The Oak Openings Explained

The Oak Openings; or, The Bee Hunter is an 1848 novel by James Fenimore Cooper. The novel focuses on the activities of professional honey-hunter Benjamin Boden, nicknamed "Ben Buzz". The novel is set in Kalamazoo, Michigan's Oak Opening, a wooded prairie that still exists in part today,^{[1] [2]} during the War of 1812.^[3]

Background and publication history

After returning from his European travels in the 1830s, Cooper was persuaded by his niece's husband, Horace H. Comstock, to invest in Michigan real estate. The Potawatomi had ceded much of their land in central Michigan by 1833 and their former territory became known as "oak-openings". By 1837, Cooper's $6,000 investment was losing value, though he watched as his fellow New Yorkers attempted to colonize the area like honeybees.^[4] The experience inspired The Oak Openings; or, The Bee Hunter, and the novel became one of the first representations of beekeeping in American literature.^[5] Though not the first author to use the term "oak openings", Frederick Marryat did so, Cooper popularized the term for the type of oak clad Savannah with the publication of the novel.^[6]

The novel is Cooper's last "wilderness novel" following his Leatherstocking Tales and serves as a melancholy follow-up to that series.^[7] It is also the last of his novels to explore the relationships between Europeans and Native Americans in the early American expansion.^{[8] [9]}

Analysis

The novel has a significant religious thematic focus.^[10]

The novel explores assumptions about individual and Native American ownership of property, a continuation of issues that some of Cooper's other works deal with, as in the tract The American Democrat.

The main character, Benjamin Boden, is compared symbolically to the bees which he tends through nicknames like "Buzzing Ben" and the French term le Bourdon ("the drone"), which shows him as an industrious laborer.^[11]

Further reading

• Flory. Claude Reherd. Economic Criticism in American Fiction, 1792-1900. University of Pennsylvania. 1936.
• Pakditawan. Sirinya. Die stereotypisierende Indianerdarstellung und deren Modifizierung im Werk James Fenimore Coopers. 2008. de. University of Hamburg.
• Cooper's Oak-Openings: A Christian Novel. Robert D. . Madison. Cooper Panel of the 2013 Conference of the American Literature Association. Boston, Massachusetts . James Fenimore Cooper Society Miscellaneous Papers . 30. May 2013. 10–12.

External links

• • 1871 Edition of the Novel republished by the University of Michigan Library's Making of America project

Notes and References

1. Web site: About the Kalamazoo Nature Center. naturecenter.org. 2016-09-05. https://web.archive.org/web/20170822015902/http://naturecenter.org/Home/TheKNCMission.aspx. 2017-08-22. live.
2. Web site: South Westnedge Park: Pioneer Cemetery and Urban Oak Opening - Kalamazoo Public Library. www.kpl.gov. 2016-09-05. https://web.archive.org/web/20160914140240/http://www.kpl.gov/local-history/cemeteries/pioneer.aspx. 2016-09-14. live.
3. Book: Goff, Lisa . Shantytown, USA: Forgotten Landscapes of the Working Poor . Cambridge, MA . Harvard University Press . 2016. 42. 978-0-674-66045-8.
4. Book: Ziser, Michael. Environmental Practice and Early American Literature . New York . Cambridge University Press . 2013. 121–122. 978-1-107-00543-3.
5. Hardy. Rob. 2016. Bee Line: How the Honey Bee Defined the American Frontier. Readings - A Journal for Scholars and Readers. 2. 1. https://web.archive.org/web/20180421130342/https://www.readingsjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Readings-Hardy-Bee-Line.pdf. 2018-04-21. live.
6. Chapman. Kim Alan. Brewer. Richard. 2008. Prairie and Savanna in Southern Lower Michigan: History, Classification, Ecology. The Michigan Botanist. 47. 1–48. https://web.archive.org/web/20161011091642/http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5080218be4b03711ad4ed392/t/57a93ef2e6f2e1756d4fa507/1470709493286/Chapman-Brewer.pdf. 2016-10-11. live.
7. Book: Goff, Lisa . Shantytown, USA: Forgotten Landscapes of the Working Poor . Cambridge, MA . Harvard University Press . 2016. 41. 978-0-674-66045-8.
8. Theory and Practice in English Studies. 4. 2005. Proceedings from the Eighth Conference of British, American and Canadian Studies. Brno: Masarykova univerzita. Cooper's Indians: Typology and Function. Michal. Peprník. 2015-09-02. https://web.archive.org/web/20150924091447/http://www.phil.muni.cz/plonedata/wkaa/Offprints%20THEPES%204/TPES%204%20(127-133)%20Peprnik%20M.pdf. 2015-09-24. live.
9. Cooper's Eloquent Indians. John T.. Frederick. PMLA. 71. 5 . December 1956. 1004–1017. 10.2307/460524. 460524.
10. Book: Walker, Warren S.. Plots and Characters in the Fiction of James Fenimore Cooper. Hamden, CT. Archon Books. 1978. 133–140. James Fenimore Cooper Society. The Oak Openings; or, The Bee-Hunter (1848) plot summary. 2015-09-02. https://web.archive.org/web/20150617014330/http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/writings/plots/walker-oak.html. 2015-06-17. live.
11. Book: Goff, Lisa . Shantytown, USA: Forgotten Landscapes of the Working Poor . Cambridge, MA . Harvard University Press . 2016. 43. 978-0-674-66045-8.