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
