Cold Mountain is a historical fiction novel written by Charles Frazier that tells the story of Inman, a wounded deserter from the Confederate Army near the end of the Civil War who travels to months to get back to Ada Monroe, the love of his life. His novel is set in North Carolina during the mid-1860s, in the heart of the Civil War. However, it hardly describes a single battle in detail, but it is praised as one of the greatest Civil War novels. Presenting the real battles of the Civil War, mostly in flashbacks through Inman's perspective, Cold Mountain takes a different tack and discusses the Civil War by studying its impact on individual people rather than a depiction of the battles that occurred. Therefore, it is both accurate and inaccurate to describe this novel as a Civil War novel. Frazier's novel Cold Mountain can teach us about the Civil War through the trauma it caused soldiers and those on the home front, both physically and emotionally. One can especially see the impact of the Civil War on ordinary citizens by looking at the experiences Inman, Ada, and other characters had during this time. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay At the beginning of the novel Inman is in the hospital due to a neck wound received during combat. Not only does he have a physical injury, but he also experiences emotional distress during this time. Inman finds himself trying to remember how he got the injury and ended up in the hospital. He remembers fighting in a war near Petersburg when he received the wound. His two closest companions pulled him aside to examine his wound and said a prayer for him because they were so sure he would die. Somehow, Inman survived and was transported to the field hospital and then transferred. He doesn't remember much about that time except the sounds of buzzing flies, the extreme heat and the foul-smelling odors he experienced during his time in the hospital. The Battle of Petersburg is described as one of the deadliest battles of the Civil War. Nothing like this confrontation had occurred up until that point during the war. Rather than providing an explicit account of the battle itself, Frazier takes a psychological approach and focuses on the trauma and disorientation Inman experiences from the battle. Throughout the rest of the novel, it is safe to say that there is not a single soldier along the way who displays a sincere love for battle, or for the South or the Union. The soldiers are severely traumatized by what they experienced in war. War not only causes psychological trauma to those at war, but creates a cascading effect on those on the home front who are experiencing the trauma in different ways. We can see the emotional trauma that occurs on the home front through the perspective of Ada Monroe. Even though Ada has never set foot on a battlefield, she begins to experience the trauma of the Civil War. The war took men from their homes to go fight in wars, leaving women alone and uncertain of what their futures held. During this period men predominantly held positions of authority in the community, managed farms, and also ran businesses in the city. Few of these things have been done rigorously by all women. To make Ada's situation even worse, her father, named Monroe, had recently died. Ada is now left to manage the family farm alone as the laborers have also left, to fightat war or to desert. She realizes that she is not equipped to run the farm on her own and wonders if it is worth continuing to keep up since she has no use for the things the farm provides. Faced with the very real possibility of starving on her farm, Ada must accept that her education, while important, left her totally unprepared to survive the Civil War. You can begin to understand why Ada feels so desperate and...emotionally scarred by this experience. She has depended on her father all her life to support her and now he is dead. Without her help or the farm workers, it seems to her that she would have to give up on life. Ada will have to learn the ways of the farm to survive, but she is afraid of everything she will have to do. In the epilogue of Cold Mountain, Frazier points out that when Ada reads a story to children she has difficulty turning the pages. Ada has since lost the tip of a finger while chopping wood. The wound Ada sustained appears to represent the physical and emotional trauma left in her life by Inman's death. Just like many other women and families who lost loved ones during this time, Ada also lost Inman just when she thought she had him back. This great loss of life and change in lifestyle creates trauma on the home front and has impacted nearly all American citizens during this time. Furthermore, the things that people usually turn to in times of crisis, such as family or religion, are nowhere to be found during the mid-1860s: the only priests or parents in the book are corrupt, absent or dead. Ada's father, Monroe, was the town's priest before he died, leaving the town without a priest. Inman meets another priest named Veasey while he is walking along the Deep River. Veasey is dressed all in black and walks with a horse carrying an unconscious woman. Inman runs to the man and demands that Veasey tell him what is happening or else he will kill him. Veasey boasts to Inman that it would be a shame to kill him because he is a priest and a man of God. Veasey explains that he drugged the women to catch and kill her because she is pregnant with his child. Veasey didn't want the people of the town to find out because they would ban him. This leaves the town of Cold Mountain without a priest since Monroe's death and a priest corrupted only for his own good, leaving the home front without a reliable minister to turn to at this time. Just as Ada's father died, Ruby explains that she never had a relationship with her father, who is called Stobrod. Ruby's mother died during childbirth and Stobrod makes sure Ruby doesn't forget this since his mother's death devastated him so badly. Stobrod never physically hurt Ruby, but he didn't care for her either. At the start of the Civil War, Stobrod goes to fight in the war, leaving Ruby without warning to fend for herself. Leaving those on the home front with no form of comfort to turn to during this time other than themselves, causing enormous amounts of physical and emotional stress for everyone. Please note: this is just an example. Get a customized document from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay Much of the devastation of the Civil War was largely psychological, as can be seen through Frazier's novel, Cold Mountain. However, it wasn't just psychologically traumatic, it was physically traumatic as well. In the final chapters of the novel, Inman is hunted down by the National Guard and killed. A large portion of Americans lost their lives during the Civil War, and countless others were injured. A theme present throughout Cold Mountain is the trauma that war survivors experience and how.