![]() ![]() Ada, the daughter of a preacher turned farmer, tries, with the help of her resourceful companion Ruby, to live off her land after her father's death.īefore the Civil War separated them, Inman and Ada were in the early throes of an awkward romance. Inman, a wounded deserter from the Confederate army, walks for weeks to try to get home. But natural description is there to follow the two main characters' eyes and minds. Cold Mountain, which takes its title from a peak in the Great Balsam Mountains of Northern Carolina, certainly carries its author's knowledge of a particular area. You might think that natural description is what an author provides to let a reader imagine a place, the background against which the characters are placed. That last sentence, with its weirdly religious notion of turning anything seen in nature into an emblem, is natural for the daughter of a religious minister. The simile of the camera iris is hers: she has seen photographs taken and is much preoccupied with this modern (in the 1860s) art. The meanings attached to the scene are entirely Ada's. Details of the natural world have to be recorded. ![]() It is a characteristic fragment of description. ![]()
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