Of the many characters that Cooper deftly creates, David is the most puzzling to me. I can’t tell if Cooper intends for him to provide comic relief or not. His lack of awareness, and any sense of self-preservation, is highlighted by his actions that lead to his being shot in Chapter 7 and consequently his losing consciousness. When David is in this state, Hawkeye notes that “[t]he longer his [David’s] nap lasts the better it will be for him…” (63). His lack of any common sense makes David amusing, as I can’t help but wonder how someone could be so oblivious. 

While at this point I don’t know how The Last of the Mohicans ends, and so I can only speculate, in many ways it reminds me (in a loose sense) of a Shakespearean comedy. Specifically, Cooper’s novel makes me think of Shakespeare’s As You Like It. The snarling Adirondack landscape is to some degree romanticized as country-living would be in a pastoral comedy, although there is certainly much more danger in the woods. The strongest parallel to me is between the cunning Rosalind and her gentler cousin Celia in As You Like It and sisters Cora and Alice in The Last of the Mohicans. I am curious if Cooper was just an admirer of Shakespeare (as the epigraphs in The Last of the Mohicans suggest) or if he intentionally used Shakespeare (and other British authors) as an attempt to appeal to the sense of British intellectualism that we discussed in class.