Cold Mountain: Frasiers Archetypal Journey

The archetype of the journey is seen in Charles Frazier’s novel Cold Mountain, most clearly through the experience Inman has wandering back to Cold Mountain. The journey archetype sends the hero in search of some truth to restore order and harmony to the land. The journey often includes a series of trials and tribulations the hero faces along the way. Usually, the hero descends into a real or psychological hell and is forced to discover the blackest truths. Once the hero is at his lowest level, he must accept personal responsibility to return to the world of the living. Inman’s trip fits this description very well in some ways and not in others. It could be said that Inman’s search for truth is his desire to be back home. He has been disillusioned by the war. He saw horrible scenes daily and fought for his life. By coming home to Ada and his mundane life, it is a welcome constant for him in a world he has recently determined to be wild. He believed that once he had reached his destination, order in his personal world and soul could begin to return to normal. In accordance with the definitions of the archetype journey, Inman goes through a great deal of angst and tribulations. He has practically starved many times, been mugged, and fired upon. This strife is culminated when he is betrayed and shanghaied, marched nearly to death, then shot and left for dead. He is buried with a thin layer of dirt in a mass grave and spends half a day underground with the dead. This is his low point, his personal hell. At this point, he even considers not uncovering himself and allowing the easy death to occur. For such a logical and even-headed man, this is a particularly extreme thought. But he eventually finds the willpower to hoist himself out of the grave to once again take up the road. Finally, he gets to the house and restores order to his metaphysical kingdom, coming to terms with many of his thoughts. Ada goes through a more mental archetypal journey. She has to find manageable independence, an aspect of development of which she had always been deprived. Her low point was at the beginning of the book when she realized that she no longer had the money that once had enabled a work-free lifestyle. At the beginning, she has no idea what to do or what she even wants. Once Ruby comes, she begins to come to important self-realization about the pettiness of her past life and how she is no longer willing to live that way. The two women are foils to each other, with Ada being the more refined and educated of the two, while Ruby is more practical and hardworking. Inman, the rational, moral, and selfless farmer boy, and Veasey, the lecherous, self-centered preacher, serve as foils to one another. When the pair is together, Inman seems so strait-laced and moral, thinking every aspect out well in advance, then taking the most sensible route. Veasey, on the other hand, is made to look even more of a lecherous buffoon when he, who has just had relations with Laura Foster, solicits the massive Tildy for sex in the tavern while Inman, the lonely former-soldier who has not been with a woman for a long time, remains celibate.