The Crater

Name: The Crater
Rating: 3.57 (93 reviews)

by James Fenimore Cooper

First published 1847

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3.4(93)

Mark Woolston is a young American sailor when a voyage leaves him stranded on a barren Pacific reef with only the resources salvaged from his ship. Through ingenuity, labour and close observation he makes the apparently useless place habitable, and the arrival of other settlers gradually transforms a survival outpost into a prosperous island community.

The second half of the novel turns material success into a political experiment. Population, property, religion and faction alter the cooperative society Mark helped create, and Cooper contrasts the discipline required for survival with the instability produced by ambition and collective self-interest. The Pacific setting becomes both an adventure landscape and a warning about the fragility of utopian communities.