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Survival and Love in Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain Essay example

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Survival and Love in Charles Frazier’s "Cold Mountain" I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. (ll. 19-24) Wordsworth’s famous and simple poem, “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” expresses the Romantic Age’s appreciation for the beauty and truth that can be found in a setting as ordinary as a field of daffodils. With this final stanza, Wordsworth writes of the mind’s ability to carry those memories of nature’s beauty into any setting, whether city or country. His belief in the power of the imagination and the effect it can have on nature, and vice a versa, is evident in most of his work. This …show more content…

Throughout Inman’s journey across the dangerous terrain of the South, he recounts the short but beautiful moments he experienced with Ada and Cold Mountain. Although he also fears the changes he has gone through in his mind and physical appearance, Inman is calmed by the memory of his love and the hope that she will be waiting for him. He also combines the memory of Ada with that of Cold Mountain itself. The beauty of nature’s cycles is repeatedly honored in the novel. As Inman journeys home he analyzes the reason for war and comes to realize its absolute contradiction of nature. All of his life, he had lived according to nature’s clock, the seasons, night and day, and his ideas of war and its unnatural existence shows the appreciation he has for nature and its life-guiding force. Men talked of war as if they committed it to preserve what they had and what they believed. But Inman now guessed it was boredom with the repetition of the daily rounds that had made them take up weapons. The endless arc of the sun, wheel of seasons. War took a man out of that circle of regular life and made a season of its own, not much dependent on anything else. (276) This unnatural reaction of mankind to defy the cycles of life is very much against the lifestyle and emotions of Inman. As he had been further pulled from the reality of nature during his years at war, Ada

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