Memory In Cold Mountain

The Role of the Past in Cold Mountain and in Life

Memories are one of the few things that people cling to for their entire lives. Some memories can be extremely enlightening and remind a person of joyful times; on the contrary, memories can exist as nightmares and haunt a person until their death. The novel Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier deals with the past and how the characters are affected by it. In Cold Mountain , the two main characters both experience hardships due to the Civil War, which influences many decisions they make later, both of their futures are also shaped by people they’ve met, places they’ve been, and experiences they’ve been through. Inman and Ada, the two people that the novel focuses on, go through life changing

The titular Cold Mountain is an area in which his grandparents lived when he was a kid, and one where he would visit on the weekends. It is evident through some of his other works that Frazier really likes to write about what he is familiar with setting wise. It has been said that he “writes about his native territory with the eye of a lifelong countryman and the voice of a poet”(Grove Atlantic). He has a PhD in English from University of South Carolina. Frazier still lives in North Carolina and still writes. Cold Mountain was one of Frazier’s first and only books, and probably the most famous. It won the National Book award in 1997 and tells the story of a Confederate soldier in the Civil War, named W.P. Inman who deserts an army hospital where he is being treated and decides to walk a great distance back to his home in Cold Mountain. There is speculation that the soldier in the book could have bene real (Peuser , Plante), but Frazier claims that the idea for the character came from his great-great uncle, with the same name. These facts all relate back to the thesis. Frazier is writing about a place he’s been, Cold Mountain, and some of the experiences he’s had there. His past, and his family’s past, helped to shape the novel into a work that deals with memories, the past, and it’s effects on

He is “regarded by many as the greatest American painter of the nineteenth century.”(Wienberg). Being born in the mid 19th century in Boston, he lived around the same place and time as the character Inman(Weinberg). As a teen, Homer travelled to New York to be a printmaker and then went to Virginia to make prints of the Civil War. as a war correspondent. After those experiences, he made two trips to Europe by himself and met many people. After his return, he painted realistic Civil War paintings as well as paintings of people working and struggling in England and other coastal countries in Europe. This relates to the fact of memories affecting one’s future because the people that Home met shaped his future paintings, by making them more realistic and truthful. Winslow Homer and Inman have many similarities; they were born around the same time and place, they both experienced the war, and they both went on long journeys, individually, meeting new people along the way. Homer was a war correspondent for a newspaper and had to depict, in detail, the disgusting sights that he experienced first-hand. Inman also experienced horrific sights and, rather than portraying them in artwork, he had to relive the vivid memories through terrible flashbacks. Homer took trips to Europe, alone, to study painting. His isolation changed his work and made him a better artist. Inman is also influenced by his isolated