Frazier: Cold Mountain
Directions: After reading the lecture, answer one of the main questions, which will appear in red. This question is due no later than Thursday, Mar. 15. Following that will be other questions, in black, which you should read and think about–they may help you answer the main question. However, you are not required to answer these questions in writing.
Your responses to other students’ answers are due by midnight on Saturday, Mar. 17. In order to get the full 20 points, you MUST respond to at least 3 or 4 other people’s postings.
This set of discussion questions is worth a possible 20 points. Remember: late answers receive 0 points, so post early 🙂
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Charles Frazier: Cold Mountain Link
WARNING! These discussion questions will reveal plot points. If you don’t want to know what happens, wait until you have finished the novel to read them.
1. For the characters in this novel, is redemption possible? Explain.
2. Both Ada and Inman reflect, at different times, that they are living in a “new world” (33). What changes is America undergoing at the time of the novel, and how do Ada’s and Inman’s experiences, and the people they meet, reflect those changes?
3. Many readers object to Inman ‘s death at the end of the novel. Do you think it was necessary to the novel that Inman die? Explain.
1. How have Inman’s experiences during the war changed him?
2. For a large part of the novel, Inman prefers to look back into the past. Why does he find that more satisfying than imagining the future?
3. How are the leaders of the war portrayed?
4. What does the blind man outside the hospital represent, symbolically?
5. How is the narrator of Bartram’s Travels similar to Inman? How is he different?
6. How is Swimmer’s view of the world disturbing to Inman? How is it, at times, comforting?
7. Why does Inman desert?
8. It is easy to see what Ruby contributes to Ada; what does Ada contribute to Ruby?
9. How does the theme of “breaking traditions” run through the novel? How does the war contribute to the tendency to break traditions?
10. How does the landscape through which Inman travels serve as a metaphor for his emotions and his spirit?
11. After rescuing the pregnant girl from the preacher (Veasey), Inman says he “wished not to be smirched with the mess of other people” (123). Yet, he does rescue or help others several more times. Why?
12. Inman’s view of the world is that it is chaotic, without order, ruled by chance; Ruby sees the world as an orderly place, in which everything works together to create a coherent whole. Which view does the novel, as a whole, seem to endorse?
13. Inman, before he left for the war, told Ada the story of the Shining Rocks (pp. 249 ff.). What did the story reveal about his own fears and desires?
14. What does Inman learn from the goat woman?
15. How did the war change Stobrod? What function does music serve for him?
16. How is Stobrod’s music different from Sara’s song (321)?
17. Is Inman happy at the end? Is Ada?