Pioneers/New Home Compare-Contrast

Caroline's Kirkland's A New Home -- Who'll Follow? And James Fenimore Cooper's The Pioneers are novels from the nineteenth century that examine the life of the American frontier. Each author seeks to maintain a realistic them with an underlying yearning to educate the reader. Both novels present us with glimpses into how life would have been for the American man and woman on the frontier through specific, conscious detail. This paper will show how the authors achieve their goals by examining the similarities and the differences between their novels.

The predominant theme each author uses is realism, focusing on elements that would create within us a sense of understanding about that era in time. Kirkland tells us that she wishes to create a realistic novel of the life of those who settles in Michigan when she says:

The reader who has patience to go with me to...
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