~*~ Blondes the new Pink~*~

After I started reading this story, I noticed that the chapters are very long. I also noticed that when there was a new chapter each one was a different person’s view. The idea I chose to follow was, From what point of view is your book told? How does this help the story? How would the book be different if the author used a different point of view?

Cold Mountain is told in two views. One from Inman, the main male character who is on his way back home to his love. The second view is Ada, the main female character who is Inman’s love. This is where the chapters switch up themselves. The first chapter starts with Inman and his story and his past, and then the second chapter starts with
Ada’s story and everything that has happened to her. The chapters keep switching between their two lives and the way they are feeling. Inman’s story starts when he is in the civil war hospital, and continues until he reaches Cold Mountain to find Ada. Ada’s story starts off with her replying to a letter from Inman, telling him how she feels about him, and how her time is at Cold Mountain.

How does this help the story?I

 think that this helps the story by giving the reader an expectation on what’s going to happen, and a tense feeling, because the reader knows what’s going on before the character does. Ada knows that Inman is on his way home, but she does not know all the obstacles and the adventures that he is going through to get there. The reader knows everything that is going on between both lives and both views. This is how the views help the story. By having the readers experience both sides that the characters don’t.  Mainly to help the reader have a connection with the characters.

How would the book be different if the author used a different point of view?

The book would be different because if say the author only used the view of Inman, then the book would have a very adventurous side, but also the book would be a civil war book, instead of a dramatic love story. The reader would hear about Ada and the love he has for her but it wouldn’t be the same because, we wouldn’t have Ada’s views and we wouldn’t be able to know what type of person she is. If the author used only Ada’s views then we would know that she loved this man in the war, but her views are based around her independence and how she is raising this farm from nothing to something big. Also the reader wouldn’t get the adventures that Inman had to go through to get to Cold
Mountain, leaving the book boring and uninteresting. 

Frazier, Charles. Cold Moutain. Canada: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997

I decided now that I am in about a hundred pages into my story; that I could start identify a plot. I chose to use the idea, Try to identify a very important scene in your book. Explain why it is so important.I chose to use the scene where Ada is explaining her father before he died, and the type of person he was. This is important to me because, with describing the kind of person he was, you can see how his influences have rubbed off on Ada. He also was her father for one thing, but he was a very selfless and opinionated person, and reading the story the reader can tell that the older Ada gets, the more like her father she is.

“His Charleston doctor, putting all his faith in the powers of cool fresh air and exercise, had recommended a well-known highland resort with a fine dining room and therapeutic mineral hot springs. However, Monroe did not relish the idea of a restful quiet place full of the well-to-do and their many afflictions. He instead found a mountain church of his denomination lacking a preacher, reasoning that useful work would be more therapeutic than reeking sulfur water.” Pg. 109.

This quote shows that he is more of an outdoor type, and that he does not feel that being all fancy makes things better. This is why this scene is so significant because its showing what type of guy Monroe, Ada’s father, was before he died.When Ada finally decides to go back to the house where her father, and herself lived before he died.

“Ada sat on long enough to watch the day rise. The first grey light began gathering faintly, and then as the light built the mountains began to form themselves, retaining the dark of night in their bulk. The fog that clung to the peaks lifted and lost the shapes of the mountains and dissipated in the warmth of the morning. In the pasture the forms of trees remained drawn in dew on the grass beneath them. When she stood to walk down to the house, the smell of night still lingered under the two chestnut trees.” pg. 108

This quote to me shows how Ada has started to share the same perspective that her father did. Most people wouldn’t want to live out there being surrounded by the mountains, and the cold, but being her father’s daughter, she definitely feels that because there is so many obstacles she can get through them.

Frazier, Charles. Cold Moutain. Canada: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997

For a character idea, I thought that Ada, the main female character, was a strong influence for the question asked. The question is, Try to infer what a character’s motivations are for doing certain things. Why did your character act that way? What does that action tell you about the character? Ada is a strong character with her own characteristics; I think this is what drew me towards her as a character. She definitely has her own way of doing things, and because she lives alone on this farm with no help, she grows as a character.

Ada crawls into this chicken coop to look for eggs, “Ada sat up in it and looked about on the ground and in the branches eggs but found only a broken shell, dried yolk the color of rust in one jag-edged cup. She fitted herself between two limbs and rested with her back against the trunk. The boxwood bower smelled of dust and of the sharpness and bitterness of chickens. Its light was dim, and it reminded her of childhood play in caves made by draping sheets over tables or by tenting carpets over clotheslines. Best of all were the tunnels she and her cousin Lucy dug deep into haystacks on her uncle’s farm. They had spent entire rainy afternoons snug and dry as denned foxes, whispering secrets to each other.” Pg. 22

The motivations for Ada in this scene, was to get eggs for something to eat, but she seems to discover a world that is familiar to her when she gets in the coop. When she starts thinking about her past and how she lived on this farm with her cousin, she gets feelings of security inside this chicken coop.

“It was a familiar delicious tingle of pleasure, a tightening in her breathing, that she realized she was now similarly hidden away, that anyone walking from the gate to the porch would never know she was there. If one of the ladies from the church made an obligatory visit to see about her welfare, she could sit motionless as they called her name and knocked at the door.” Pg. 22

The reason she acted that way is because she likes the feelings of being not alone, but more of secure in a way of knowing that if she needed to hide then she would be safe in this chicken coop. The action tells me that she is a very organized person who thinks about how she could handle a difficult task, such as hiding from someone that might harm her. She likes to have a safe place to just feel sheltered by, and unharmed.

Frazier, Charles. Cold Moutain. Canada: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997

In the story,Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier, the story is taking place during the civil war. Inman, the main male character in the story seems to have been traumatized by the images of the war. The question I used was, how does the setting affect the main character? What has a good influence and what has a bad influence on the character? The character is affected because the death and brutal killings of the civil war seem to haunt him in his dreams.

“In the dream, the aurora blazed and the scattered bloody pieces-arms, heads, legs, trunks- slowly drew together and reformed themselves into monstrous bodies of mismatched parts. They limped and reeled and lunged about the dark battlefield like blinde sots on their faulty legs.” pg. 10

This quote is a great visual of how Inman is dealing with the war. He obviously is having a hard time with it, and the death that he has seen is affecting his life.After I read this part of the story, the story takes a turn and gives the reader some comfort and also comfort to the Inman character. Inman starts reading this story that he has found and in the story is a quote that comforts him.

” Continued yet ascending until I gained the top of an elevated rocky ridge, when appeared before me a gap or opening between other yet more lofty ascents, through which continued as the rough rocky road let me close by the winding banks of a large rapid brook, which at length turning to the left, pouring down rocky precipices, glided off through dark groves  and high forests, conveying streams of fertility and pleasure to the fields below.” Pg 11

 The bad influences that affect the character is that he very much haunted by the bloody scenes of the civil war, but he is also affected in a good way because he finds this story that comforts him and makes him dream about everything that is good in his life. The reader knows after reading this passage, that even though Inman has been influenced by the war greatly, he still has the side of him that is caring and loving.

Frazier, Charles. Cold Moutain. Canada: The Atlantic Monthly Press,1997.