though the rock had only the smallest handholds, Magawisca scaled it by means of “the power of love, stronger than death.”
Magawisca is resourceful, courageous, and bold against all odds. Sedgwick suggests that her greatest strength, though, is love, which transcends racial differences.
Themes
