Guns And Death In Coldmountain Essay, Research Paper

Cold Mountain includes mention of many Civil War-era weapons. Some are standard-issue field arms, such as the Springfield and Enfield rifles, and the Colt army and navy revolvers. Others are rare, specialty items, like the powerful LeMat pistol or Whitworth sniper rifle. The question is, why these particulars out of the hundreds of devices that made a battlefield appearance during the war? There must be something between them that relates to the story and its mood.

All of the weapons, greatly varied though they are, have one thing in common: effectiveness. When used appropriately, they excelled in battle over many other widely-used firearms, especially smoothbore muzzle-loading muskets.

The most mentioned weapon in Cold Mountain is Inman s LeMat revolver. Invented in 1856 by Jean Alexander Francois Le Mat, his pistol became the most famous foreign pistol during the war (Weapons of the Civil War n.p.). The LeMat s was an incredibly deadly weapon in its time. Not only was it a nine-chambered .40 calibre revolver, but it also had a secondary .63 calibre barrel that fired either 18 or 20-gauge buckshot. Some models even had fittings for a full-size shotgun barrel (ibid.). About three thousand of the pistols were shipped to the Confederacy, being used most notably by generals J. E. B. Stuart and P. T. Beauregard (ibid).

Another pistol that receives repeated attention in Cold Mountain is the Colt revolver. The Colt Army version was preferred by Union forces, while the Navy model was more popular in the South. The names of the pistols do not necessarily denote the forces they were used in. The Union army bought more Colt Navys than the Navy did (ibid.). The Colt revolver was reliable and had interchangeable parts for ease of service. A testament to its performance is the fact that the pistol accounted for forty percent of all handgun purchases in the Union army (ibid.).

An example of a rare and powerful Confederate weapon is the Whitworth rifle, a creation of Sir Joseph Whitworth. When combined with its telescopic sight, the rifle had an effective range of 1,500 1,800 yards (Antique Firearm Network n.p.). The Whitworth was unusual in that its bore and therefore its bullet was a twisted hexagon. The ridges of the bullet, known as a bolt, stabilized it in flight, adding to its range. Whitworth sniper rifles were used to great effect by Confederate forces, especially to kill enemy officers. At the battle of Spotsylvania Court House, (in an all-time favorite Civil War Moment) Union general John Sedgwick was killed by a sniper s bolt, cutting short his immortal last words: They couldn t hit an elephant at this dist

A more common rifle was the model 1861 Springfield Musket. The most widely used long weapon of the war, the Springfield fought, on both sides, in every major battle (Weapons of the Civil War n.p.). It brought together all of the major developments in arms into one weapon; a rifled bore, percussion firing system, and interchangeable parts. The Springfield fired a .58 calibre minie ball at a respectable 950 ft/sec (ibid.). A simple but effective weapon at a cost of $15 – $20.

So there is a wealth of weapons in Cold Mountain that function well. How are several tools that quite easily take life appropriate for the story? It seems that death fits well with the cynical, fatalistic outlook that the novel contains and its grim lesson of futility.

Cold Mountain pulls no punches. The entire novel is a series of one hardship after another, staring with the first chapter. A wounded Inman spends his time in a field hospital after a too-hot, stinking train ride from the battlefield (Frazier 6). For his first few weeks there, his neck allowing him no movement, Inman does naught but watch a blind man sell peanuts and newspapers. When well enough to walk, Inman decides to talk to the man, sensing a certain kinship, as the peddler had lived less than whole for a long time (ibid.). During their conversation, Inman admits to times he wished he was blind, most of all the battle of Fredericksburg, where an army of Union soldiers marched across an open field to assault an impregnable position, leading to a slaughter (Frazier 9-14). Inman later reveals his feeling after thinking of a friend: [He] guessed Swimmer s spells were right in saying a man s spirit could be torn apart and cease and yet his body keep on living He was himself a case in point for his spirit, it seemed, had been about burned out of him but he was yet walking (Frazier 22).

In her opening chapter, Ada doesn t fare much better. For her part, while there are no masses of dying Federals to poison her mind, she has as well suffered a spiritual blow. Her father Monroe, the only person who could take care of the farm, has died, leaving her alone and clueless as to how she should live. Ada is reduced to the unenviable position of eating little but scavenged eggs, salad, and wild tomatoes (Frazier 28). Her situation is summed up on the next page: She wanted a bowl of chicken and dumplings and a peach pie but had not a clue how one might arrive at them. A kind of metaphor for her vulnerability happens when she is beaten and sent into retreat by a rooster (32). Ada has turned from being blissfully ignorant of the world to having full responsibility but with little functional knowledge, and she feels it may always be that way: [H]er new life seemed only a foreview of herself as an old woman, awash in solitude and the feeling of diminishing capabilities (Frazier 41).

The entirety of Cold Mountain is similar, a constant stream of bad luck and problems, many times with the setting or seemingly inconsequential events providing a commentary on it all. Early into his trek home, Inman is traveling through some rough country, and its description sets the feeling to foul and wretched:

Nothing but trash trees Red dirt. Mean towns. He had fought over ground like this from the piedmont to the sea, and it seemed like nothing but the place where all that was foul and sorry had flowed downhill and pooled in the low spots [The] sump of the continent and he could take little more of it. (Frazier 69-70)

After a night of beating off attacks by dogs and hiding from the Home Guard, Inman is somewhat disappointed to notice butterflies stop to drink from the ground he just used: They seemed to him things too beautiful to be drinking piss. It was, though, apparently the nature of the place (ibid.). While for the most part weapons in Cold Mountain are mentioned for accuracy and realism, it is in this country that weapons become a particularly effective mood-setting device.

The first is a scythe, being sharpened poorly by a smith in the little town Inman enters to buy supplies (Frazier 72). Although a common tool in the time of the book, it is used as a weapon in this section and the modern reader is more likely to associate a scythe with the Grim Reaper than wheat threshing. Soon after, Inman sees a Whitworth rifle, excellent for dealing death. At a time when most weapons became ineffective past five hundred yards, something that could even hit anything almost a mile away is something that impresses. Even though Inman defeats the three men in the village that attack him, this covert display of doom foreshadows his eventual end.

As the story progresses, there is a marked increase in deaths. Once, Inman was captured by the Home Guard, thanks to a treacherous opportunist, Junior (Frazier 221). After being marched for days, he and his fellow captives are to be shot. The Guard leader sounds offhand about it: We had us a talk and decided that you pack of shit are just wasting our time (227). The men proceed to shoot their bound captives, luck and a bad shot rendering Inman no more than unconscious. After he rises, he comments on the scene and recent past: [He] had seen so much death it had come to seem a random thing entirely. He could not even make a start at reckoning up how many deaths he had witnessed of late (230).

Cold Mountain continues in such a vein throughout, and ends in the same, if the add-on epilogue about Ruby is discounted. As well it should, since that passage is so unlike all that came before it. The focus of the story is death and the seeming cruelty of the universe. It easy to see why, then, that the weapons chosen for use therein are highly efficient and powerful for their time. Those firearms are just one way in a hundred little devices Frazier uses to impress the sense of sorrow and futility those living and working or fighting in the disintegrating late-war South must have felt.