The distinction between scenes and signs is made very clearly here, and it is invariably clear in the work of James Fenimore Cooper. The opposition is static, even dichotomous, for although the scenes and signs ‘mingle’ they so not merge into a new unity or a third term. Nor do they problematize each other as they do in later American writers for whom it is often not clear to what extent scenes have become signs, and vice versa, if indeed the two can be distinguished and differentiated. In Cooper the opposition is not without attendant ambiguities and it is often these ambiguities which give thematic energy to Cooper's work; but the terms do not lose their distinctness. The scene may succumb to the sign, or it may outlast it, but it is always clear which is which; there is no peripheral contamination of the categories. Scenes are, primarily, to be seen – appreciated by the non-intervening eye – and there are many passages in Cooper where the narrative effectively comes to a halt while a static scene is ec-statically seen.