6 ms·

I am very surprised by this comment. Could you elaborate? I read nearly everything published by JRR or Christopher, including notes and letters, and never is a

I am very surprised by this comment. Could you elaborate? I read nearly everything published by JRR or Christopher, including notes and letters, and never is any north american influence mentioned. There are Norse/Germanic/Finnish, Icelandic, Celtic, Byzantine (for Gondor) influences and Atlantis for Numenor, that's pretty much it. It is also worth noting that Aragorn is not, in fact, the last of his race, as there are still other rangers. He is merely the last one of royal line.

d883kd8 7y ago
Hawkeye is a white mountaineer, not the titular Last Mohican (that's Chingachgook)
injb 7y ago
Well, I'll try, but I don't know if I can explain it very well. In The Last of the Mohicans, Nathaniel (Indian name: Hawkeye) is a British-American scout and frontiersman who has largely forsaken white civilization, and lives/hunts/travels with a Mohican chief and his son. He speaks their language and understands their ways. The influence is a bit mixed up though; in TLOTM, there is an exiled chief, the last of his race, who wanders in the wilderness keeping his true identify a secret, but it's the Mohican, not Hawkeye. But in most other ways, Hawkeye is like Aragorn. Another obvious similarity is the theme of the passing of an age - the natives have lived in their own old fashioned ways for centuries, but now they're receding, and their way of life is fading away in the face of increasing colonialism. Finally, the storyline of the three companions Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli tracking their friends the captured hobbits across the wilderness, hopelessly outnumbered is pretty much lifted from TLOTM, although Toklien's version is far more epic. I'm surprised that you would never have heard of this. I read that book only recently, but I always believed it was an influence on Tolkien. I remember reading that he used to dress up as a Native American to entertain children. Here's an interesting quote[1]: "I had very little desire to look for buried treasure or fight pirates, and Treasure Island left me cool. Red Indians were better: there were bows and arrows (I had and have a wholly unsatisfied desire to shoot well with a bow), and strange languages, and glimpses of an archaic mode of life, and above all, forests in such stories." TLOTH is pretty much set entirely in a forest, populated by almost mystical race of forest-people and their enigmatic white friend. If he read books from that era (like Treasure Island) and had an interest in "Red Indians" then he must have read TLOTM. I hope I've made a good case for this, but if not then I think reading the book will make the link much clearer. [1] http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/jrr_tolkien_in_his_own_words.html http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/jrr_tolkien_in_his_own_wo...
- TsiCClawOfLight 7y ago
  Thank you! In Europe (well, outside the UK at least - I lived in France, Belgium, Germany and Austria) TLOTM is pretty much unknown to my generation. It is only left as a figure of speech, probably due to the movies. Since multiple movies were made in the 60s, I suppose that it was not always so.

d883kd8 7y ago

Hawkeye is a white mountaineer, not the titular Last Mohican (that's Chingachgook)

injb 7y ago

Well, I'll try, but I don't know if I can explain it very well. In The Last of the Mohicans, Nathaniel (Indian name: Hawkeye) is a British-American scout and frontiersman who has largely forsaken white civilization, and lives/hunts/travels with a Mohican chief and his son. He speaks their language and understands their ways. The influence is a bit mixed up though; in TLOTM, there is an exiled chief, the last of his race, who wanders in the wilderness keeping his true identify a secret, but it's the Mohican, not Hawkeye. But in most other ways, Hawkeye is like Aragorn. Another obvious similarity is the theme of the passing of an age - the natives have lived in their own old fashioned ways for centuries, but now they're receding, and their way of life is fading away in the face of increasing colonialism. Finally, the storyline of the three companions Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli tracking their friends the captured hobbits across the wilderness, hopelessly outnumbered is pretty much lifted from TLOTM, although Toklien's version is far more epic. I'm surprised that you would never have heard of this. I read that book only recently, but I always believed it was an influence on Tolkien. I remember reading that he used to dress up as a Native American to entertain children. Here's an interesting quote[1]: "I had very little desire to look for buried treasure or fight pirates, and Treasure Island left me cool. Red Indians were better: there were bows and arrows (I had and have a wholly unsatisfied desire to shoot well with a bow), and strange languages, and glimpses of an archaic mode of life, and above all, forests in such stories." TLOTH is pretty much set entirely in a forest, populated by almost mystical race of forest-people and their enigmatic white friend. If he read books from that era (like Treasure Island) and had an interest in "Red Indians" then he must have read TLOTM. I hope I've made a good case for this, but if not then I think reading the book will make the link much clearer. [1] http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/jrr_tolkien_in_his_own_words.html http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/jrr_tolkien_in_his_own_wo...

TsiCClawOfLight 7y ago
Thank you! In Europe (well, outside the UK at least - I lived in France, Belgium, Germany and Austria) TLOTM is pretty much unknown to my generation. It is only left as a figure of speech, probably due to the movies. Since multiple movies were made in the 60s, I suppose that it was not always so.