The Crater, Or, Vulcan's Peak: A Tale of the Pacific. Volume 1 of 2

Fenimore Cooper's late didactic novel, THE CRATER, carries a lot of freight, perhaps too much. (1) As a straight-forward shipwreck survival novel a la ROBINSON CRUSOE or THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON, it is very slow. (2) As an adventure yarn full of sea chases, pirates, evil natives, it lacks the detail and energy of other Cooper sea adventure tales. (3) As Plato-Lite telling how a ideal community is built up step by step and then destroyed by the growing hubris of its inhabitants, it is no REPUBLIC and its islands are no Atlantis. (4) As commentary on the political decline of the USA in the 1840s: rule by gossip-ocracy of the press, tricks such as party caucuses by which minorities make themselves majorities on paper, and more, THE CRATER is perhaps at its most convincing. But these contemporary political points are largely pulled together only toward the end of a curiously long "shaggy dog" story, or perhaps even something of a cosmic joke, a ponderous precursor of G. K. Chesterton's 1904 THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL. ***** (5) Cooper gives much often right-on attention to religion, both organized/formal and personal/heartfelt in THE CRATER. The very young (in 1796) hero Mark Woolston (pronounced Wooster, as Cooper insists) becomes increasingly religious for a couple of years early on, as the number of his seafaring companions shrinks. He finds God everywhere and is not slow to fall to his knees to say so. Later, as "Governor" of his island colony, Woolston sanctions only one minister of the Gospel, an Episcopalian like himself. The Quakers, Presbyterians and others subordinate to Woolston grumble about vestments, incense, prayers read from texts, etc. but they passively accept the arrangement. Later, when several more uninvited ministers appear among them, along with a lawyer and a printer, the colony's doom begins to appear inevitable. This dimension of religious variety as it weakens a nation politically might have been predicted by such early modern European rulers as the Tudor monarchs: Henry VIII, Mary and Elizabeth. ***** There is certainly something in THE CRATER for everyone, including tender love stories, inter-racial marriages, black slavery, praise of the family as fully satisfying woman's nature and more. A tough book to evaluate. -OOO-