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Returning to Home land in the novel Cold Mountain

All the major wars that America was fought, The Revolutionary War lasted from
1775-1783. This fight between Great Britain and its thirteen colonies was the result of
years of growing conflict. After the French and Indian War that occurred 1754-1763, the
British government began requiring the colonies to pay higher taxes. Over time, protests
and conflict led to a tightening of control by the Mother Country. Beginning with the
fighting at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, open warfare broke out.
Next, War of 1812 was fought between the United States and Great Britain and
lasted from 1812 to 1815. Resulting from American anger over trade issues,
impressments of sailors, and British support of Indian attacks on the frontier, the conflict
saw the US Army attempt to invade Canada while British forces attacked south. Over the
course of the war, both side gained a decisive advantage and the war resulted in a return
to status quo ante bellum. Despite this lack of conclusiveness on the battlefield, several
late American victories led to a newfound sense of national identity and a feeling of
victory.
And also Mexican-American War was occurred between 1846 and 1848. The
cause of the Mexican-American War was Texas winning its independence from Mexico
in 1836. After the end of the war, Mexico refused to acknowledge the new Republic of
Texas, but was prevented from taking military action due to the United States, Great
Britain, and France conferring diplomatic recognition. The war ended on February 2,

1848, with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This treaty ceded to the
United States the land that now comprises the states of California, Utah, and Nevada, as
well as parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Colorado. Mexico also renounced
all rights to Texas. During the war 1,773 Americans were killed in action and 4,152 were
wounded.
Then the Spanish American War from April 1898 to August 1898 began as a
direct result of an incident that occurred in Havana harbor. On February 15, 1898, an
explosion occurred on the USS Maine that caused the deaths of over 250 American
sailors. Even though later investigations have shown that the explosion was an accident in
the boiler room of the ship, public furor arose and pushed the country to war because of
what was believed at the time to be Spanish sabotage.
The Civil War is the central event in America's historical consciousness. While the
Revolution of 1776-1783 created the United States, the Civil War of 1861-1865
determined what kind of nation it would be. Eleven Southern slave states declared their
secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America, also
known as the Confederacy. Led by Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy fought for its
independence from the United States. The war resolved two fundamental questions left
unresolved by the revolution: whether the United States was to be a dissolvable
confederation of sovereign states or an indivisible nation with a sovereign national
government; and whether this nation, born of a declaration that all men were created with

an equal right to liberty, would continue to exist as the largest slaveholding country in the
world.
Northern victory in the war preserved the United States as one nation and ended
the institution of slavery that had divided the country from its beginning. But these
achievements came at the cost of 625,000 lives of many American soldiers as died in all
the other wars in which this country has fought combined. The American Civil War was
the largest military conflict in the Western world between the Napoleonic Wars and World
War I. Its social consequences were especially far-reaching. The war resulted in the
emancipation of four million enslaved African Americans. It also brought vast changes to
the nation's financial system, fundamentally altered the relationship between the states
and the federal government, and became modern history's first total war. The American
Civil War is sometimes called the first modern war due to the mobilization and
destruction of the civilian base. It also is characterized by many technical innovations
involving railroads, telegraphs, rifles, trench warfare, and ironclad warships with turret
guns.
The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free
and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the
territories that had not yet become states. When Abraham Lincoln won election in 1860
as the first Republican president on a platform pledging to keep slavery out of the
territories, seven slave states in the South seceded and formed a new nation, the
Confederate States of America. The incoming Lincoln administration and most of the

Northern people refused to recognize the legitimacy of secession. They feared that it
would discredit democracy and create a fatal precedent that would eventually fragment
the no-longer United States into several small, squabbling countries.
The event that triggered war came at Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay on April 12,
1861. Claiming this United States fort as their own, the Confederate army on that day
opened fire on the federal garrison and forced it to lower the American flag in surrender.
Lincoln called out the militia to suppress this "insurrection." Four more slave states
seceded and joined the Confederacy. By the end of 1861 nearly a million armed men
confronted each other along a line stretching 1200 miles from Virginia to Missouri.
Several battles had already taken place--near Manassas Junction in Virginia, in the
mountains of western Virginia where Union victories paved the way for creation of the
new state of West Virginia, at Wilson's Creek in Missouri, at Cape Hatteras in North
Carolina, and at Port Royal in South Carolina where the Union navy established a base
for a blockade to shut off the Confederacy's access to the outside world.
But the real fighting began in 1862. Huge battles like Shiloh in Tennessee, Gaines'
Mill, Second Manassas, and Fredericksburg in Virginia, and Antietam in Maryland
foreshadowed even bigger campaigns and battles in subsequent years, from Gettysburg in
Pennsylvania to Vicksburg on the Mississippi to Chickamauga and Atlanta in Georgia. In
1864 the original Northern goal of a limited war to restore the Union had given way to a
new strategy of total war to destroy the Old South and its basic institution of slavery and

to give the restored Union a new birth of freedom, as President Lincoln put it in his
address at Gettysburg to dedicate a cemetery for Union soldiers killed in the battle there.
From 1862 to 1865, Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia staved off
invasions and attacks by the Union Army of the Potomac commanded by a series of
ineffective generals until Ulysses S. Grant came to Virginia from the Western theater to
become general in chief of all Union armies in 1864. After bloody battles at places with
names like The Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg, Grant finally
brought Lee to bay at Appomattox in April 1865. In the meantime Union armies and river
fleets in the theater of war comprising the slave states west of the Appalachian Mountain
chain won a long series of victories over Confederate armies commanded by hapless or
unlucky Confederate generals.
In 1864-1865 General William Tecumseh Sherman led his army deep into the
Confederate heartland of Georgia and South Carolina, destroying their economic
infrastructure while General George Thomas virtually destroyed the Confederacy's Army
of Tennessee at the battle of Nashville. In 1865 all the principal Confederate armies
surrendered, and when Union cavalry captured the fleeing Confederate President
Jefferson Davis in Georgia on May 10, 1865, resistance collapsed and the war ended. By
the end of Civil War united nation free from slavery began. The military force of the
United States over two centuries. During those years, the United States evolved from a
new nation fighting Great Britain for independence 177583, through the monumental

American Civil War 186165 and, after collaborating in triumph during World War II
194145, to the world's sole remaining superpower from the late 20th century to present.
These wars made a huge impact on writing which portraits a suffering and
violence of war towards common peoples survival. Many of the war novels emerged
due to war times, a war novel is a novel about the details of war which the primary action
takes place on a battlefield, or in a civilian setting, where the characters are either
preoccupied with the preparations for, suffering the effects of, or recovering from war.
The war novel's origins are in the epic poetry of the classical and medieval periods,
especially Homer's Iliad, Virgil's The Aeneid, sagas like the Old English Beowulf, and
Arthurian literature. All of these epics were concerned with preserving the history or
mythology of conflicts between different societies, while providing an accessible
narrative that could reinforce the collective memory of a people.
Other important influences on the war novel included the tragedies of dramatists
such as Euripides, Seneca the Younger, Christopher Marlowe, and Shakespeare.
Euripedes the Trojan Women is a powerfully disturbing play on the theme of war's
horrors, apparently critical of Athenian imperialism. Shakespeare's Henry V, which
focuses on events immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 during
the Hundred Years' War, provides a model for how the history, tactics, and ethics of war
could be combined in an essentially fictional framework. Many war novels are historical
novels. The war novel came of age during the nineteenth century, with works like
Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma in 1839, which features the Battle of Waterloo,

Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace in1869, about the Napoleonic Wars in Russia, and Stephen
Crane's The Red Badge of Courage in 1895, which deals with the American Civil War.
All of these works feature realistic depictions of major battles, scenes of wartime horror
and atrocities, and significant insights into the nature of heroism and cowardice, as well
as the exploration of moral questions.
American writers wrote, published, and read a great deal about the war as it was
going on and in the years that immediately followed. This literature invested the violence
and trauma of the Civil War in their novels such as Gone with the Wind is a novel written
by Margaret Mitchell, first published in 1936. The story is set in Clayton County and
Atlanta, both in Georgia, during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era. It
depicts the struggles of young Scarlett O'Hara, the spoiled daughter of a plantation owner,
who must use every means at her disposal to claw her way out of poverty following the
destructive Sherman's March to the Sea. This historical novel features a Bildungsroman
or coming of age story, with the title taken from a poem written by Ernest Dowson. Its
portrayal of slavery and African Americans has been considered controversial, especially
by succeeding generations, as well as its use of a racial epithet and ethnic slurs common
to the period.
In 1952 Shiloh the novel by eminent civil war historian Shelby Foote uses first
person narratives by soldiers on both sides of the conflict to tell the story of the horrific
1862 battle of Shiloh, one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. The Killer Angels
novel by Michael Shaara published in1974 , a historical novel that was awarded the

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975. The novel tells the story of the four days of the Battle
of Gettysburg in the American Civil War: June 30, 1863, as the troops of both the Union
and the Confederacy move into battle around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and
July 1, July 2, and July 3, when the battle was fought. The story is character-driven and
told from the perspective of various protagonists.
John Jakes North and South was published in 1982. The story of the novel takes
place before, during, and after the American Civil War. The saga tells the story of the
enduring friendship between Orry Main of South Carolina and George Hazard of
Pennsylvania, who become best friends while attending the United States Military
Academy at West Point but later find themselves and their families on opposite sides of
the war. The slave-owning Mains are rural gentleman planters while the big-city Hazards
live by manufacturing and industry, their differences reflecting the real divisions between
North and South which ultimately led to war.
One of the most influential war stories every written , The Red Badge of Courage
by Stephen Crane it was published in 1895, a full thirty years after the American Civil
War had ended. Although Stephen Crane was born after the war and never participated in
battle himself, he was highly praised by the Civil War veterans for having captured a
realistic impression of their actual battlefield experiences and emotions. The Red Badge
of Courage treats with the meaning of courage as the young protagonist, Henry Fleming,
is cast into a literal "trial by fire" that will take the full measure of his courage. Crane

carefully traces the development of our young soldier, detailing the hopes and fears and
rationalizations of his career.
Robert Hicks tells the remarkable story of Carrie McGavock in The Widow of the
South published in 2005. The novel is based on the true story of a Confederate woman
who devoted herself to giving Southern soldiers a proper burial in her own backyard. The
novel begins in 1894 when, the protagonist, Carrie McGavock, is an elderly woman. An
equally elderly soldier who turns out to be her lost love shows up at her door and asks if
he too can be buried in her personal graveyard. As the novel opens in 1894, she is
accompanied by her ex-slave, servant, and friend, Mariah, as she makes her daily
pilgrimage among the graves. The Widow of the South describes the lives of Carrie and
her acceptance of her role in life, with her husband John, and Zachariah Cashwell for the
rest of the war and the years that followed. It's a setting that could fall into stereotype
proper Southern lady falls for common soldier against the backdrop of the evil of man.
Robert Hicks avoids this trap. The relationship between Carrie and Cashwell is hard to
understand at first, partly because Carrie McGavock is hard to fathom for much of the
book, even to herself. Their love, born in a world of pain and desperation, becomes a
force to understanding themselves and their own roles in the world, and changes them
both irrevocably.
There are many facets of this story that Robert Hicks does well. His descriptions
of how the war changed the South, both from the privileged plantation aristocracy and the
common men trying to scratch out a living any way they can, rings painfully credible.

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The loss of so many men and the destruction of large areas left farms untended and towns
deserted. Reconstruction brought a new economic model that left the plantations
anachronistic leftovers of an earlier age. While it is obvious that the author cares deeply
for his beloved South, he is also unflinching in his criticisms of it. The Widow of the
South is homage to the strength and character of Carrie McGavock, and by the end of the
novel, it is a touching tribute to the sacrifices she made to the men and families she never
knew. This novel is not be a Civil War classic like Gone with the Wind and Cold
Mountain, but it is a perceptive look at lives undone by the folly of men and one woman
who dragged herself from the pits of grief and depression to make a difference in the
world.
March is a novel by Geraldine Brooks published in 2005. It is a novel that retells
Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women from the point of view of Alcott's protagonists'
absent father. The novel Little Women was published just a few years after the Civil War
ended. It portrays the lives of a mother and her daughters while the father is away,
serving in the U.S. Army. In March Brooks has inserted the novel into the classic tale,
revealing the events surrounding March's absence during the American Civil War in
1862. In 1862, Mr. March, an abolitionist and chaplain in the Union Army, is driven by
his conscience to leave his home and family in Concord, Massachusetts, to participate in
the war. During this time, March writes letters to his family, but he withholds the true
extent of the brutality and injustices he witnesses on and off the battlefields. He suffers
from a prolonged illness stemming from poor conditions on a cotton farm in Virginia.

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While in hospital, he has an unexpected meeting with Grace, an intelligent and literate
black nurse whom he first met as a young woman staying in a large house where she was
a slave. The recovering March, despite his guilt and grief over his survival when others
have perished, returns home to his wife and Little Women, but he has been scarred by the
events he has gone through. The novel accurately reflects Bronson Alcott's principles,
notably his belief that boys and girls of all races had a right to education and his wish to
follow a vegetarian diet. It presents the young Mrs. March as a fiery character with strong
verbal and physical expressions of anger. The novel won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for
fiction.
Like this Charles Frazier also used the civil war background in his work Cold
Mountain this novel is about the story of a confederate soldier named Inman and his
journey back to his homeland after years of fighting in the civil war, along the way he
meets many interesting personalities some benign some malevolent. Inman desire to
meet his lover Ada who is struggles to live without her father, Inman and servants, the
story shares several similarities with Homer's The Odyssey is one of the major ancient
Greek epic poems written by Homer. The poem mainly focuses on the Greek hero
Odysseus an Ithacan king and his journey home after a successful campaign against the
City of Troy although long since wearied of the war he had nevertheless staid until the
end. It takes Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War, along the
way he meets many interesting personalities and some malevolent. Odysseuss returning
to his home to see his wife Penelope who struggle to live without her husband and son

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Telemachus twenty years old. The two stories are very similar on the surface level only
but the characters are different through their survival against hardships. The story and
characters of Cold Mountain have certain parallels to The Odyssey of Homer. Inman is a
soldier, like Odysseus is warrior who is battle-fatigued and is trying to get home. Further,
each obstacle, each rogue, encountered along the way teaches the wayfarer more about
himself. The patience, humility and endurance required confer upon him a worthiness of
his goal. Meanwhile, Ada, like Penelope, faces problems of her own at home, and when
Inman, Odysseus finally arrives they were united. Homers Iliad tells about the battles of
the Trojan War. His Odyssey, as sequel, tells about wanting home and peace. Cold
Mountain, as sequel to Inmans Civil War battles, is the story of those same wants. This
desire for home is the central theme that ties The Odyssey and Cold Mountain together.
The protagonist of the story is a man named Inman, who served with the Confederate
army during the Civil War. The qualities or attributes of a hero, he showed great heroism
in battle field such as intrepidity, valor, prowess, gallantry, bravery, courage, daring, and
fortitude. The tale revolves around Inman's journey home to meet his beloved Ada. He
was from the area around Cold Mountain in the Western North Carolina, along the way,
he is confronted by various obstacles, but he journeys on valiantly, regardless, to reunite
with his love, Ada Monroe, a beautiful young woman whos living alone on a huge farm
following the death of her father, Monroe. Ada and Inman both live in the town of Black
Cove, which is overlooked by Cold Mountain. The novel story is about the two
protagonists, Inman tries to return to Black Cove and Ada tries to survive there.

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The story begins in the final months of the Civil War, Inman deserting from a
hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he was recovering from a neck wound he
received at Petersburg, Virginia. He was fighting in the war near Petersburg when he
was injured. But he somehow survived, and was moved to a field hospital. After two
days, Inman was sent to another hospital. Inman remembers little of this period, except
the incredible heat and horrible smells of the hospitals. Civil War buffs will recognize
Petersburg as one of the deadliest battles of the Civil War. The vast majority of soldiers
there died in rapid gunfire, something that was unprecedented in war up to that point.
Frazier doesnt give a very clear description of Petersburg: instead, he goes for
psychological realism, describing Inmans trauma and disorientation. Inman slowly
regains his strength and then proceeds to leave the hospital with a large neck wound.

He is haunted by nightmares about his time in battle, and he is so powerfully

attracted to Ada that he wants to see her again as soon as possible. As he slowly walks
home, he remembers seeing Ada for the first time in her fathers church. Inman
remembers falling in love with Ada. He began attending church just to see her. Many of
the people in Black Cove made fun of Monroe and Ada because they were out of touch
with the town. Ada in particular was seen as snooty and pretentious. On the day that
Inman first saw Ada, Monroe spoke in church about the beauty of Cold Mountain, and
the inevitability of death. Inman is a poor, working class boy, while Ada is wealthy and
privileged. In addition, Ada is seen as an outsider in Black Cove, while Inman is secure in
his connection to the town.

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Even though in the past Ada and Inman were very different, they have become
increasingly alike as the Civil War has stripped away all but the most basic aspects of
humanity and survival. Inman continues to think about Monroe. Monroe was fond of
saying that he was on a mission in Black Cove to bring Christianity not only to the
townspeople but also to the Native Americans living nearby. Inman did not pay much
attention to Monroes sermon because he was too busy staring at Ada. After the sermon,
Inmans friends, Mars and Dillard, teased him for staring. A stranger told Inman that Ada
probably had a betrothed back in Charleston already. On the road, Inman gets in a fight
with three men who demand to know where he is headed. Inman fends off the men, but
they chase him to a river and shoot holes in the boat he is taking to the opposite side.
Inman also fears that he will be attacked by the Home Guard, a group of Confederate
soldiers who have the right to arrest and kill deserters which Inman technically is.

Ada and her beloved father lived in Charleston for most of Adas life, but when
Ada was a teenager, they moved to Black Cove. Monroe is a talented, charismatic
preacher. Monroe seems to be a kindly, if overbearing father, and for many years he is the
only man in Adas life. Ada was trained for a docile life of reading and music. Monroes
death marks the true beginning of Adas life, absence of Monroe; Ada must take care of
herself. After the death of Monroe Ada is remain unmarried, she is so reluctant to work
her farm that shes having trouble finding food for the time being, she eats mostly eggs,
milk, and tomatoes, she is slowly starving to death. She remembers being a child and
playing with her cousin, Lucy. Although Ada never fights in the Civil War, her situation

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back at home in some ways parallels Inmans. She is pulled away from her friends and
family, and forced to survive on her own. Her fortunes change when her neighbors, Sally
Swanger and Esco Swanger, send a young woman named Ruby Thewes to live with Ada.
Ruby is a talented farmer and a diligent worker, and she and Ada agree to live like equals,
taking care of the land. Ada is amazed by how hard she is forced to work to survive. Ada
must struggle to survive, but her struggle has a silver lining: she has a chance to reinvent
herself as a stronger, more confident woman.

Ada remembers coming to the town of Black Cove six years ago, hoping to cure
Monroe of his tuberculosis. Monroes doctors in Charleston recommended that they all
move out of the city so that Monroe could get some fresh air. Ada had never seen
mountains before arriving at Cold Mountain. She was delighted to find Monroe so
interested in Cold Mountains foliage and animals. She thinks,
I would follow this old man to Liberia if he asked me to do so.
Ada did not choose to come to Black Cove of her own free will she came out of loyalty to
her aged father, whom she seems to have loved dearly. While Adas relationship with her
father is touching and poignant, it also signals her immaturity. No matter what she wants,
Ada cannot spend the rest of her life guarding her fathers memory, she has to move on
with her life, and learn to live as her own woman.

Inman crosses paths with a strange priest named Solomon Veasey, who is carrying
a young woman whom he is impregnated. Inman forces Veasey to return the young

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woman, whose name is Laura, to her home. Afterwards, Inman spends a night with a
group of roaming gypsies, and steals food from a group of beautiful women who are
bathing in the river. Soon after, Inman crosses paths with Veasey yet again. Veasey
continues walking in the same direction as Inman, reasoning that he will be killed if he
sticks around any longer.
During this time, Inman remembers his early experiences with Ada, such as resting
his head in her lap at a Christmas party four years earlier just before the war began. At the
Christmas party, Ada had a little too much to drink. Sally Swanger, also drunk, told Ada
that she should marry Inman as soon as she could. Ada was embarrassed by this
suggestion. But when she got up to leave the room, she found Inman sitting outside,
wearing a black suit. Inman greeted Ada and pointed out that she looked flushed. Shyly,
Ada sat in Inmans lap for a while, while Inman smiled quietly. Afterwards, Ada got up
and returned to the party. Inman and Ada are undeniably attracted to one another, Adas
attraction to Inman, was sincere and passionate, seems strangely childish she rests in his
lap because she has no idea what else to do.
Inman and Veasey come to a large wooden building, an inn. Where Veasey tries
and fails to have sex with a black prostitute named Tildy. Veasey has just left the building
with Tildy, Inman is by himself. He decides to spend the night in the inn, paying about
five Confederate dollars for food and shelter for the night. Later in the night, Inman
encounters an old peddler whose name is Odell, who claims to own a vast fortune in
Georgia one that he will probably never be able to claim for himself. Odell offers Inman
some whiskey from Tennessee, which they enjoy together. Odell tells Inman that he was

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born rich, but lost his property in Georgia due to the chaos of the war. Odell gives Inman
and Veasey food and drink in exchange for listening to his stories, so too could Inman be
said to provide for Veasey in return for Veaseys companionship. The next morning,
Inman and Veasey reunite. Veasey claims that he had a wonderful night, although Inman
notices that Veasey has a long scratch on his eye. Together, they set off down the road.

As time goes on, Ada and Ruby become close friends. Ada learns that Ruby is the
daughter of Stobrod Thewes. Stobrod abandoned Ruby when she was still a child, so
shes been taking care of herself for almost as long as she can remember. When Ruby was
older, she began to wonder about her mother the kind of woman who would marry a man
like Stobrod. She never succeeded in learning anything about her mother, because
Stobrod enlisted in the army before she could ask him. Ruby has not heard anything from
her father since he went off to fight, so shes sure he was killed in battle. In her fathers
absence, Ruby learned how to run a farm, and how to fight off enemies with her bare
hands. Ada and Ruby stare out into the night sky. Ada feels an overpowering sense of
loneliness as she makes out the outline of Cold Mountain. She remembers something
Monroe told her the sense of loneliness is really the sense that God has vanished.
Ruby and Ada have a lot in common; in spite of their differences neither Ada nor
Ruby seems to know much about their mother. Ruby also proves that shes tough and
self-sufficient she can fight off adults with her bare hands, despite the fact that shes a
young woman. In a way, Ruby has been training for the aftermath of the Civil War for her
entire life she seems not to mind that the war has thrown the country into chaos, because

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she was born into this same kind of chaos. Ada tells Ruby about her own childhood: her
mother, Claire Dechutes, turned Monroe down the first time he proposed to her, but
changed her mind several years later. Later, she died giving birth to Ada.
In town, Ruby and Ada meet a captive who tells them that he was arrested and
tortured by the Home Guard, which is headed by a man named Teague. Although the
captive served in the war, he tried to desert halfway through, and was punished for his
crime. Inman and Veasey meet a man named Junior, whos trying to move a dead bull out
of a riverbed. After helping Junior with his task, they join Junior for dinner.
In Juniors home, Inman realizes that Junior is an abusive husband and father, and
he may be serving his guests human flesh to eat. Inman meets one of Juniors children, a
half-black girl named Lula, and Juniors wife Lila. Lila gets Inman drunk and Inman is
tempted to have sex with her. Suddenly, Junior bursts in and points a gun at Inman: hes
lured Inman and Veasey into his home so that he could arrest them and turn them over to
the Home Guard. Drunkenly, Junior forces Veasey to marry Inman to Lila; afterwards, the
Home Guard shows up and marches Inman and Veasey into the forest. The horsemen of
the Home Guard shoot both Inman and Veasey. Veasey dies of his wounds, but Inman
miraculously survives. He crawls back to the road and eventually gains the strength to
walk. Inman sneaks back to Juniors house for revenge. There, he reclaims the
possessions he left there, including a rifle and money. He uses the butt of the rifle to beat
Junior over the head, and then walks back to the road.

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In Black Cove, Ada remembers one of her final meetings with Inman, just before
he went off to fight. Inman, who was quiet and introspective, told Ada a long story about
the lost city of Kanuga, which used to be a Native American community. One day, long
ago, a stranger came to Kanuga and told the people that he came from the land of Shining
Rocks. The stranger advised the people of Kanuga to journey to the Shining Rocks but he
also suggested that very soon, they had be conquered by a dangerous enemy. The people
decided to take the strangers cryptic advice, and they traveled to the Shining Rocks,
where they found a bright cave. Confused, the people returned home, where they were
quickly conquered. Ada had no idea what this story meant. She said something flippant
and then said goodbye to Inman, but soon regretted her words. She saw Inman one more
time before he left, and gave him a passionate kiss.
Inman comes to an Old Woman, who takes Inman into her home and treats his
wounds. The woman gives Inman food and lets him rest until he is feeling much
healthier. The old woman gives Inman a strange ball, made of herbs, and tells him to
swallow it. Inman does so. The evening moves on, and Inman is inspired to open up to
the old woman about Ada. He tells her about Adas beauty, her personality, and his desire
to marry her. The old woman finds fault with Inmans desire to marry Ada for her beauty
she claims that,
Marring a woman for her beauty makes no more sense
than eating a bird for its singing.

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And also the old woman suggests, theres a kind of Romeo and Juliet irony about the
romance in this book that Inman and Ada are basically two inexperienced young people
experiencing a first crush, but because of external situations their young love becomes a
matter of life and death. As the evening turns into night, Inman and the old woman fall
asleep. He wakes up late the next day, feeling foggy from the medicine the woman gave
him. He goes back to sleep, and when he wakes up, he finds that at least another day has
passed. Inman tells the woman that he needs to be going soon. The woman nods, and
points Inman on the right path back to Cold Mountain.
Afterwards, Inman stays with a young woman named Sara, who is lost her
husband Jonathan. She is eighteen years old. Inman is impressed that Sara survives on her
own. Sara explains that she pulls her own plow, butchers hogs, grinds cornmeal, etc. She
also takes care of her baby child. She says that her husband has died in the war. Late at
night, Sara is ambushed by Union soldiers, she sees three horsemen wearing blue jackets
ordering Sara to come out of the house with her hands up. Inman will need to hide
himself; he sneaks out the back of Saras house.
Inman identified that the men are Federals who were in blue jackets. They point
guns at Sara and ask her where her money is hidden. To torture Sara, one of the horsemen
goes into her house and comes out carrying Saras baby. He threatens to hurt the baby
unless she tells him about her money. After many hours, during which the men dangle
Saras baby over fire, the men realize that Sara is telling the truth: she has no money.
They take Saras hog and ride away. Inman decides to follow the three horsemen. Inman

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hunts down the soldiers and kills them, returning what they stole from Sara. The next day,
Inman sets out on the road to give up on his journey, he is too loyal and desire to meet
Ada in Black Cove.
Ada and Inman bury their feelings of isolation, just as they internalize their grief,
regret, and hope for the future. Ada grows to feel content and secure at Black Cove but
recalls the alienation she felt both on first arriving and immediately after her fathers
funeral. She also recollects her sense of estrangement from Charleston society. Similarly,
Inman feels a sense of profound loneliness and growing misidentification with the human
world because of his war experiences. His spiritual desolation is suggested when he
listens to many peoples tales of hardship but rarely shares details of his own past.
Through his loneliness Inman cultivates an otherworldly spirituality, similar in many
ways to the goat-womans, that encourages people to talk. Frazier shows how Inmans
solitude is not simply a physical state it is a psychic introspection born from a need to
find meaning in what appears to be a senseless existence.
In Black Cove, Stobrod Thewes, now a military deserter, returns to Ruby and asks
Ada and Ruby to take him in. He plays the fiddle for them, very beautifully, and Ada,
feeling sympathetic, allows him to stay with them. Later, Stobrod brings a deserter friend,
nicknamed Pangle, and another, Reid, to stay with Ruby and Ada. Ruby is resentful of
Stobrod presence, but agrees to let the guests stay. Shortly afterwards, Stobrod and
Pangle are attacked by the Home Guard in the mountains. The Guardsmen kill Pangle and
wound Stobrod. Reid, who was just out of sight when the Home Guardsmen attacked,

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tells Ada and Ruby whats happened. The trio goes into the mountains, where they find
Stobrod, still barely alive. Ada and Ruby take care of Stobrod, trying to nurse him back to
health so that they can carry him down to Black Cove.
Inman walks through the mountains, stopping only rarely. He stops to help a
weeping woman, whose child has just died. Inman builds the child a tiny coffin and
buries the child in the ground. In gratitude, the woman invites Inman for dinner, and
cooks him a meal. That evening, Inman goes on his way. This is one of the clearest
examples of Inmans hospitality towards a woman. Inman provides a very clear service
for the weeping woman, at once abstract and concrete, in return for which he gets food.
The feeling of empathy and compassion for others are that contribute to heroic behavior.

People who rush in to help others in the face of danger and adversity do so because they
genuinely care about the safety and well being of other people. The people who have
heroic tendencies also have a much higher degree of empathy and they feel concern and
care for the people around them and they are able to feel what those in need of help are
feeling. Inman continues walking, often sleeping in abandoned buildings. One day, he
passes by two skeletons dangling from the trees. The skeletons still have some hair and
flesh on them. The skeletons are a reminder of the harshness and danger of this world
Inman draws closer and closer to Cold Mountain, he was overjoyed to be near the
end of the journey, and imagines what his reunion with Ada will be like. As he enters
Black Cove, he sees a cabin, from which smoke is rising. He knocks on the door of the
cabin and finds the Georgia boy inside. The boy invites Inman in, and Inman hears about

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the Georgia boy is witnessing of Stobrod and Pangles deaths. Inman listens patiently to
the boys story, and then asks him if he knows who Ada Monroe is. He is amazed to find
that the Georgia boy has met Ada. The boy points Inman toward Adas farm and wishes
him good luck.
Inman hears a gunshot in the distance. He draws his own weapon and moves
toward the sound. As he approaches, he sees a figure: the figure of Ada Monroe. He calls
her name, and Ada does not answer. She sees a dirty beggar, with bloodshot eyes and old
clothes. Inman stares into Ada is eyes, he is overcome by love. Ada does not know what
to do or say. Eventually, she tells Inman, I do not know you. Her gun is still pointed at
him. It is tragic but understandable that when Inman and Ada finally do see one another,
Ada barely recognizes Inman. Inman has been changed by his journey not just in a
physical sense, either. He is become more savage and brutal, taking revenge into his own
hands time and time again. He is amazed to meet Ada there, as she is caring for Stobrod.
At first, Ada does not recognize Inman, but when she does she embraces him and takes
him back to Stobrod and Ruby. Inman and Ada make passionate love and share stories of
their time apart.
In mountain Stobrod begins to recover. His wounds shrink, and hes able to eat
solid food again. Ruby, Ada, and Inman prepare to return to the farm Ada and Inman
agree that to keep Inman safe, he should journey north, surrender to the Federals, and
wait for the war to end. Inman and Stobrod who were been nursed back to health head
north while Ruby and Ada return to Black Cove. Inman proposes that Ada and Ruby go

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ahead to the farm if they travel with Inman and Stobrod, they will be in danger. Stobrod
and Inman plan to walk north to the Federals, where they will surrender and then lay low,
hoping that the war ends soon. Ruby and Ada agree to this plan. But while they were still
in the woods, the Home Guardsmen attack Inman and Stobrod. While Stobrod succeeds
in running off, Inman attacks the Guardsmen, succeeding in killing three of them. For the
last time in the novel, Inman will fight, and defeat, a larger, more powerful force.
The remaining Guardsman runs away from Inman, and Inman chases after him.
Inman corners his enemy in the forest, Inman tries to get a good look at his opponent; he
realizes that the horseman is Birch. Birch is really a teenage boy, not even old enough to
shave his face. The trees become so thick that the Home Guard riders can no longer ride
away he is trapped. Inman raises his gun and tells Birch to drop his weapon. He wants an
excuse to save the boys life, he insists. The most important sign of Inmans changing
personality comes here, when Inman refuses to kill the final guardsman, even though he
has every advantage over his young opponent. Inman now seems to have embraced
mercy instead of revenge. Instead of obeying Inman, Birch tries to bolt away on his
horse. Almost immediately, the horse gets tangled in the trees, and Birch falls off. He
reaches for his pistol, but Inman yells for him to drop it at once. Instead of responding,
Birch moves his hand shoots Inman and suddenly, Inman falls to the ground. Ironically,
he partly dies because he makes the conscious choice to spare the life of the person who
eventually murders him. Inman sacrifices his own life to save Birchs.

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Meanwhile, Ada and Ruby are walking back to their farm when they hear
gunshots. Stobrod comes running toward them, and explains that the Home Guard
ambushed them. Ruby, Ada, and Stobrod rush toward the gunshot sounds to find Inman.
Ada looks through the woods, and eventually comes to Inman, lying on the ground. Ada
allows Inman to rest his head in her lap, Inman is dead. This action resembles Inmans
first romantic encounter with Ada occurred when she sat in his lap, years before, and now
the roles have reversed. Of course, the narrator makes clear the differences between that
idyllic early scene and the present moment: back then, Inman and Ada had a happy future
to look forward to; now, they have none.
An Epilogue is set in 1874; Ruby and Adas fledgling community is still thriving.
Ruby and Ada do the farming, and Stobrod makes the music. Ruby has married Reid, and
has three children. Ada has lost Inman, but she has a nine year old girl, presumably the
product of her encounter with Inman just before Inmans death. Ada spends her days
caring for her child and calmly attending to the tasks of life on a farm. Ada sustains that
Inmans tragic death left its mark on her life in ways both physical and emotional.
Nevertheless, because she is inspired by the task of caring for her farm and her child, Ada
refuses to wallow in the past. She devotes herself to living here and now, working on her
farm, loving her child, and listening to Stobrod beautiful fiddle music. As Ada has
already said, strength and happiness are acts of will. She simply refuses to spend the rest
of her life moping over Inman.

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