Way back at the beginning of summer, when I picked up my copy of Cold Mountain from a second-hand bookshop (although, it wasn’t well worn), I first noticed the quote on the back of the novel, “…Cold Mountain asserts itself as an authentic American Odyssey– hugely powerful, majestically lovely, and keenly moving.” Naturally, I was excited. Having gone over the mighty tale of the Odyssey twice for school, I am fairly familiar with the twists of the story and was ready to look for parallels between the two stories.
Ah, but that was several months ago, when I still had hope, and now the book is over and I’m left with disappointment. Aside from it being a man trekking across a harsh landscape to return to his lover, there isn’t much in common between Inman and Odysseus, but there are a couple places where the stories blend together. One of the the first little treats the audience gets to poke at the Odyssey is that the man in the bed next to Inman, Balis, is working on translating Greek. It’s not much of a reference, but enough to make readers’ allusion meter turn on.
About a page later, Frazier introduces the blind man, who immediately made me think of Tiresias, the blind prophet Odysseus meets in the Underworld. The comparison between the two establishes that the hospital is less a place of recovery and more a place of death. The title of the chapter being “The Shadow of a Crow” also hints at this with a crow commonly being seen as a symbol of death. While Inman is in the hospital, he is sitting in the shadow of death.
Since Tiresias doesn’t appear in the Odyssey until almost halfway through the saga, it would seem that the first half of Inman’s journey has already happened, but there is a reference to Odysseus’ early journey. Inman asks the blind man, “Who put out your pair of eyes?” and, with a smile on his face, the man responds, “Nobody.” (p. 8) It is a reference to, what I think, is one of the most iconic moments in the Odyssey, when Odysseus first meets the cyclops, Polyphemus, he tells him is name is Nobody. When he blinds him, Polyphemus proclaims that Nobody blinded him.
An actual reference to the Odyssey as a work of literature comes toward the end of Ada’s second chapter, “Verbs, All of Them Tiring.” Ada begins to read Ruby some of Homer’s works. Frazier doesn’t forget this, mentioning it again in Ada’s next chapter, “Ruby had grown impatient with Penelope, but she would sit of a long evening and laugh and laugh at the tribulations of Odysseus, all the stones the gods threw in his passway.” (p. 140) At first, I found Ruby’s insight funny; it was how I felt about the progress of Cold Mountain. Inman’s chapters were full of adventure and Ada’s were just incompetence and farm work. Then, I realized that was Frazier’s intent in creating a Civil War Odyssey: to take the slow pace of Penelope’s life without Odysseus and multiply it by ten because we don’t get to see how Ada would fare without Inman for ten years.
A parallel to the Odyssey story can be found in the chapter “To Live Like a Gamecock,” where Inman and his companion Veasey are taken in by a man named Junior and his wife Lila. It is not long into their stay that Lila attempts to seduce Inman. When Junior finds them, Inman tries to gather Veasey and leave, but realizes Junior had drugged them and called the Home Guard to take the deserters back. The chapter plays out much like Odysseus’ encounter with Circe. Both Inman and Odysseus come to a place that seems too nice after the hardships of their journey where a beautiful woman falls for them. They eventually realize that many other men have been in their place before and were turned into animals at the end of their stay, be it literally with magic or captured and treated like animals. Their journey might be significantly hindered, but Inman and Odysseus are the ones able to escape the fate of so many men before them.
While the similarities between the two stories are evident, they don’t match chronologically and stop toward the end of the book. Odysseus’ story ends when he wipes out the suitors trying to marry his wife and assumes his place by Penelope’s side. Inman’s story ends when he is killed after spending a couple short days of happily-ever-after with Ada. This sharp turn in the last pages of the book has a bit of a Hannah Montana moment, “Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side, It’s the climb.” Inman’s journey home and Ada learning how to be independent (as long as Ruby doing everything for her is independent) is what the book is about. A happier ending would have been nice, but it doesn’t change what the characters experienced in getting to that point.