Cold Mountain Character Analysis

Cold Mountain Character Analysis

Charles Frazier’s novel “Cold Mountain” is a story of personal and emotional growth. The protagonists Inman, Ada, and Ruby try to survive in times during the Civil War. Ada Monroe, a lonely and helpless woman, develops into a strong, secure woman with a loving family due to her adaptation to manual labor and living in tune with nature. In the beginning Ada is left alone at her farm after her father’s death and she has no knowledge on how to take care of herself. Throughout the book, Ada embarks on a journey to finding herself, and connecting with nature and everything around her. In order to begin this journey, the death of her father had to occur. Ruby, a young woman with a vast knowledge of the surrounding environment, helps Ada along the way by teaching her about nature’s “signs”, and how to take care of herself without the use of money or scrip.

Monroe, Ada’s father, was a reasonably wealthy man who moved Ada and himself to Cold Mountain from Charleston because of health issues. Monroe was interested in Ada being “educated beyond the point considered wise for females”, so Ada learned skills like reading, writing, literature, language and things of that sort. She never learned how to cook, or tend the earth, or things that could sustain her without the help of others. Because of this Ada carried a sort of resentment toward her father. Each time she thinks of her underdeveloped skills of production, she thinks of how “all her life…her father had kept her back from the hardness of work.” Ada began her actual development when Monroe died and she had no choice but to learn to take care of herself. She could not get her father to hire anybody to do the work for her, she had nobody but herself to rely on.

Ada’s neighbors, the Swangers, noticed how poorly Ada was doing and sent Ruby to help her. From the beginning of their relationship, Ruby clearly expressed how she is not a worker or a servant but a person there to help her. Ruby is a very strong willed and...

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