B is for Books - Cold Mountain

Inspired by the Pagan Blog Project.

My favorite novel is Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. People seem to either love this book or hate it. Before I finished reading the first paragraph, I knew I’d love it.

At the first gesture of morning, flies began stirring. Inman’s eyes and the long wound at his neck drew them, and the sound of their wings and the touch of their feet were soon more potent than a yardful of roosters in rousing a man to wake.

There are small spoilers ahead, but I do not give away the whole story. 

The first chapter introduces Inman, a teenaged, Confederate soldier who is in the hospital, recovering from a battle wound. He recalls many of the horrors he saw in the fighting and decides to return to his home on Cold Mountain and to the young girl he loves, Ada.

Inman is supremely competent and able to deal with all the physical challenges he faces during his journey home. The twisted landscape and the corruption he encounters force Inman to look within his soul and assess his values. His real journey is within.

Each of Inman's chapters relates a different encounter. Inman meets a Reverend Dimmesdale type character in one chapter. In another, he stays in a caravan with a woman who has spent years alone in the wilderness, raising goats and sketching plants, unaware that time is passing and that she is aging.

It seems all southern novels are required to reference Greek literature, so one chapter is a reference to The Odyssey. Inman passes this test, too.

The memory of one encounter still makes me cry: Inman finds a woman who is sitting by the side of the road weeping. Her daughter had died in the night, but the ground is frozen so the woman cannot bury her. Inman follows her back to her cabin, digs a grave, buries the girl, and says an impromptu prayer. The child’s mother wraps up a considerable amount of food for him, saying she does not have the heart to cook. When he has walked some distance away from the cabin, he hears her shout. She runs to him and begs him to come back. “Some day, I won’t be able to forgive myself for not making you a meal.” Inman did not just help her bury her child; he gave her hope that there might be a future in which she could feel something besides the loss of her child.

In one long and fascinating chapter, Inman recalls his friendship with a Cherokee boy and the tribe’s redemption myth. 

Redemption, and the different paths a man and a woman take to be redeemed, are the themes of the book. The love story is secondary. (Whoever wrote the screenplay never read the book.)

The other main character of Cold Mountain is Ada, a teenaged girl alone in her large home on Cold Mountain. Her father, a preacher, has died and all the men have gone to fight in the war. We meet her hiding from an angry rooster, having failed to steal an egg with which to feed herself.

A southern belle transplanted to the mountains because of her father’s health, Ada is accomplished at playing the piano, drawing, and reading Greek. However, she is completely unable to run a farm and care for herself, having always relied on other people.

Ada lives inside herself. Because she is painfully shy, she finds it very difficult to write to Inman and express her love for him. Ada’s plight is the opposite of Inman’s; she must learn to step outside herself and be competent in the world.

Once, on a walk to the post office looking for a letter from Inman, she stops at a neighbor’s farm, hoping to be invited in for a meal. The neighbor gives her a jar of jam, unaware of just how hungry Ada is. A mile or so from the woman’s home, Ada sits on the side of the hill and eats all the jam with her fingers. She falls asleep there and wakes under the stars.

Finally, someone introduces Ada to Ruby, a girl who decidedly does know how to survive. When Ruby was a toddler, her father, a drunk and a gambler who always had a new scheme, would leave her alone for days. Somehow, Ruby survived and learned all she needed to know to work a farm. The two girls reach an agreement about working Ada's farm together and Ada’s outward journey begins.

One chapter is a surprise. It focuses on an unlikely character. The message is that anyone can be redeemed and anything can be the means of that redemption.

The bond between Ada and Ruby may be more important than the relationship between Ada and Inman. Ruby helps her grow both in practical competence and in self-awareness; she is partly responsible for Ada's redemption. (When Ada lets Ruby play with one of her rings, I imagine that Ruby puts it on her ring finger, symbolically showing their bond.) I admire Charles Frazier for portraying women’s friendship so well.

**Big Spoilers Ahead**

When Inman arrives on Cold Mountain, Ada is overjoyed, but her first words to him are, “No matter what happens between us, Ada stays.” 

People have different feelings about the end of the book. I think it's perfect.

I just wonder... is the loss of Ada’s little finger a message that all losses are smaller than the life that remains?