On The Color Imagery Of Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain

Breathtaking verbal virtuosity, heartbreakingly beautiful narrative ingenuity, well-chiseled andreverential evocation of a time are all tributes Charles Frazier’s novels live up to though his newlymarching into the palace of literature. Such a rarity and sensation is he when Frazier surprisesAmericans, even people from the world in1997with his first novel Cold Mountain. Set inAppalachian Mountains, like his later two novels, Cold Mountain, wafting the fragrance ofreminiscence of old times and epic, won people’s heart. It has brought its author the National BookAward the year of its publication and catapulted him into the company of contemporary knownAmerican writer like Patricia Cornwall, Danielle Steele, or John Grisham.Cold Mountain depicts an intriguing homeward journey. Disillusioned toward war and worriedto be shipped back to Virginia, Inman slips out of the hospital in a midnight and begins his journeyback home as a deserter, where his sweetheart Ada awaits him. Chapters alternate between Inmanand Ada pivoting respectively on Inman’s encounter on the way and Ada’s transformation in thehome front. Set in the19thcentury American Southern Mountain areas, the novel definitely recalls alost time and arouses modern urbanites’ idyllic dream. Frazier’s ingenuity in the environmentdescription and his keen antennae for19thcentury life leaves so much for scholars to explore.However, both domestic and foreign critics who have ever studied in this works usuallyapproach it macroscopically from the thematic perspective. Given that, this thesis intends to zoomin on the environmental description, more specifically on color description of this novel. Literaturemasters like Oscar Wilde, Tony Morrison A.S.Byatt are never mean to apply color in their worksand color actually contributes to their success. Cold Mountain also presents a splash of colors to thereaders and these colors become the basis of this thesis. The main body of this thesis unrolls intothree parts in an attempt to detail the color in this novel. It firstly elaborates on the colorcomposition that comprises mainly blue, black and yellow. It secondly explores the features of colorexhibiting in it and analyzes the non-presence of some color. And finally it dwells on the functionsof color in this novel. With this analysis about color, the author hopes it can provide a differentperspective for the understanding of this novel and stimulate more to come.