 Balzac 's style in Le Père Goriot is influenced by the American novelist James Fenimore Cooper and Scottish writer Walter Scott . In Cooper 's representations of Native Americans , Balzac saw a human barbarism that survived through attempts at civilization . In a preface to the second edition in 1835 , Balzac wrote that the title character Goriot – who made his fortune selling vermicelli during a time of widespread hunger – was an " Illinois of the flour trade " and a " Huron of the grain market " . Vautrin refers to Paris as " a forest of the New World where twenty varieties of savage tribes clash " – another sign of Cooper 's influence . 
