SuitabookThe Prairie
James Fenimore Cooper
- Reading
- Read together at first, pausing to ask what each traveller seems to want from the journey. Revisit those impressions as the group encounters the prairie and its demands.
- Themes
- Settlement and the land: Settlers travel west with livestock and farming equipment; Natty is described as opposing destruction of animals’ land. The setup places settlement alongside concern for the natural world, but does not show how the story resolves or weighs that tension.
- Different backgrounds among the travellers: The book addresses different backgrounds among the travellers; the detail of how it is developed remains unclear. The party brings varied characters together, but the available details do not establish how their differences affect their relationships.
- Worth knowing
- The travellers are described using period frontier labels and details, including “squatters” and “semiliterate”. You may wish to notice how the narrative characterises different people.