The Slaughter Of The Pigeons Analysis

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The slaughter of the pigeons: a text dealing with nature and civilization In this text, James Fenimore Cooper shows how American civilization destroyed the wilderness. At the beginning of the story, he describes how Templeton - which represents the whole America - was beautiful. Nature was amazing, there were mountains and rich valleys, but then things started getting worst. Society was brought to a consummation step (with the shoot of the pigeons seen as a sport), and the wild started being destructed (the massacre of pigeons). Cooper tries to show us a conflict between civilization and nature with three characters: Natty Bumppo, the defendant of natural freedom; and Marmaduke and Richard Jones, two representants of destructive America.…show more content…
Leatherstocking reacted when he saw the swivel. That was too much for pigeon haunting. We can see in the following quotation that contrary to Jones and Duke, he had feelings for the pigeons, which represented the Indian civilization. “This comes of settling a country” he said – “here have I known the pigeons to fly for forty years, and, till you made your clearings, there was nobody to scare or to hurt them. I loved to see them come into the woods, for they were company to a body; hurting nothing; being, as it was, as harmless as a garter snake. But now it gives me sore thoughts when I hear the frighty things whizzing through the air.” Natty Bumppo explains in this passage that for him the murder of the pigeons (the destruction of nature) is unfair because they did not do anything to deserve it. They were just flying, and they lived peacefully with men. For him, their massacre is totally unjustified. He also “confess” that he has remorse. Pigeons were condemned from the beginning; they were not as equipped as

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