The Price of Progress

Irving and Cooper are two men with one common idea: the cost of progress. Is the price that we pay worth what we sacrifice? Both men explore this topic in their own way, while simultaneously coming to the same conclusion, or at very least, the same state of open-ended though. Let's explore the two works separately, and then bring them back together for the the final analysis.

Irving's story of a man who falls asleep in the wilderness only to wake up years later to an entirely different world may seem nothing more then a simple tall-tale told for the purpose of entertainment, however there is the theme of the price of progress underlying the entire story. Winkle wakes up years later to an entirely different world, one that he did not necessarily want to see. One gets the idea that he was happy with his town the way it was before, and that while the colonies have indeed made great progress towards equality and the like, they lost something too, a sense of cultural identity that Winkle enjoyed.

Cooper too has such themes. The entire tale presents the suffering of the native people and the costs that the European's sense of progress has exacted upon the natives. A unique sense of culture and identity was lost with the assimilation of the Europeans, and it only gets worse as the years go on.

What does this mean for American literature? Throughout the Romantic period that Irving and Cooper were an early part of, writers questioned pre-established norms, among these the destruction of nature at in the name of progress. Romantic writers valued tradition and nature, and both were lost as America continued to grow exponentially. Was the cost worth it? Irving and Cooper leave that up to the reader, and therefore so shall I.