고결, 야만, 그리고 사라짐

Noble, Savage, and Disappearing: Native Americans and National Identity in Metamora; or, the Last of the Wampanoags

'The noble savage' is one of the important motives in the early American literature. Referring to the Native Americans, more familiarly known as American Indians, the term reflects the contemporary white's romantic gaze upon these so-called red-skin pagan tribesmen. The term also reflects the contemporary social needs to establish genuine and authentic identity of the US as distinct from British one, after the independence from the motherland. John Augustus Stone's 1829 play Metamora is the representative reflection on the white's romantic gaze upon the American Indians as well as their literary response to the social needs for the American tradition and national identity. This paper traces the process in which the positive images of the protagonist Metamora, meeting a sudden turn in the middle, are portrayed as negative in the second half, and the Indian chief eventually dies disappearing into history. This paper explores the following issues: the author's intention to romanticize the Indian chief as the model of proto-American virtue and finally dispose him in the end; the implication of his disappearance in terms of the social needs and justification for American national identity; the collective emotions of the US citizens, related to the issue of national identity, as implied by the author's literary choice and solution in the play.