Cold Mountain
Cold Mountain, a novel wrote by Charles Frazier, is a Civil War story, a magnificent love story between a wounded Confederate soldier – Inman who deserts and begins a lonely, dangerous journey to find the way back home, and his lover – Ada who tries to survive after her father’s death. The Cold Mountain is the destination Inman wants to arrive at, and a place where Ada transform from a city girl into a mountain woman. The story is woven around the experiences of Inman and Ada trying to rebuild their lives from the desperation and disaster of the war, all the while trying to find a way to see each other again--whilst they are so far apart. Cold Mountain opens with Inman staying in a Virginia hospital trying to recover his wound from the war. One day he speaks to a blind man he usually saw through the window of the hospital’s room. When the blind man asks Inman to “cite me one instance where you wished you were blind,” Inman doesn’t know where to begin. There are many like: Malvern Hill, Sharpsburg, Petersburg, but “Fredericksburg was a day particularly lodged in his mind.” At that time, he wishes that he himself had been blind at Fredericksburg when his regiment shot down thousands of Federal troops. He wishes that there is no war that takes many lives of soldiers, partitions families and makes him shatter by the violence he has witnessed while fighting in the Confederate army. Inman returns to the ward and opens his copy of Bartram’s Travels at random. He finds himself lose in descriptions that remind him of his home near Cold Mountain. One day in town, he writes a letter to Ada inform her that he will return home. That night, he leaves the hospital through a window and sets out on his journey back to North Carolina. On his way to Cold Mountain, he faces many challenges, tries to survive from starving and being murdered, but his mind always turns to events of the past, the day he met Ada. The dark-haired girls make him think of Ada, his lover, who gives him strength to keep going, crossed the Cape Fear River, avoids the townspeople and has to flow downstream to avoid getting shot thanks to the skill of a young dark-haired girl paddling a dugout canoe. Late in the night, Inman walk along the banks of the Deep River, he meets with a man who he scares can be a Home Guard, but it turns out to be a preacher who is trying to kill his pregnant lover. Inman takes his gun out and makes the man lead him to where the woman lives. When they arrive, Inman ties the man to a tree, carries the woman to her house and puts her on the bed. He tells her that the man is no good, leaves a note, and then he leaves. Her long dark hair remains him about Ada again, and he dreams about her dressed in white with a black shawl while he is staying with the gypsies through the night. The next day he wakes up and finds himself alone. The gypsies have gone. He continues his journey, cheered by the memory of his dream. But he once again gets intervening with the preacher he met before. They become the companion of the journey. He tells Veasey, the preacher, about the battle of the Crater at Petersburg, another gruesome slaughter in the war. The next day, he meets and shares a hayloft with a traveler named Odell who claims to be very wealthy. They drink and Odell tells Inman his story about falling in love with the slave, Lucinda, but his father against them and sell Lucinda off to someone in Mississippi. Odell also tells of the horrors he’s seen in his travels, the savage punishment and murder of slaves, wishes one day he can find and marry his woman. Inman continue his journey with Veasey until they meet a man called Junior. They help Junior out and in return, Junior treats them dinner and let them rest at his house. But Junior actually brings the Home Guard back with him to arrest Inman and Veasey. They are tied to a string of fifteen other prisoners and walked eastward for several days. One night they stop and the Guard decides the prisoners are a waste of time. They shoot all the prisoners but luckily Inman just suffers only a superficial wound to the side of his head. He gets rid of Veasey’s dead body and tries to walk westward once more. After many days starving and trying to get the sense of direction, he meets a man who directs Inman down the road where he says there is a girl that will give him some food without asking any questions. Inman follows the man’s direction and finds a girl named Sara. He stays with her for a couple days, helps her killing, scalding and butchering the hog, and then fights with three Federals who almost harm Sara and her baby. He kills those three men with his short gun, stays with Sara one more night and then he leaves, and continues his journey.
As the same time when Inman is trying to desert in the Confederate army, Ada is struggling with her life. She is left alone to manage Black Cove Farm following her father’s death and has no idea how she can earn a living. She is setting out a journey herself to find exactly where her home should be and recognizes that there is something rooting her to the farm. Her vision of seeing a man walking through the woods on a journey suggests her to stay at Cold Mountain and wait for someone’s arrival. Ada meets Ruby one day. Ruby offers to help Ada on the condition that she is treated like an equal and “everybody empties their own night jar.” They become friends and establish a comfortable domestic routine. Ada and Ruby decide to barter the piano for a sow, sheep, cabbages, and other goods in order to support them through the winter. They share their stories late at nights, watching the winter leave. Ada is slowly learning about the natural world from Ruby and beginning to realize that within the landscape around her is “all the life there is” and she is a part of it. One day, Ada and Ruby go in town, they stop by to see the old, wealthy widow, Mrs. McKennet. They discuss about the war and their point of view about it. Mrs. McKennet’s opinion is that the war is glorious and heroic. But Ada expresses that she finds the war brutal and morally ignorant on both sides. Because of that, Mrs. McKennet dismisses Ada’s opinion as naïve. Ada and Ruby continue talking about war and life, and they share the stories about their parents and their childhood. Ada meets Stobrod, Ruby’s father. They talk about war and how Stobrod’s life has been changed by the war, and changed by his music. He plays some his own music for Ada and Ruby, develops his own talent. Ada now can lives on her own. While Ruby is away, she can cuts wood, burns brush, milks the cow, etc. She writes a letter to her cousin, Lucy, explains how she has changed, both physically and in character, as a result of her life on Cold Mountain. She is serene and satisfied with her new life.
Ada and Inman meet at the place where Stobrod and Pangle were shot by Teague, the young boy and a bunch of Home Guard. The two meet face to face when Ada is hunting and Inman is following Ada’s gun shot, but they don’t recognize each other at first. The two stand, weapons drawn against each other. Inman puts away his gun first and says, “I’ve been coming to you on a hard road and I’m not letting you go.” Ada still doesn’t recognize him and says she doesn’t know him. Inman then apologizes and turns to leave. But before he does that, Ada lowers her gun, says his name and tells him to follow her. He is overwhelmed with happiness and love, and the tone of her voice tells him that everything will be fine. They spend days and nights together talking of the past, and then their future. They decide to surrender to the Federals and wait for the war to end. On their way back home, Inman fights with Teague and his men, he kills all of them but the last boy shoots him with the gun. Ada hears the shot and runs back. She finds Inman and cradles him in her lap. As he drifts in and out of consciousness he envisions all the seasons on Cold Mountain happening simultaneously, and the spirits of crows, dancing and singing in the trees. The book Cold Mountain ends with Ada and her daughter live in the farm, and work together with Ruby’s family.
In the book Cold Mountain, Frazier essential writes about how Inman and Ada fight against the war inside themselves to find their new hope and their new life. Ada and Inman differences and similarities are the things that make relationships interesting. The differences come from their childhood; the form of Cold Mountain which Inman seen as a beautiful place he can go to forget, relax, and to be reborn, while Ada’s view is as visible moisture- light haze, dense valley fogs, tatters of cloud hanging like rags on the shoulders of Cold Mountain. But there are still some similarities between them. Their characters both see superstition as a last resort for hope. Ada sees a man coming to town in a reflection is a well. This image she believes is the image of the person that’s going to solve her problems. Inman’s supernatural believe is the hope that Cold Mountain is a magical place where he can be reborn. They both struggle with their life and their feeling. Inman struggles against the death. He feels no particular sorrow over Veasey’s death. He has seen so much random killing that he views death insensitively. “He had grown so used to seeing death, walking among the dead, sleeping among them . . . that it seemed no longer dark and mysterious.” He is losing faith in his own future and fears he has become so bitter and angry in the past four years that he will not recover. In difference case but similarity, Ada is struggling against the loss. She losses her father, Inman – the man she loves, and being left alone, not knowing what to do with her farm, her life. The war, having taken the men away, leaves women filling in all roles. Ada starts to rebuild her life with the help from Ruby. She learns everything and now she can do everything by herself.
The mood of Cold Mountain is one of struggle and melancholy, while the theme is the desire for home. For Inman it is a journey to the home he knows and remembers. For Ada it is a longing to find one’s place and establish a home. Frazier lets Inman witness the most gruesome slaughters of the war to accentuate Inman’s resolve against the war. The battles of Fredericksburg, Sharpsburg, and the Crater at Petersburg are prominent markers in Civil War history. Frazier, through this book, lets the readers know and perceive the scene of war, the pain of loss and the fear of death.