Cold Mountain Sparknotes

Charles Frazier writes about the love story of Inman and Ada in the novel Cold Mountain. Inman was a soldier that was wounded in the Civil War. He escapes a hospital in Virginia in hopes to return to his home on Cold Mountain in North Carolina. The novel provides vivid detail of Inman’s journey back to his home. He survives against the struggles that man and nature provide on the way. Ada, the woman that Inman longs to find, simply goes on with day to day life, learning how to work and be independent. At the end of the novel, Inman finally reaches Ada and they are able to spend five days together. As he’s traveling back to her house, he is shot by Home Guard and dies in Ada’s arms. This essay includes background information on the author, the

analysis that imagery is a key component in the work, and also the perspectives that other people have found on the novel.
1.

Authors Biographical Information

Charles Frazier was born on November 4, 1950 in Asheville, North Carolina. He spent his childhood growing up near Cold Mountain which is part of the Blue Ridge Mountains within the Appalachian Mountains. This setting inspired him to include it in his first novel.

Frazier graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1973, and later received his Master of Arts Degree from Appalachian State University in 1975. He met his wife at ASU and in 1985 his daughter, Annie, was born. A year later, Frazier received his Ph.D. in English from the University of South Carolina. He left North Carolina and spent some time teaching at the University of Colorado before returning to his home. After his return, he taught English at North Carolina State. He quit teaching and to pursue his dream of becoming an author and published his first novel in 1997.

Cold Mountain was Frazier's first novel and it won many awards. This novel was an international bestseller, and won the National Book Award in 1997. Frazier also wrote the novels Thirteen Moons in 2006, and Nightwoods in 2011. Nightwoods is his only book that does not take place during the civil war. Charles Frazier also received the North Carolina Award for literature in

2002.
2. Historical Influences on the Author
Charles Frazier revealed that one of the main characters of this novel, Inman, was based on his great-great uncle who fought in many key battles during the Civil War. Frazier grew up hearing a few stories about his uncle which inspired him to create the novel. He claimed that the story of his uncle escaping from the war and pursuing the treacherous walk back to the mountains of North Carolina from Virginia inspired him the most. He admits that there were only a handful of facts that he was told about his uncle due to lack of written letters or photographs taken for proof. However, the lack of exact details allowed Frazier to create an inspiring and detailed piece of literature. The adventure that he was able to illustrate was largely due to his imagination, however, he tried to keep the character of Inman as close to fact as he could. Frazier was able to capture the landscape of the mountainous regions due to personal experience, and accurately developed Inman's struggle with nature and his quest to return home to find Ada.
3. Critical Analysis of a Literary Aspect
Charles Frazier illustrates the struggles of Americans around the time of the Civil War in the novel Cold Mountain. He portrays the daily hardships that two people endured and who they encountered on their journeys. This novel tells the solemn love story between the protagonists, Ada and Inman. Inman, was on a desperate, physical expedition, fleeing the war, hoping that someday he would return to his love, Ada. However, throughout the novel, Ada's day to day expedition was self discovery. The strong use of imagery in this novel portrays to the theme and allows readers to grasp the perseverance that the characters must show to succeed with the difficulties of common, everyday life.
Ada lives at Black Cove Farm on Cold Mountain in North Carolina. She is a naive young woman who does not know how to take care of herself or her farm after the passing of her father, Monroe. She desires to find herself, to be independent, and to be knowledgeable about the land surrounding her. Luckily Ruby, a single woman about her age, comes to live at Black Cove with Ada and teaches her the ways of a farmer. Frazier uses imagery and extreme detail to describe the so-called common tasks that Ada must get used to performing. At the beginning of the novel, Frazier describes Ada as being helpless by saying, “Cookery had become a pressing issue for Ada. She was perpetually hungry, having eaten little through the summer but milk, fried eggs, salads, and plates of miniature tomatoes from the unattended plants that had grown wild and bushy with suckers” (Frazier 28). However, after Ruby came, Ada is put to work day in and day out and must adapt to the change.
Ada was not accustomed to working for everything she needed, and she tires quickly in the beginning of Ruby's stay. However she did not give up because she knew that the tasks she performed were necessary for survival and success on her farm. Later on in the novel, Frazier includes a letter that Ada writes to her cousin that resides in Charleston. Ada writes, 'I suspect, were we to meet on Market Street, you would not know me; nor, upon seeing the current want of delicacy in my aspect and costume, would you much care to... I cannot begin to recount all such rough work that I have done in the time since Father died. It has changed me. It is amazing the physical alterations that can transpire in but a few months of labor' (326). Frazier includes Ada's thoughts on her transformation to show that she is finding herself and recognizes her own transformation. Ada is oblivious to that fact that while she embraces her new hard-working lifestyle that a man is traveling across mountains to find her once more.
Unlike Ada, Inman begins on a treacherous expedition home from the war as an outlier. He escaped a hospital in Virginia and begins to walk back, wounded, to the mountains that he calls home. Inman is determined to get home to Ada after he realizes that men in the war were terribly brutal, not because they were passionate about what they were fighting for, but because they couldn't bear the thought of losing. Frazier illustrates every aspect of Inman's trek home. The perseverance that Inman shows is notable in many different parts of his journey. He finds trouble shortly after escaping the hospital. Frazier ceases to leave out a single aspect of the fight Inman was tangled up in. A brief part of the fight Frazier writes includes, “Inman jerked the scythe from the smith's hands and used it as it was intended, making long sweeping strokes close to the ground... the pistol snapped on four chambers before he gave up and beat the man about the head with it and flung it onto the top of the building and walked away” (74). Vivid details are used to describe each troubling moment that Inman goes through. This detail allows the readers to understand the magnitude of the lifestyle that people accepted around wartime.
Inman spends months traveling. He expires all of his resources and becomes very weak towards the end of the novel. Frazier writes about how exhausted and exasperated Inman becomes before finally reaching Ada. Frazier writes, “He took a walnut out of his sack and threw it in the creek too, and it made the valved sound of a scared frog plunging in the water. He left the other nuts in his sack, though he intended to eat nothing until he found Ada” (393). Inman becomes so consumed with his need to find his love that he refuses to nourish his body.
The tragic finale of the novel leads people to question if the perseverance throughout the entire novel was worth it. Inman and Ada were reunited for five days, and they only had one last measly journey to make back to Ada's house. Inman requested that Ada leave first in case trouble came up on the way since he was still considered an outlier. Before they could each safely complete their journey, the Guard found Inman in the woods. Inman put up a good fight, but in the end he was shot and died in Ada's arms. Part of the final paragraph states, “An observer situated up on the brow of the ridge would have looked down on a still...A pair of lovers. The man relined with his head in the woman's lap...A scene of such quiet and peace that he observer on the ridge could avouch to it later in such a way as might lead those of glad temperaments to imagine some conceivable history where long decades of happy union stretched before the two on the ground.” (445).
Frazier is able to illustrate the perseverance of the two main characters by using vivid details.

The climax of whether Ada would find herself, or more importantly, if Inman would survive his journey home became understood by the use of imagery. Every action that the characters endured was felt, seen, and smelt by the readers. The novel revealed the daily struggles of Americans in history.

4. Analysis of the Critical Responses

The novel Cold Mountain spoke to many different people through imagery. The most perceived theme of the book was that it was a troubling love story.

According to one site, Ada and Inman were both in search of self-knowledge. This site claims that Inman was in search of the man he once was before the war so that he will be good enough for Ada when he finds her. (http://www.novelguide.com/cold-mountain/theme-analysis). The characters must adapt to the changing world around them. The war impacted every aspect of life, and each character must find themselves again. It claims that the characters go about finding themselves in different ways, through “books, astronomy, Christian teachings, natural history, myth, and folklore.”

The main conclusion was that the characters went through many different ways to find themselves and adapt to new

circumstances.
5. Conclusion
Charles Frazier was able to successfully reinvent the lifestyle around the Civil War. He did a wonderful job of creating the atmosphere and the setting of the book. This novel was simply meant to entertain the readers and to educate them on the way of life during this time period.