3/14/2013
American Literature
Romantic Hero Essay
“The Last of the Mohicans vs. Shooter.” The American hero has changed in the many minds of Americans throughout time. We went from a Native American saving his self and others, to superheroes saving the world from aliens. Nathanial in The Last of the Mohicans can be compared to the modern day hero of Bob Lee Swagger in the film Shooter. Bob Swagger is an army sniper who was left out to die on a mission in Afghanistan were his best friend died. He is then recruited to prevent an assassination of the American President, but is then wrongly convicted as the real shooter and is on a quest to find the real culprit for the assassination while being hunted by federal officials. Both of these heroes are searching for some higher truths in the natural world because they want to find out what happened and they do anything to gain the knowledge that put them in trouble.
Nathanial in The Last of the Mohicans displays the idea of search for a higher truth in the natural world because he tries to be accepted into French and British culture but is not fully respected because he is Native American. This trait is displayed when he is put to trial for sedition after allowing those other Native Americans leaves, because if he were white he would not have been put to trial. Just because he was a Native American he was found guilty, and if it hadn’t been for the Attack on the British soldiers that surrendered he would have been hanged. This trait also shows when Nathanial allows his brother to run away from the British fort to deliver a letter to another British general. This is searching for a higher truth because it is allowing the British to have a fair right to the fort that they have. The Native Americans feel like the British had a right to the fort so they took a risk in effort to keep it that way.
In the film Shooter, Bob lee Swagger was framed and in effort to clear his name he searched for the real culprit of the shooting. Bob is searching for a higher truth because he wants to find out what really happened and he thinks that it is unfair that these events happened. While looking for the killer, Bob wanted to see what was wrong with the system that he works for. He dug deeper and deeper and discovered that the system was corrupted and they would do anything to keep it that way, but Bob found everything out and found the truths