Cold Mountain Themes

Inman may be running away from a war, but Cold Mountain isn't. The American Civil War is a constant presence in the book, one that can't be escaped. It's the reason Inman is fleeing toward home, an...

Freedom! Painting your face blue, fighting for your beloved Scotland, winning academy awards—oops, wrong movie.What does freedom mean, anyway? The South is supposed to be fighting for freedom fro...

Inman is disenchanted with pretty much the whole world after his stint in the war. And he's not the only one. Ruby is disappointed with her father, who neglected her as a child and expected her to...

It's a web that connects all living things. It has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together. It's the Force! Er, make that "spirituality in Cold Mountain."Whatever your own...

It's not just rom coms that have a lot to say about love. Cold Mountain does too. Ada and Inman gradually realize how much they love each other as they struggle through the challenges the war has b...

We all want to get home, from Harry Potter wanting to settle in at Hogwarts to Odysseus wanting to reach Ithaca in the great-granddaddy of homecoming stories. Inman is just part of a long line of c...

Innocence isn't doing so well in Cold Mountain. Inman loses his innocence to the war. Ada's naïveté is rapidly being clobbered by the hard work of running a farm and the sorrows of observing a wa...

The answer is blowin' in the wind…or at least the question is. Nature is really important in Cold Mountain. It shows people things about the world, each other, and themselves. It serves as a symb...