Cold Mountain Essay

Love is seen as the greatest feeling of all; it brings people of all types and places together. Love is also a destructive force, wars have torn people apart all in the name of love. The book Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier is a story of two young lovers trying to get back to each other in the time of the Civil War, and the people and experiences they face. Love has an important role to play for many of these characters. It takes many forms in this story, from the love of a father to the love of a land; these types of passions define a character's life and its outcome. The love of three characters in particular is especially powerful, it is the type of love that sends someone on a journey and gives someone the resolution to wait and to hope.

In the novel Cold Mountain, the characters Inman, Ada and Odell all have experienced love and had it taken away from them, this leads them on epic journeys, both physically and mentally, all in the hopes of reaching that love again.
Love can be sparked in a moment, or take years to achieve, yet neither instances are less important or valid than the other.

Although the love Inman and Ada had was budding and uncertain it was enough to spark hope in Inman throughout his experiences. “ ...He held to the idea of a better place and he figured he might as well consider Cold Mountain to be the location…” His hopes of returning home and finding love and happiness relied on Ada, and he took a leap of faith in believing her to feel the same. “And if Ada would go with him, there might be hope, so far off in the distance he did not even really see it…” Inman gave up on the war and risked his life to head home, with only an inkling of the reception he would get there, all for the hope of receiving Ada’s love. Although Inman’s journey was a great physical distance for love, Ada went on a more personal journey in order to grow and love without her prejudices holding her

back.
Ada's life was much different than Inman's, she never had the experience of going to war or of a long perilous journey home.

Ada faced not a challenge of distance but of her mind. When Inman left to go to war she realized that she possibly did love him, and that she wished to have him with her. “‘Here is far enough’, she said. Go on back. As you said, ‘I'll see you when I see you.’‘But I hope that's soon.’‘We both do then.’” When her father died she had to decide whether to give up on her love of Inman, or to wait and face the challenge of depending on herself. “... she could not shake the picture from her mind. A wood. A road through it. A clearing. A man walking. The feeling that she was meant to follow. Or else to wait.”  Ada decides to wait and to face the tough job of supporting herself and her farm with her friend Ruby’s help, for the hope that someday Inman might come home and renew their budding passion. Although Ada and Inman experience heartache and pain, they were lucky in knowing exactly where and who they belonged

to.
The character Odell led a very privileged life, he was the son of a wealthy plantation owner and was the heir to inherit the property. “I’ve not had an easy life. Far from it, Odell said. And don’t let what I am now stand for what I always was. I was born rich. By rights I ought to be ready to come into a planter’s inheritance…”He chose to leave it all behind him and risk his life and live as a traveler in order to search for the woman he had deep affection even though society looked down upon their love. The difference between Odell and Inman is that Odell has no clue where his lost love is. His affection for her is so strong that he would rather go his whole life searching for her than give up and live in comfort and safety. “In the years before the war, he searched the cotton states until… he had exhausted his store of valuables. But he had yet to find Lucinda and… in a sense he was still searching.” Odells traveling hasn’t brought him to his love but did show him the way the world is outside of privilege.
Each of these individuals endured hardships that shaped them and the lives they lived because the love they had in the past gave them courage enough to hope for the future. For Inman his hopeful love took him through the Civil War and across the country. For Ada her dreams of the future allowed her to grow as a human and learn to live for herself. For Odell his love opened up his eyes to injustices and to ways of life he never would have given a second thought to.