The themes in this novel that are created by the character’s journeys are of romance, loneliness, opposite, and nostalgia. The romantic theme in this novel allows characters to have feelings and emotions which creates a connection between the readers and the characters through the use of realism. There is a glimpse of a tragic love story in the sense the lovers are separated (i.e. Inman and Ada) until their reunion. If Inman had decided not to return back to cold mountain to return to Ada then there would not be a love story, it is only due to their separate journeys and through their unexpected meetings of random strangers such as the goat woman or the blind man allowed for their to be a theme of romance. All of these unexpected meetings have played a role in allowing Inman and Ada to be reunited. For if it weren’t for the blind man to make Inman realise that he does want his old life back at Cold Mountain where he lived happily with Ada, he may not have started his journey. If Ada had not looked into a well to have seen a man travelling her way, what was stopping her from leaving? Therefore all these unplanned events that the characters encountered played a role to allow them to have their journey, which therefore allows us to have a story.
The novel is not only based on romance but also a theme carried on from it is the idea of arrival and survival. Arrival being the reunion of both Inman and Ada and survival related to Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest. Darwin’s theory can be presented through the character Ruby. Ruby’s mother had died and her father had been an alcoholic that left her when she was a child. The night Ruby was stuck on a briar in the woods, all alone in the dark, when she was only four years old. She spent a night alone with only nature around her. She learned that nature was a good useful tool and that it could help her. Ruby has taught herself everything and all this knowledge has come from nature, therefore in a sense it is as if nature is teaching her. Ruby started to work on the farm from such a tiny age and she learned how to do all the manly jobs like hunting as well as womanly jobs like keeping the house tidy. Ruby’s personality shows the reader strength and thereby she is able to survive and overcome any obstacles that come her way.
A few characters in this novel experience nostalgia. Inman for one is nostalgic as the reason behind his whole journey is to go back home, to cold mountain where Ada will be. Stobrod experiences nostalgia and therefore returns home to Ruby to make amends.
Frazier uses a narrative technique in the novel where oppositions are found. This structures the story in a way that when the novel starts, this is where Inman’s journey starts and where the novel ends, Inman's journey has also ended. This theme of opposition runs throughout the novel in many ways. With Inman he goes from sin to redemption when he had been in the civil war and had killed to making a ‘vow to a bear’ never to kill and eat it, from being wounded on the neck from the war to being healed from the goat woman who gives him medicine, from being lonely to finding love in Ada. Ada goes from innocence to maturity, as she spent more time with Ruby, Ada became more independent. From having lost Monroe to finding love in Inman and from also being wounded to being healed in the sense that at the start she was wounded by a cockerel and near the end of the novel she shoots the chickens. It is not only characters who experience the effect of such contrast between two different things; it is also seasons how it goes from warm to cold. This all helps to structure the novel.
