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.

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

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