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Satire
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis:
The novel is set in upstate New York in 1757. The plot revolves around an attempt to move the English Colonel Munro's two daughters, Cora and Alice, from one English fort to another. The journey takes them through wilderness occupied by not only French soldiers who are at war with the English, but also by members of several American Indian nations with various complicated alliances. Cooper gives readers the sense of an upstate New York that is both far more beautiful and far more dangerous than it would have been even in the 1820s. In Chapter 1, he writes:
[I]t would seem that, in time, there was no recess of the woods so dark, nor any secret place so lovely, that it might claim exemption from the inroads of those who had pledged their blood to satiate their vengeance, or to uphold the cold and selfish policy of the distant monarchs of Europe.
Related Themes:
