Depiction of The Civil War in Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

Cold Mountain is a historical fiction novel written by Charles Frazier that tells the story of Inman, a wounded deserter from the Confederate army near the end of the Civil War who journeys for months to return to Ada Monroe, the love of his life. His novel is set in North Carolina during the mid-1860’s in the heart of the Civil War. However, he hardly describes a single battle in detail, but it is praised as one of the greatest novels about the Civil War. By presenting the actual battles of the Civil War, mostly in flashback through Inman’s perspective, Cold Mountain takes a different route and discusses the Civil War by studying its impact on individual people rather than a depiction of the battles that occurred. Therefore, it is both accurate and inaccurate to describe this novel as a Civil War novel. Frazier’s novel Cold Mountain can teach us about the Civil War through the trauma it caused soldiers and those on the home front, both physically and emotionally. One can especially see how the Civil War impacted everyday citizens by looking at the experiences Inman, Ada, and other characters go through during this time.

At the beginning of the novel Inman is in the hospital because of a neck wound he received during combat. Not only does he have a physical wound, but during this time he also experiences emotional distress. Inman finds himself trying to remember how he got the wound and ended up in the hospital. He recalls fighting in a war near Petersburg when he received the wound. His two nearest companions pulled him to the side to examine his wound and said a prayer over him because they were so certain he was going to die. Somehow, Inman survived and was transported to the field hospital and then relocated. He cannot remember much from that time except the sound of buzzing flies, extreme heat, and malodorous smells he experienced during his time spent in the hospital. The Battle of Petersburg is described as one of the deadliest battles of the Civil War. Nothing of this comparison had happened in the war up to that point. Instead of giving an explicit account of the battle itself, Frazier takes a psychological approach and focuses on the trauma and disorientation Inman experiences from the battle. Throughout the rest of the novel, it is safe to say there is not a single soldier along the way who shows a sincere love for battle, or for the South or Union. The soldiers are severely traumatized by what they have experienced in war. Not only does the war cause psychological trauma to those who are in the war, but it creates a waterfall effect on those in the home front who are also experiencing trauma in different ways.

We can see the emotional trauma that takes place on the home front through Ada Monroe’s perspective. Even though Ada has never stepped foot onto a battlefield she begins to experience trauma from the Civil War. The war took men from their homes to go fight in the war, leaving the women lonely and uncertain what their future would hold. During this time period men predominantly held positions of authority in the community, kept up the farms, and also ran businesses in town. Few of these things were done strictly by all women. To make Ada’s situation even worse, her father named Monroe, had died recently. Ada is now left to run the family farm by herself since the farm hands have left as well, either to fight in the war or to desert. She realizes she is ill-equipped to run the farm by herself and wonders if it is even worth keeping up since she does not have any use for the things the farm provides. Faced with the very real possibility of starving to death on her farm, Ada must accept that her education, while important, has left her totally unprepared to survive during the Civil War. One can begin to see why Ada feels so hopeless and emotionally scarred from this experience. She depended on her father for all her life to support her and now he is dead. Without his help or the farm hands it seems to her like she should just give up on life. Ada will have to learn the ways of the farm to survive, but she is afraid of what all she will have to do. In the epilogue of Cold Mountain, Frazier points out that when Ada is reading a story to the children she has trouble turning the pages. Ada has since lost the tip of one of her fingers while chopping wood. The wound Ada has seems to represent the physical and emotional trauma Inman’s death as left in her life. Just like many other women and families who lost loved ones in this time, so did Ada by losing Inman just when she thought she had gotten him back. This great loss of life and a changning way of life creates trauma on the home front and impacted almost every American citizen during this time.

Furthermore, the things that people usually turn to in times of crisis, such as family or religion, are now nowhere to be found during the mid-1860’s: the only priests or parents in the book are corrupt, absent, or dead. Ada’s father Monroe was the priest of the town before he passed away, leaving the town without a priest. Inman comes across another priest named Veasey while he is walking along the Deep River. Veasey is dressed in all black walking with a horse who is carrying an unconscious woman. Inman runs to the man and demands Veasey tell him what is going on or else he will kill him. Veasey boasts to Inman that it would be a sin to kill him because he is a priest and a man of God. Veasey explains that he drugged the women to take her and kill her because she is pregnant with his child. Veasey did not want the people of the town to find out because they would ban him. This leaves the town of Cold Mountain with no priest since Monroe’s passing and a corrupt priest only out for his own good, leaving the home front with no trustworthy minister to turn to at this time. Just as Ada’s father has passed Ruby explains that she has never had a relationship with her father, who is named Stobrod. Ruby’s mother died during childbirth and Stobrod makes sure Ruby does not forget it since her mother's passing devastated him so badly. Stobrod never physically hurt Ruby, but he did not take care of her either. At the beginning of the Civil War, Stobrod goes to fight in the war, leaving Ruby with no warning to fend for herself. Leaving those on the home front with no form of comfort to turn to during this time, but themselves, causing massive amounts of physical and emotional stress on everyone.

An immense part of the Civil War’s devastation was largely psychological as one can see through Frazier’s novel, Cold Mountain. However, it was not only traumatic psychologically, it was traumatic physically. In the last chapters of the novel, Inman is hunted down by the Home Guard and killed. A large fraction of Americans lost their lives during the Civil War and countless others suffered injuries. A theme that is present throughout Cold Mountain is the trauma that survivors of the war experience and how they manage to deal with it. Frazier parallels the American history of the Civil War with personal history to give us an idea of what exactly these people went through in the mid-1860’s. There’s no easy answer to this idea and Frazier suggests that the people of this time looked forward to the future in order to overcome their traumatic memories of the past. At first Ada is living an unproductive life alone on her father's farm with no future. Once she starts setting goals for herself and imagining what the future can be like she starts to heal some of her psychological scars from the past. In the same way that Inman’s journey to Ada provides a sense of “therapy” for his experiences in the war. Just like it is shown in Cold Mountain there is nothing inevitable about the healing process, it takes determination. Ada and Inman move on with their lives because they want to move on and they work hard at doing it. Approaching the depressing end of the novel, Ada has not let the trauma of Inman’s death weigh her down with more traumas. She looks forward to each new day of work on the farm and raising her daughter she had with Inman. Optimism and looking for a better future isn’t always enough to overcome trauma, but it is still important.