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Mikkaela Bailey
ReplyDeleteProf. Kirk
ENGL 3353
30 September 2015
Cold Mountain: First Limited Literary Critique
In Charles Frazier’s novel, Cold Mountain, the mountain from which the book gets its name is the obstacle that the main characters must conquer, but it is also a source of hope. Ada must overcome her ineptitude to continue living because a life on the mountain is her only option. Inman must reach the mountain to find peace and balance once more, to truly recover from the war. “So he held to the idea of another world, a better place, and he figured he might as well consider Cold Mountain to be the location of it as anywhere” (23). Whereas Inman could reach a place of solace by coming to the mountain, Ada will only truly reach this point by learning how to embrace life on the mountain. “Ada wondered where she might find the courage to search out hope…. The sky was clear, and Cold Mountain suddenly looked close enough to reach out and touch” (61). If both of them can overcome this mountain, they will come to the place of hope that the mountain represents.
Sadie Wyant
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ENGL 3353
30 September 2015
Cold Mountain—First Third Critique
In Charles Frazier’s novel Cold Mountain, windows are seen as opportunities for adventure and hope. Inman describes the window in the hospital by saying, “The window was as tall as a door, and he imagined many times that it would open onto some other place and let him walk through and be there” (2nd page of Ch. 1). Inman places so much value on this window that he even uses it to calculate how much the world around him is changing. However, Inman is desperate for hope that the hospital can no longer offer him. He finally “set his foot on the sill and stepped out the window,” leaving behind his dreary existence for something new (last page of Ch. 1). In a similar way, Ada uses a window as a means of escape from her current reality. Her special reading spot is one that looks upon a window. This window “offered some relief against the strain of such bleak stories” (1st third of Ch. 2). Both Ada and Inman use windows to escape from reality and dream of something more. Through each of their windows they see a different landscape than the one inside their minds. The windows almost seem to offer something that is unattainable; such as a place where reality is different.
Ashton Dickerson
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ENGL 3353
30 September 2015
Part 1 Critique
In Charles Fraziers’ Cold Mountain he explores the possibility of losing one’s self and innocence. We see these ideas come to life in Inman during the first few pages of the novel. While in the hospital, Inman remembers details about his home and childhood, places where he would always be innocent. Inman points out that “The window apparently wanted only to take his thoughts back. Which was fine with him, for he had seen the metal face of the age and had been so stunned by it that when he thought into the future, all he could vision was a world from which everything he counted important had been banished or had willingly fled” (4). After what he has experienced in the war Inman will never be the same again. Only his memories of simpler, more innocent times will offer him any sort of hope. On page 9, the blind man says that, “It might have been worse had I ever been given a glimpse of the world and then lost it.” Inman is struggling this same idea. He has seen the good side of the world, the innocent side, but has lost it and will probably never be able to truly see it again. The only choice that Inman has is to live in the past, in his memories, as a way to remain hopeful. If he looks towards the future Inman only sees a world on fire and cannot imagine anything hopeful or peaceful about it.
Amanda McMahon
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ENGL 3533
30 September 2015
Cold Mountain First Third Paragraph
In Charles Frazier's novel Cold Mountain, the isolation of characters is often paired with a search for meaning. Both Ada and Inman are virtually alone during the first chapters of the novel. Inman is filled with terrible homesickness during his time at the hospital ward. It could be that, through the pain and loss of war, Inman came to associate his own identity with his home at Cold Mountain. Inman's thoughts often wandered toward home: "after a time, though, Inman found that he had left the book again and was simply forming the topography of home in his head. Cold Mountain, all its ridges and coves and watercourses..." (11). Ada, however, cannot be homesick because she does not feel that anywhere is home. She claims that Charleston is not a place that she ever felt welcome and she felt isolated on Cold Mountain long before Monroe died because all of the mountain people were beneath her. When Monroe died though Ada's isolation became more than just emotional, it became physical. As a result, Ada had to search herself for meaning since she had no work that fulfill her. Both Ada and Inman are faced with similar feelings of isolation in the first few chapters of the novel and, as a result, they search for meaning within themselves.
Callie Brothers
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ENGL 3533
30 September 2015
Cold Mountain Literary Critique
Cold Mountain. A mountain in which the entire story revolves around. As the main characters evolve and adjust to what Cold Mountain truly is, they seem to face many obstacles ahead. Ada discovers the aspect of being homesick and never feeling like she belongs. As she wonders around this mountain she realizes that the people of Cold Mountain aren't beneath her, they are actual people just like her, struggling and wondering where their place is just like her. "But still, outsider though she was, this place, the blue mountains, seemed to be holding her where she was. From any direction she came at it, the only conclusion that left her any hope of self-content was this: what she could see around her was all that she could count on.”p. 50. Inman is a man that is struggling with the idea of seeing one thing for a glimpse, then losing it. This idea of striving to find a place, Cold Mountain, a place that will break your heart.
Kelsey Wheatle
ReplyDeleteProfessor Kirk ENGL 3353
20 October 2015
Cold Mountain Literary Critique
In Charles Frazier's "Cold Mountain", the mountain that the book is named after is a symbol for Ada's love, perseverance, and the hope that Inman will return home to his loves Ada, and his home Cold Mountain. As we learn of Inman's injury and near-death, we become aware of Inman's longing of Cold Mountain, because he relates it back to everything in his life. When Swimmer was speaking about climbing, and Inman had told him that he climbed Cold Mountain to its peak, Inman considered Cold Mountain to be a healing realm, a place where all scatter forces would gather(17). Inman himself is a scattered force, and because he was a lost and bothered soul due to the war, he considered that Cold Mountain could be another world, a better place than the foul world he lived in. To the reader, Cold Mountain and Ada can be seen as one body, that becomes Inman's safe haven, and his reason for leaving the war and returning home.