Cold Mountain

C old Mountain , Charles Frazier’s debut novel, won critical acclaim and the National Book Award for fiction when it was published in 1997. As an author of travel books and short stories, Frazier had ample experience in writing about landscapes and using a condensed prose style. Frazier applied these literary skills in crafting Cold Mountain’s episodic structure and detailed descriptive passages. Frazier’s prose draws on the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the scope of southern novels by authors such as William Faulkner, and the appreciation of nature expressed in the poetry of Walt Whitman. Frazier lives in North Carolina, and his choice of Cold Mountain’s setting along the Blue Ridge Mountains conveys his profound identification with this hallowed terrain.
The epic novel charts its course through the troubled waters of nineteenth-century American history. The action is set in 1864, three years after the outbreak of the Civil War, in an era of discord between North and South. Although the war is essentially a backdrop for events, it is clear that Inman’s experiences as a Confederate soldier have profoundly affected his understanding of the world and have resurrected his dormant spiritual anxieties. Many characters tell tales of hardship and despair, some of which are war stories. These tales help develop the themes of displacement and exile that define the novel.
Frazier suggests that the war damaged Southerners both personally and politically. Frazier’s characters are rarely supportive of one side or another. After three years of conflict, many are disillusioned with what they consider to be the selfish motivations of both sides. In particular, the inhabitants of Cold Mountain are presented as guarded, insular, and narrow-minded.
Frazier examines the issue of slavery in the context of the war, but as a backdrop to central events. The characters are racially diverse, but the novel tends to focus on white society. Frazier incorporates the cruel