The Immersion Library

But she filled him full, and se he believed everything that had been taken out of him might have been for a purpose. To clear space for something better.

A story of humanity and the world, of dualism. Opposing forces in a civil war, a civilized lady immersed in a harsh mountain life, a soldier seeking peace, and a nihilistic or sentimental mountain ruler – depending on how one chooses to live.

Frazier intertwines cruelty with love – violent action sequences with love’s longing, separation and lonliness with a nurturing land. The world provides all and those within it simply must make the best of it. Or does it make the best of them?

The war ravages the cities while the countryside thrives. Inman traverses his area of America like a man leaving hell to find heaven. During his odyssey, he encounters all manner of trials and challenges. As in the war, each day tests his ability to survive. In comparison, Ada faces the same challenges in Black Cove. Though she remains in a single location, she must toil and learn the skills necessary to survive off the land. While this may link the two experiences. I see them more as two lines forming an X. While one starts low and ascends, another starts high and descends. Is heaven, the destination, where they intersect?

…Cold Mountain nevertheless soard in his mind as a place where all his scattered forces might gather. Inman did not consider himself to be a superstitious person, but he did believe that there is a world invisible to us. He no longer thought of that world as heaven, nor did he still think that we get to go there when we die. Those teachings had been burned away. But he could not abide by a universe composed only of what he could see, especially when it was so frequently foul. So he held to the idea of another world, a better place, and he figured he might as well consider Cold Mountain to be the location of it as anywhere.

Cold Mountain looms over all these lives as a deified governor. Its beautiful nature would inspire the simplest sentimentalist. They might see the face of God in its autumn leaves and majestic peak. Undoubtedly, this contrasts the horror of Inman’s reality in the war and during his travels. And yet, within this landscape prowls the devourer who would ravage the unprepared and unaware. Perhaps this would turn the sentimentalist into a nihilist. Nothing matters. Yet are these the only choices?

Should a crow fly over, I mark it in all its details, but I do not seek analogy for its blackness. I know it is a type of nothing, not metaphoric. A thing unto itself without comparison.

I find this transcendant. People often apply meaning to their surroundings and fail to acknowledge the world for its own steadfast nature exempt from the influences of mankind. It withstands war just the same as it can choke a farm. The world need not change its nature to suit our point of view. Perhaps it would enrich our lives beyond our own estimation if we allowed it the privilege. If the land represents a kind of deification – as Inman implies with his Cherokee stories – it need not cater to us. Instead, we ought to find a oneness with it, as we would with God.

Perhaps we want the world to be what we make ourselves; the intersection of an X. It may not last, and lines may continue before and after the intersection, but the intersection is in the world as well as created within ourselves. We wouldn’t have the intersection without the world’s lines. Abandon the metaphor. Let it be a thing unto itself without comparison. Or else we can’t have it.