《冷山》与《奥德赛》比较研究

University Code: 10225
Register Code : 09195
Dissertation for the Degree of Master
Comparative Study on Cold Mountain and The

Odyssey in Myth-Archetypal Approaches
Candidate: Sun Haiyi

Supervisor: Prof. Wang Xinchun
Academic Degree Applied for: Master
Speciality: English Linguistics and Literature
Date of Oral Examination: June,2009
University: Northeast Forestry University
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摘要
摘
帮鬻帮
本文通过《冷山》与《奥德赛》的比较研究，分析两部作品在主题，故事情节，人
物塑造及叙事结构上的平行与变异，试图运用神话原型批评理论探究在《冷山》与《奥
德赛》中存在的移位运用。
原型批评的最大特点是整体性与系统性。诺思洛普·弗莱一再强调，在欣赏作品的
时候，要往后站，从整休上把握作品，不局限千一部作品中的一个人物，一个意象，一
种叙述，而要将作品放在历时与共时的环境中，审视作品中的人物、意象、主题、叙述
与其他作品的联系与区别，从而寻找出共同的或不同的原型。在找到原型之后，还要进
一步分析原型在作品中的变化运用，并且与作品所处的历史和文化环境联系起来，考查
作者为什么进行这样的移位运用。根据弗莱的理论，文学批评应该将文学、神话、文
化、历史等诸多因素包含在内，发挥整体性优势；应该借助特定的文化语境，深入分析
作品中的原型，从而真正把握作品的思想内涵。弗莱认为，对千西方文学传统而言，有
两大文本体系构成了原型的本源，那就是古希腊神话和希伯来人的圣经。本文将通过
《冷山》与其背后的范本《奥德赛》的比较研究入手分析两部作品中的神话原型。
论文分为四部分，在第一部分中，简要介绍这两部作品及其作者。第二部分介绍神
话原型理论的发展阶段及诺思洛普·弗莱的原型理论，特别是神话移用和“异位平行“
这两个理论概念。第三部分是论文的主体，分析《冷山》与《奥德赛》在主题，故事情
节，人物塑造及叙事结构上的平行与变异，尤其是在主题和人物塑造过程中移用的运
用。最后一部分是结论，概括前面原型分析的结果，揭示弗雷泽将《奥德赛》作为《冷
山》写作范本的意图。
关键词：比较；原型；移用；异位平行；变异
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Abstract
Through the comparison between Cold Mountain and The Odyssey, the thesis studies the
parallels and variations in the themes, plots, characters and narrative structures of the two
works to find out the archetypes in Cold Mountain and The Odyssey through mythological and
archetypal approaches.
Northrop Frye said that in appreciating an artistic work, you should stand backwards. That
is to say, you should manage the work wholly and cannot limit yourself to one aspect, character,
image or narrative model. Then you put this work in the environment diachronically and
synchronically and look into the relationships and differences between the characters, images,
themes and narration in this work with those of other works. At last you should try to find the
similar or different archetypes. A 知 r you find the archetypes, you should progressively analyze
the ways these archetypes change in the work, and then you can connect the work with its
history and cultural environment and study why the author uses this kind of displacement. The
archetypal criticism can include aspects such as literature, myths, culture and history, and use
its advantages in entirety. Therefore, if the reader wants to understand a literary work well, he
must analyze the archetypes in the work against certain cultural background. Only through this,
can the reader understand the real meaning of the work. According to Frye, as far as western
literary tradition is concerned, two systems contribute to archetypes, that is, the ancient Greek
myths and The Bible.
This thesis will analyze the archetypes in Cold Mountain through the comparison between
Cold Mountain and its model---The Odyssey. There are four parts in the thesis. The fist part is
an introduction in which Charles Frazier and his work Cold Mountain, as well as The Odyssey
will be briefly introduced. The second part is a survey of the development of mythological and
archetypal approaches. Northrop Frye's theory of archetype and the concept of displacement
and transposed/ inverted parallelism will be employed in the analysis of the characters. The
third part is the main part of the thesis, which includes the analysis of the parallels and
variations on themes, plots, characters and narrative structure between Cold Mountain and The
Odyssey, especially, the displacements in the depiction of main characters in Cold Mountain.
The last part is the conclusion, which summarizes the findings in the archetypal analysis and
reveals Frazier's intention of taking The Odyssey as the writing model of Cold Mountain.
Keywords: comparison; archetype; displacement; transposed parallelism; variation
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Contents
Contents
摘要….............................................................................. I
Abstract...................................................................................................................................................................................II
1 Introduction…………………………....…·............................................. 1
1.1 Charles Frazier and Cold Mountain.......….........…...….....………...…........…..........….....…...…..
1.2 Homer and The Odyssey........................................................................................................................3
1.3 Literature Review.......................................................................................................................3
2 Mythological and Archetypal Approaches...............................................................................5
2.1 The History of the Mythological and Archetypal Criticism............................................................5
2.1.1 Frazer's Contribution to Mythological Criticism.......................................................................5
2.1.2 Jungian Psychology and Its Archetypal Insight........................................................................6
2.1.3 Northrop Frye's Theory....….................…….......…….......…..........................….........….........
2.2 Archetypal Images, Motifs or Patterns.．．．．．．.........................................9.
2.3 The Concept of Displacement and Transposed/ Inverted Parallelism......................... ．．．．．．．．10
3 Comparative Study between Cold Mountain and The Odyssey in Myth-
Archetypal Approaches..................................................................................................................13
3.1 The Parallels between Cold Mountain and The Odyssey..………….........…······················· 13
3.1.1 The Parallels in Themes.........................................................................................................................1.3
3.1.2 The Parallels in Plots..............................................................................................................................1.6
3.1.3 The Parallels in Characters......…...…………····················........................................1.8
3.1.3.1 The Archetype Attached to Inman and Odysseus.............................................................18
3.1.3.2 The Archetype Attached to Ada and Penelope.................................................................20
3.1.4 The Parallels in Narrative Structure……………………............…..………························· 21
3.2 The Vaarriations in Cold Mountain versus The Odyssey..............................................................22
3.2.1 The Variations in the Theme of War...………….................…...............…·········、..............22
3.2.2 The V:ariations in Images............................................................................................26
3.2.3 Displacement in the Depiction of Inman versus Odysseus...............……············.......26
3.2.4 Displacement in the Depiction of Ada versus Penelope..................………………………· 28
3.2.5 Displacement in the Depiction of Ruby versus Euryclea……………·..............30
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................................34
Notes…·...........................................................................35
Bibliography…·.......................................................................... 38
The Published Paper.................................................................................................................................40
Acknowledgements....................................................................................................................................................41
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
1.1 Charles Frazier and Cold Mountain

Charles Frazier was born in 1950 in Asheville, North Carolina and grew up in the
mountains of North Carolina. Frazier's father, Charles 0., was his high school principal while
his mother, Betty, was a school librarian and administrator. He was a "moderately" good
student. After graduation, with a vague idea about what he wanted to do in his life, Frazier
attended the University of North Carolina and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in
1973. He then enrolled in Appalachian State University's graduate program. It was there
Frazier met a fellow student, Katherine. They married in 1976. For the next fifteen years,
Frazier taught literature at the University of Colorado and earned a Ph.D. in English from the
University of South Carolina, before returning to North Carolina.
During this time Frazier also traveled extensively in South America. In 1985, Frazier and
co-author Donald Secreast published Adventuring in the Andes. This nonfiction travel advice
book featured information on native cuisine, hotels, and hiking trails, as well as warnings about
possible island diseases. A reviewer in Kliatt called the book "excellent" and "invaluable," and
Harold M. Otness, writing in Library Journal, felt it was "a fine choice for travel collections."
Over the next five years, Frazier continued teaching and traveling. Yet it wasn't a trip overseas
that inspired Frazier's tum to fiction, but a trip to his grandparents'home at Cold Mountain,
North Carolina, where he learned a piece of family history.
Although Frazier grew up in the rural culture of North Carolina, it wasn't until the mid-
1980s when he returned to his grandparents that he began, as he told people, a lot of note
taking on the folklore, the music, the Indian history and the natural history of the area.
However, he didn't know what he was going to do with it. Frazier was certain about only one
thing that he didn't want to write a book about the battlefield. He wanted to write about the old
Southern Appalachian culture, like watching somebody make molasses with a mule.
However, Frazier's ideas lacked focus. He needed some point of access. This point of
access came from the author's father. Charles 0. had been researching his family history when
he discovered the story of W. P. Inman, one of the Fraziers'ancestors. Inman, a Confederate
soldier, after being wounded in battle, deserted and walked back to his home at Cold Mountain.
That bit of family history provided the spark Frazier needed. As he said, "It's like someone
saying,'Here's a brief outline for a book; what do you think?"'
巨 ttle did Frazier know that he would spend more than seven years writing Cold Mountain.
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He surrendered himself to a painstaking research process, often declining all human

companionship for weeks on end, and steeping himself in Southern folklore. During this time,
his family's support proved invaluable. In fact, Frazier's wife, Katherine, convinced him to
leave his teaching position to focus on his writing. Frazier's daughter, Annie, helped her father
by reading aloud chapters of the book. It really helped to hear it in somebody else's voice and
to see if she was getting the rhythm of the sentences. In 1993 Frazier, prodded by his wife,
turned over some 100 pages of his manuscript to novelist Kaye Gibbons, a mutual friend.
Gibbons found the work enthralling. In the fall of 1995, with Katherine and Annie's support,
Gibbons'high praise, and his agent's persuasion, Frazier showed his manuscript to publishers.
Within two months, the Atlantic Monthly Press paid Frazier a six-figure sum for the publishing
rights. Thus, the phenomenon of Cold Mountain had begun.
With the publication of Cold Mountain, Frazier--dubbed "a famously laconic loner" -
became not only a best-selling, award-winning author but a bona fide celebrity. It won the
National Book Award in 1997.
The story is based in part on Frazier's great-great-uncle, W. P. Inman. It traces the journey
of Inman, a wounded deserter from the Confederate army. It is at once an enthralling adventure,
a stirring love story, and it luminously evokes a vanished American in all its savagery, solitude,
and splendor. In Cold Mountain Frazier not only celebrated love, but also such old fashioned
virtues as hard work and self-reliance. He wanted to put readers in touch with their past.
Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned during the fighting at Petersburg, Inman, a
Confederate soldier, decided to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge Mountains and to Ada,
the woman he loved three years before. His trek across the disintegrating South brings him into
intimate and sometimes lethal contract with slaves and marauders, bounty hunters and witches,
both helpful and malign. At the same time, Ada is trying to revive her father's derelict farm and
learn to survive in a world where the old certainties have been swept away. As their stories
interweaves, Cold Mountain asserts itself as an authentic American Odyssey--- hugely
powerful, majestically lovely, and keenly moving.
Critics often cite the emotion-filled narrative, which parallels Homer's Odyssey, the
richness and authenticity of Frazier's language, and the strong, well-developed characters. Cold
Mountain intertwines the story of Inman---his desertion from the Confederate army and his
journey home--with the story of his Ada, his love. While Inman encounters danger and
adventure on his trek, Ada struggles to survive on the family farm, joining forces with a local
girl, Ruby, after Ada's father dies. As the lovers'reunion approaches, both are aware of their
internal (and external) transformations and irrevocable changes that reflect those of the country
in which they live. Charles Frazier reveals marked insight into man's relationship to the land
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1 Introduction
and the dangers of solitude. And he shows a keen observation of a society undergoing change.
1.2 Homer and The Odyssey

The Odyssey (Greek: Odv o o E t a or Odusseia) is one of the two major ancient
Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. The poem was probably written near the end of the
eighth century BC, somewhere along the Greek-controlled western present day Turkey seaside,
Ionia. The poem is, in part, a sequel to Homer's Iliad and mainly centers on the Greek hero
Odysseus (or Ulysses, as he was known in Roman myths) and his long journey home to Ithaca
following the fall of Troy.
It takes Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War. During this
absence, his son Telemachus and wife Penelope must deal with a group of unruly suitors, called
Proci, who compete for Penelope's hand in marriage, since most have assumed that Odysseus
had died.
The poem is a fundamental part of the modem Western canon and is indeed the second —
the Iliad is the first--extant work of Western literature. It continues to be read in Homeric
Greek and translated into modem languages around the world. The original poem was
composed in an oral tradition by an aoidos, perhaps a rhapsode, and was intended more to be
sung than read. The details of the ancient oral performance and the story's conversion to a
呻 ten work inspire continual debate among scholars. The Odyssey was written in a
regionless poetic dialect of Greek and comprises 12,110 lines of dactylic hexameter. In the
English language as well as many others, the word odyssey has come to refer to an epic voyage.
1.3 Literature Review

Research on The Odyssey at home and abroad is abundant and various. Critics and
researchers study the work from different perspectives and employ various theories. Many
essays on The Odyssey are included in Critical Essays on Homer compiled by Atchity Kenneth
(1987). There are also some domestic researchers who focus on the study of theme and
narrative structure, such as, Pan Yihe's The Modern Inspiration of the Homing Theme in The
Odyssey (1998), Bao Pengcheng's The Structure and Sub-structure of The Odyssey (2001), Li
Chunxia's The Floating Theme in The Odyssey (2006) and Dong Ailan's Odessey and Modern
Narrative Patterns about Multi-Angled Focus (2007).
There is very little research done on Cold Mountain. It was published in1995 and won the
National Book Awardin 1997. People at home are not familiar with the novel itself. Only
through the Hollywood film Cold Mountain, which was adapted from the novel in 2003 have
people learnt about the author and Cold Mountain. There are some film reviews, such as, Yang
Huarong's The Journey through 万 me--- the Textual Analysis on Cold Mountain (2005), Zhou
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Xiaoying's Searching for the Textual Origin of the Film Cold Mountain and the 协 riation
(2006) and Liu Congying's Searching for the Textual Origin of the Film Cold Mountain (2007).
The thesis aims at studying The Odyssey and Cold Mountain comparatively in myth
archetypal approaches. Mythological criticism started in late 19th century, when James George
Frazer first bridged anthropology and literature, by applying his proven anthropological
research achievements in mythological criticism, and opened a new window for the approach.
The Golden Bough is his representative works in this field. Jung added his primary contribution
to archetypal criticism with his theory of racial memory and archetypes. In the mid-20th
century, Canadian critic Northrop Frye, notably, in Anatomy of criticism, proposed a whole
system of literary archetypal criticism based on the achievements of Dr. Frazer and Jung.
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2 Mythological and Archetypal ]>!()_aches
2 Mythological and Archetypal Approaches
2.1 The History of the Mythological and Archetypal Criticism

"Myths are by nature collective and communal."1They bind a tribe or a nation together in
common psychological and spiritual activities. "Just as dreams reflect the unconscious desires
and anxieties of the individual, myths are the symbolic projections of peoples hopes, values,
fears and aspirations."2 Although every people has its own distinctive mythology that may be
reflected in legend, folklore and ideology---in other words, "myth takes their specific shapes
from the cultural environments in which they grow"3 ---myth is, in the general sense, universal.
Furthermore, similar motifs or themes may be found among many different mythologies, and
"certain images that recur in the myths of peoples widely separated in time and place tend to
have a common meaning or, more accurately, tend to elicit comparable psychological
responses and to serve similar cultural functions."4
2.1.1 Frazer's Contribution to Mythological Criticism

Mythological criticism started in late 19th century. It was James George Frazer who first
bridged anthropology and literature, by applying his proven anthropological research
achievements in mythological criticism, and opened a new window for the approach.
As an anthropologist, Dr. Frazer's fame is as well established in the field of literary
criticism as it is in the field of anthropology. Frazer's main contribution was to demonstrate the
"essential similarity of mans chief wants everywhere and at any time 尸 particularly as
these
wants are reflected throughout ancient mythologies. He explained, for example, in the abridged
edition of The Golden Bough: "Under the names of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis, the
people of Egypt and western Asia represented the yearly decay and revival of life, especially
vegetable life, which they personified as a god who annually died and rose again from the dead.
In name and detail the rites varied from place to place in substance they were the same."6
Frazer was one of the earliest critics interested in finding out the structural principles
behind the archetypal myths and rituals in the tales and ceremonies of different cultures. By
synthesizing and comparing religious and magical practices in different cultures, Frazer, in his
book The Golden Bough, attempted to show the traces of human consciousness from the
primitive to the civilized, and what is more important, to show the similarities among the
myths and rituals of diverse cultures. One good example is his account of a ritual that was
performed in a place in ancient Italy, where an escaped slave may obtain his freedom and
power by breaking off a branch from the tree in the sanctuary and then killing the priest for the
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title of "the King of the Wood". According to Frazer, breaking off the branch and killing the
priest are actually a ritual with its archetypal meaning: when the old king's power begins to fail
him, he will and must be replaced by a vigorous new one so as to maintain the benefits of the
social and natural order. This kind of ritual can also be found in the primitive tribes in the
Mediterranean and some other places, although the actual practices are different. The central
motif with which Frazer dealt in his masterpiece The Golden Bough was the archetype of
crucifixion and resurrection, specifically the myths describing "killing of the divine king."
Among many primitive people it was believed that the ruler was a divine or semi-divine being
whose life was identified with the life cycle in nature and in human existence. Because of this
identification, the safety and happiness of the people and even of the world were felt to be
decided by the life of the god-king. Furthermore, Frazer pointed out that the rites of blood
sacrifice and purification were considered by ancient peoples as a magical guarantee to
rejuvenation, an assurance of life, vegetable, and human. Frazer's idea about rituals and magic
in The Golden Bough inspired Frye's later study of archetypes, and is frequently quoted by him.
Frye says that The Golden Bough "has had more influence on literary criticism than in its own
alleged field, and it may yetprove to be really a work of literary criticism."7 He also points out,
"The search for archetypes is a kind of literary anthropology, concerned with the way that
literature is informed by pre-literary categories such as ritual, myth andfolk tale."8
2 儿 2 Jungian Psychology and Its Archetypal Insight

The word archetype, when it was used by Plato, originally means "the original pattern or
model of a work."9 In ancient Greek, the word comprises two parts: arch means "origin" and
"root", typos refers to''form" and "model." 10 Generally speaking, an archetype is a symbol that
"recurs often in literature", but it is different from a symbol in that it is "original imagery that
recalls psychological events common to all people and all culture."11 The original imagery is
shown in worshipping totems, dreams, myths and legends. For example, the sun symbolizes
brightness and prosperity while water means purity and sacredness.
Such motifs and images are called archetypes. To state simply, archetypes are universal
symbols. The term "archetype" can be traced back to Plato, but the concept gained currency in
the 20th century literary theory and criticism through the work of the Swiss founder of
analytical psychology C.G Jung (1875-1961). Jung, in 1930s and 1940s, developed a theory of
archetypes out of rituals and tales, and established the connection between archetypes and
racial unconsciousness.
Jung's primary contribution to archetypal criticism is his theory of racial memory and
archetypes. In developing the concept, Jung expanded Freud's theories of the personal
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unconsciousness, asserting that "beneath personal unconscious is a primeval, collective

unconscious shared in the psychic inheritance of all."12 In The Archetypes and the Collective
Unconscious, Jung discussed at length many of the archetypal patterns, for example, water,
color, and rebirth. In this way, his emphasis is psychological rather than anthropological. A
good deal of his work overlaps that of Frazer and others. However, this does not mean Jung is
not a major influence in the growth of archetypal criticism. At least, he provided some of the
favorite terms which are now current among critics, like the shadow, the persona, and the
amma.
2.1.3 Northrop Fry's Theory

In the mid-20th century, Canadian critic Northrop Frye (1912-91), in Anatomy of criticism,
proposed, based on the achievements of Dr. Frazer and Jung, a whole system of literary
archetypal criticism in the 1950s, i.e. "'archetypes originate from the very nature of literature
itself---the cycle'(Frye 1970: 584-6), and it is this inner structure that connects literature to
myth."13
Frye redefines archetype as "a symbol, usually an image, which recurs often enough in
literature to be recognizable as an element of one literary experience as a whole."14 In Frye's
eyes, it is archetype that connects one individual literary work with others. He finds that writers
of different ages and in different places have employed similar images and character types in
their works to find symbolic expressions. For example, they may use gardens, festivity, and
harvest as symbols of desirable states of being, and deserts, storm, and drought as
corresponding symbols of undesirable conditions. They may connect, either consciously or
unconsciously, their characters with one or more mythic heroes or benevolent kings. In
addition, different writers have also invoked again and again identical narrative patterns such
as the quest narrative and the Cinderella narrative in their works. The recurring images,
characters, and narrative patterns in literary works do not appear coincidently. They actually
"indicate a certain unity in the nature that poetry imitates, and in the communicating activity of
which poetry forms part." 15 In that sense, archetype, according to Frye, is also "the
communicable unit" that "connects one poem with another and thereby helps to unify and
integrate our literary experience. ,, 16
In addition, archetype in literature as a recurring symbol and a communicable unit has a
close relationship with ritual and myth. Frye suggests, "the narrative aspect of literature is a
recurrent act of symbolic communication: in other words a ritual... [and] the significant
content (of literature) is the conflict of desire and reality which has for its basis the work of the
dream. Ritual and dream, therefore, are the narrative and significant content respectively of
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literature in its archetypal aspect."17 Ritual imitates the cyclical process of nature: the changes
of seasons and the movement of the universe that happens regularly and repetitively as well as
the recurring cycles of human life. Narrative, like ritual, also falls in cyclical repetition. Frye
says, "The pull of ritual is toward pure cyclical narrative, which if there could be such a thing,
would be automatic and unconscious repetition." 18 It means that images, characters, themes,
and narrative patterns, that to some extent belong to the narrative aspect, recur once and again
in literature. On the other hand, literature, according to Frye, is part of the total human
imitation of civilization, which is impelled by desire or dream. Ritual, in this case, is not only a
rec1:1rrent action but also an expressive means of desire. For example, there are rituals of
punishment 础 d expulsion to express hatred of an enemy. Since ritual is''pre-logic, preverbal
and in a sense pre-human", 19 it can not describe itself; meanwhile, the dream or desire, which
is obscure, "is a system of cryptic allusions to the dreamers own life", 20 and Frye believes- tftat
it is myth that unites ritual and dream in a form of verbal communication, because myth is
distinctively a human way of utterance and in all dreams/desires there is a mythic element with
a power of independent communication. "Myth not only gives meaning to ritual and narrative
to dream: it is the identification of ritual and dream." 21 With the interpenetration of ritual
(narrative pattern of literature) and dream (theme of literature) in the form of myths, which are
primarily the primitive and naive literature such as folk tales, biblical stories and ballads,
archetypes as a recurring and communicable symbol travel around the world over all barriers
of language and culture. Literary critics can not only find out the inner structure in a literary
work but also reveal the real significance of the writing by studying the archetypes, which
include images, characters, and narrative patterns.
Frye defined the term of archetypes on different layers and his ideas on archetypes
experienced several stages. Generally speaking, Frye's propositions are as follows:
First, archetypes are communicative modes in literature, and the communicative function
of archetypes is like that of words.
Second, archetypes could be images, symbols, themes, characters, or structure units, as
long as they recur in different literary works and possess conventional associations.
Third, archetypes demonstrate the force of literature convention. Archetypes can rally
individual literary work and make literature a special pattern of social communication.
Fourth, the base of archetypes is both socio-psychological and historic-cultural.
Archetypes work as an essential medium, bridging literature and life.
On a general level, Jung's and Frye's theorizing about archetypes, however labeled,
overlap, and boundaries are elusive, but in the disciplines of literature the two schools have
largely ignored each other's work. Myth criticism grew in parts as a reaction to the formalism
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of new criticism, while archetypal criticism based on Jung'theories was never linked with any
academic tradition and remained organically bound to its roots in psychology: the individual
and collective psyche, dreams, and the analytic process.
As discussed above, mythological criticism and archetypal criticism overlap and thus, are
interchangeable. Archetypes usually include myths (tales, rituals, totems, taboos, etc), so
archetypal criticism is often used both for myth and archetypal criticism. Therefore, in the
thesis, the two approaches will be combined as one, with no distinction, and will be called
myth-archetypal criticism.
As far as Cold Mountain and The Odyssey are concerned, their repeated adaptations, along
with added or subtracted plots, themes and characters, can best illu trate 山 na 立 c
cimyth archetypal criticism.
2.2 Archetypal Images, Motifs or Patterns

Images or symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract
ideas or concepts. There are some typical images that occur in the two works, as shown in the
following:
1. Water: the mystery of creation; birth-death-resurrection; purification and redemption;
fertility and grow 由 According to Jungian psychology, water is also the commonest symbol
for the unconscious.
a. The sea: the mother of all life; spiritual mystery and infinity; death and rebirth; timelessness
and eternity; the unconscious
b. Rivers: death and rebirth; the flowing of time into eternity; transitional phases of the life
cycle; incarnations of deities.
2. The archetypal woman (Great Mother--the mysteries of life, death, transformation):
a. The Good Mother (Positive aspects of the Earth Mother): associated with the life principle,
birth, warmth, nourishment, protection, fertility, growth, abundance
b. The Terrible Mother (including the negative aspects of the Earth Mother): the witch,
sorceress, siren, whore, femme fatale--associated with sensuality, sexual orgies, fear, danger,
darkness, dismemberment, emasculation, death; the unconscious in its terrifying aspects.
c. The Soul Mate: the Sophia figure, Holy Mother, the princess or "beautiful lady”一
incarnation of inspiration and spiritual fulfillment.
3. The Wise Old Man (savior, redeemer, guru): personification of the spiritual principle,
representing knowledge, reflection, insight, wisdom, cleverness, and intuition on the one hand,
and on the other, moral qualities such as goodwill and readiness to help, which make his
"spiritual" character sufficiently plain.
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4. Garden: Paradise; innocence; unspoiled beauty (especially feminine); fertility.

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and
inform the text's major themes. In accordance with David Adams Leeming's four types of myth,
there are several archetypal motifs:
1. Creation: perhaps the most fundamental of all archetypal motifs---virtually every mythology
is built on some account of how the cosmos, nature, and humankind were brought into
existence by some supernatural Being or beings.
2. Immortality: another fundamental archetype, generally taking one of two basic narrative
forms:
a. Escape from time: "retuo!_tc, paradise," the state of perfect, timeless bliss enjoyed by man
and woman before their tragic fall into corruption and mortality.
b. Mystical submersion into cyclical time: the theme of endless death and regeneration--
human beings achieve a kind of immortality by submitting to the vast, mysterious rhythm of
Nature's eternal cycle, particularly the cycle of the seasons.
3. Hero archetypes (archetypes of transformation and redemption):
a. The quest: the hero (savior, deliverer) undertakes some long journey during which he or she
must perform impossible tasks, battle with monsters, solve unanswerable riddles, and
overcome insurmountable obstacles in order to save the kingdom.
b. Initiation: the hero undergoes a series of excruciating ordeals in passing from ignorance and
immaturity to social and spiritual adulthood, that is, in achieving maturity and becoming a full
fledged member of his or her social group. The initiation most commonly consists of three
distinct phases: (1) separation, (2) transformat on, and (3) return. Like the quest, this is a
variation of the death-and-rebirth archetype.
c. The sacrificial scapegoat: the hero, with whom the welfare of the tribe or nation is identified,
must die to atone for the people's sins and restore the land for fruitfulness.
2.3 The Concept of Displacement and Transposed/ Inverted Parallelism

The presence of a mythical structure in realistic fiction poses certain technical problems
for making it plausible, and the devices used in solving these problems are given the general
name of displacement. The central principle of displacement is that "what can be
metaphorically identified in a myth can only be linked in romance by some forms of simile:
analogy, significant association, incidental accompanying imagery, and the like. In a myth we
can have a sun-god or a tree-god; in a romance we may have a person who is significantly
associated with the sun or trees. In more realistic modes the association becomes less
significant and more matter of incidental, even coincidental or accidental, imagery." 22
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2MythologicaIand 心 Approaches
In Frye's classification of the three basic kinds of myths and archetypal symbols, "there is
undisplaced myth generally about gods or demons, which takes the form of two contrasting
worlds of total metaphorical identification, one desirable and the other undesirable." 23 In
Frye's opinion, the tendency of realism or naturalism is at the other extreme and romance
(different from the romantic mode mentioned before) lies between the two poles. Both romance
and realism embody the same archetypes found in myth, except that they now are displaced in
a human direction: romance conventionalizes content in an idealized direction while ironic
literature "begins with realism and tends towards myth" 24 mostly with demonic structures. So
we can see displacement can be understood as "indirect mythologizing," 25 that is, stories are
modified or displaced so as to make them plausible forms of undisplaced myth.
In addition, the relationship between innocent or experienced imageries and apocalyptic
or demonic imageries reflects another aspect of displacement: it can also move in the
direction of moral acceptability.''At the radical metaphor (referring to apocalyptic or demonic
imageries), there is no correlation between what is desirable or undesirable and what is
moral." 26 The imagery in the demonic vision, for example, is evil not because it is morally
unacceptable but because it is an undesirable object. However, imagery in the innocent or
experienced vision, which projects onto human instead of gods, tends to follow the laws of
what is morally acceptable. Also the distance between the moral and the desirable tends to
collapse in the civilized human society. For example, apocalyptic sexual imagery in the
analogy of innocence has been displaced as the virginal or the matrimonial. However, this kind
of displacement is typical only when poetry is closely related with religion. On the other hand,
Frye says that literature "continually tends to right its own balance, to return to the pattern of
desire and away from the conventional and moral." 21 In analogy of experience, this tendency
may happen most likely that morally desirable or undesirable imagery often finds it rightful
or degraded expression "only through ingenious techniques of displacement." 28 Therefore, in
Frye's opinion, the moral reference of archetypes is inflexible and the meaning of archetypal
imagery can violate its customary moral association when it is displaced.
In transposed or inverted parallelism, events are taken over from the older narrative and
are remade in order to fit them into the dramatic structure of the novel. This concept was first
advocated by Julian Moynahan in his The Mayor of Casterbridge and the Old Testaments First
Book of Samuel: A Study of Some Literary Relationships, but he did not give a detailed account.
This method was not proposed by Northrop Frye, but it does have some similarities with the
concept of displacement, but there are also some obvious differences.
Briefly speaking, transposed/ inverted parallelism and displacement are both about some
changes in the use of the archetypes, but transposed / inverted parallelism means that the
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changes in the new creation can fmd its origin in the older narrative while displacement refers
especially to some complete changes and these changes cannot be seen in the former narratives.
In essence, the transposed/inverted parallelism is also a kind of copy, merely exchanging
the order of events, whereas in displacement, the development of the incident diverts to other
tracks or the fate of the character totally changes. Both appear for the sake of the accountability
and readability of the novel, and what is more, for the sake of expressing the real thoughts of
the novelist.
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3 Comparative Study between Cold Mountain and The Odyssey in Myth-Archetypal Approaches
3 Comparative Study between Cold Mountain and The
Odyssey in Myth-Archetypal Approaches
3.1 The Parallels between Cold Mountain and The Odyssey

There are a lot of parallels between Cold Mountain and The Odyssey. In an interview with
Charles Frazier about Cold Mountain, he said, when his father told him the story of the
ancestor, one of the first things he thought of was that there were certain parallels to The
Odyssey that might be useful in trying to think of a way to tell the story. Both tell the story of a
warrior, weary of war, trying to get home and facing all kinds of impediments along the way,
and a woman at home beset by all kinds of problems of her own that are as compelling as his.
So he reread The Odyssey---that was one of the first things he did when he really began
working on the book. There was a certain temptation to write parallel scenes---to try to have a
Cyclops scene, but he decided really quickly that that would be pretty limiting and kind of
artificial. Instead, he just let The Odyssey stay in the back of his mind as a model of a warrior
wanting to put that war behind him and get home.
In this part, the thesis will examine the parallels between Cold Mountain and The Odyssey.
3.1.1 The Parallels in Themes

The Odyssey provides the story of how the hero Odysseus came back home after a ten year
sea voyage, its themes are drifting and extoling people's wisdom and strength against nature,
which makes it the forerunner to the vagrant novel in the Middle Ages and the prototype of
journey literature. Starting from Odysseus'sea life elaborated in the work and taking drifting as
an important literary theme, it has influenced the thought, way, and art of many European and
American writers. Since The Odyssey the three themes of drifting characterized by seeking,
wandering, and returning have been established in European and American literature. Among
them, the journey novelists, who get great influence from the theme of drifting, are numerous.
The Odyssey tells a famous story of going home. The Greek hero---Odysseus, carrying
slaves and treasure plundered in the war, started his long journey home to Ithaca following the
fall of Troy. The Odyssey depicts how Odysseus came through innumerable hardships and
reunited with his wife and son after killing the unruly suitors at home. The Odyssey consists of
three parts with the themes of seeking, wandering, and returning. The first part narrates how
after the expedition of Odysseus, a group of unruly suitors kept pestering his wife Penelope, so
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his son Telemachus was determined to go out to search for his farther. The second part is about
Odysseus'ten-year drifting and adventures. The third part describes Odysseus going back
home, killing the suitors with his son and reuniting with his wife. From The Odyssey, the theme
of drifting came into shape, which took the self-struggle as the principal axis and presented the
human's pursuit of free will and adventurous spirit on the journey, no matter whether on the sea
or on the road. The theme came down from this ancient time to modem world and became a
basic theme of European and American literature.
In the novels about drifting, "home" is a symbol of searching. Odysseus persisted in going
back home after coming through untold hardships, because the "home" was not only his rich
kingdom---Ithaca or the place his son and wife lived, but also his spiritual home, which was
m intained inside his heart by constantly recalling his past and changeless belief. Odysseus'
searching had a certain mission. He searched for not only the way back home and the pivot of
his personal life, but also the true spiritual home and the life center of the whole human being.
On his journey, he not only shortened the spatial distance to his home, but the spiritual distance
to the gods through the struggle of auto-regression. After Odysseus'return home, the story does
not draw to a close. The gods'dictation repressed his bloody revenge, and at the same time,
instructed him to keep on drifting along the road home.''At last, however, Ulysses said,"叨 e,
we have not yet reached the end of our troubles. I have an unknown amount of toil still to
undergo. It is long and difficult, but I must go through with it …(God) bade me travel far and
wide, carrying an oar, till I came to a country where the people have never heard of the sea,
and do not even mix salt with their food. They know nothing about ships, nor oars that are as
the wings of a ship. He gave me this certain token which I will not hide from you. He said that
a wayfarer should meet me and ask me whether it was a winnowing shovel that I had on my
shoulder. On this, I was to fix my oar in the ground and sacrifice a ram, a bull, and a boar to
Neptune; after which I was to go home and offer hecatombs to all the gods in heaven, one after
the other. As for myse[f,he said that death should come to me from the sea, and that my life
should ebb away very gently when I was full of years and peace of mind, and my people should
bless me. All this, he said, should surely come to pass." 29
Getting home became an endless mission of Odysseus and he continued on the road home
all his life. Ithaca was only one station of his life journey.
In Cold Mountain, the hero---Inman is an Odysseus walking on the road home. Cold
Mountain, his home town, is a peaceful and beautiful southern town before the war. In Inrnan's
memory, "Childhood places. The damp creek bank where Indian pipes grew. The corner of a
meadow favored by brown-and-black caterpillars in the fall. A hickory limb that overhung the
lane, and from which he often watched his father driving cows down to the barn at dusk. They
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would pass underneath him, and then he would close his eyes and listen as the cupping sound
of their hooves in the dirt grew fainter and fainter until it vanished into the calls of katydids
and peepers." 30 "He thought on homeland, the big timber, the air thin and chill all the year
long. Tulip poplars so big through the trunk they put you in mind of locomotives set on end." 31
If there had been no war, Inman would have lived in the village happily all his life long,
appreciating the beauty of the mountains and river, witnessing the changes of time with love
and hope in his heart, and beginning work at sunrise and resting at sunset like his forefathers.
Once the war broke out, Inman made for the battlefield in the belief that he was guarding his
home. Finally, he found that the good nature of human beings had disappeared completely in
the cold and bloody killing. The so-called just fighting was only the cheating cloak of the
authorities. In the battle of Petersburg, Inman was badly wounded, which made him struggle
for life on the brink of death. As a survivor of a disaster, Inman conducted a deeper reflection
on life, and found that being far away from the familiar life track, he had lost the calmness of
his heart. He felt "A mans spirit could be torn and cease and yet his body keep on living. He
was himself a case in point, and perhaps not a rare one, for his spirit, it seemed, had been
about burned out of him but he was yet walking. Feeling empty, however, as the core of a big
black-gum tree. His spirit, he feared, had been blasted away so that he had become lonesome
and estranged from all around him as a sad old heron standing pointless watch in the mudflats
。,Ja pond lacking frogs. It seemed a poor swap to find that the only way one might keep from
fearing death was to act numb and set apart as if dead already, with nothing much left 可
yourself but a hut of bones." 32
In his letter to Ada, "Should you still possess the likeness I sent four years ago, I ask you,
please, do not look at it. I currently bear it no resemblance in either form or spirit."33
The exhaustion and torment of his soul and yearning for his lover urged him to step on the
long road home alone, crossing the war-ridden continent. The home is the place where all his
scattered forces might gather. Going back to Cold Mountain not only meant going back to a
peace life, but also the world of love. It is a soul returning journey and a vivification of
humanity.
The drifting was accompanied by isolation in the search for meaning. The loneliness that
many of the characters experience informs their search for meaning in a world tom by war and
hardship. For example, Ada and Inman bury their feelings of isolation, just as they
internalize their grief, regret, and hope for the future. Ada grows to feel content and secure at
Black Cove but recalls the alienation she felt both on first arriving and immediately after her
father's funeral. She also recollects her sense of estrangement from Charleston society.
Similarly, Inman feels a sense of profound loneliness and growing misidentification with
the human
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world because of his war experiences. His spiritual desolation is suggested when he listens to
many people's tales of hardship but rarely shares details of his own past. Frazier shows how
Inman's solitude is not simply a physical state---it is a psychic introspection born from a need
to find meaning in what appears to be a senseless existence.
However separated Inman feels from the human world, his character is not alienated from
society. Even while he searches nature for some overarching spiritual truth, Inman recognizes
that he seeks the solace of Ada's company. His journey becomes a solitary spiritual quest for
communion with a greater power.
3 儿 2 The ParaJJeJs in Plots

There are a lot of parallels in the plots of The Odyssey and Cold Mountain. It takes
Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War. Odysseus went through
thirteen tribulations on his journey home, such as the lazy Lotus-Eaters, the cruel Cyclops
Polyphemus, the crazy revenge and interference of Poseidon, the alluring of Sirens and seven
year captivity on the nymph Calypso's distant island. In the same way, the tribulations of
Inrnan's adventure also have the sub-myth brand. The home guard searching for deserters and
outliers everywhere are his enemy. The monstrous flabby fish is ready to swallow Inman at any
moment just like the cruel Cyclops Polyphemus. The flooding river is like crazy Poseidon who
blocked the way home. The ignorant villagers may become the mobsters at any moment. Even
a dog opposed Inman, pouncing on him unexpectedly from the darkness and biting his calf.
The three bewitching and lewd women clearly are the transfiguration of Sirens. Also, the
young widow Sara behaves like the nymph Calypso.
Odysseus'wife Penelope waited for her husband patiently and loyally. At the same time,
she dealt wittedly with a crowd of 108 boisterous young men in the palace. The Suitors aimed
at persuading Penelope to accept her husband's disappearance as final and to marry one of
them. While she waited, Penelope was continually confused by her frequent dream. "/ have
twenty geese about the house that eat mash out of a trough, and of which I am 釭 ceedingly
fond. I dreamed that a great eagle came swooping down from a mountain, and dug his curved
beak into the neck of each of them till he had Id/led them all. Presently he soared off into the sky,
and left them lying dead about the yar, 心 ” 34 Actually, the dream is a vision of good omen that
shall surely come to pass. The geese are the suitors, and the eagle is her own husband, who
will come back and will bring those suitors to a disgraceful end.
Before his reunion with his wife, Odysseus was directed by Athena to make himself up
into a beggar and tried every means to verify the faith of his wife, his son, and servants.
Penelope was also full of suspicions and uncertainty towards the beggar and took measures to
try him. "Nevertheless, Euryclea, take his bed outside the bed chamber that he himself built.
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Bring the bed outside this room, and put bedding upon it with fleeces, good coverlets, and
blankets...She said this to try him, but Ulysses was very angry and said, "Wife, I am much
displeased at what you have just been saying. Who has been taking my bed from the place in
which I left it? He must have found it a hard task, no matter how skilled a workman he was,
unless some god came and helped him to shift it...When she heard the sure proofs Ulysses now
gave her, she fairly broke down. She flew weeping to his side, flung her arms about his neck,
and kissed him." 35 At last, they finished testing each other and reunited.
While the heroine of Cold Mountain, Ada, faced her father's death, her lover's absence
and the slack farm, she had to give up the identity of a quality lady, and walked up a stiff road
for survival with the help of Ruby. In the evenings, Ada, read the story of Odysseus to Rudy.
Hasn't she gotten an expectation of Inman coming back home in her heart?
In order to comfort Ada, the Swangers'told her that if she took a mirror and look
backwards into a well, she will see her future down in the water. "She shifted her feet to find
better grip on the packed dirt of the yard and then tried to look into the mirror. The white sky
above was skimmed over with backlit haze, bright as a pearl or as a silver mirror itself...Ada
tried tofocus her attention on the hand mirror, but the bright sky beyond kept drawing her eyes
away. She was dazzled by light and shade, by the confusing duplication of reflections and of
frames ．．且 er head spun and she reached with her free hand and held to the stonework of the
well. And then justfor a moment things steadied, and there indeed seemed to be a picture in the
mirror. It was like a poorly 釭 ecuted calotype. Vague in its details, low in contrast, grainy.
What she saw was a wheel of bright light, a fringe offoliage all around. Perhaps a suggestion
of a road through a corridor of trees, an incline. At the center of the light, a black silhouette of
a figure moved as if walking, but the image was too vague to tell if it approached or walked
away. But wherever it was bound, something in its posture suggested firm resolution." 36 It
seems that Ada received some hints which refreshed her withered heart. She learned that she
had to change and had to pull herself together while waiting for Inman to come back home.
With the help and influence of Ruby, she gradually acclimatized herself to the rough life and
learned to face all kinds of hardships optimistically. Time flies, and Ada changed from a fair
lady into a farm woman. She learned to be firm. It's hard to find sadness and helplessness in
her face. Everything changed except for the love for Inman. Ada said to Ruby that the long
waiting had withered her heart like the leaves in winter, but her love for Inman was still as
solid as a rock.
When Ada and Inman met, they did not recognize each other at first. Ada's hostility and
ground alert made Inman full of despair.
"Ada still did not know him. He seemed to her some madman awander in the storm,
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knapsack on his back, snow in his beard and on his hat brim, speaking wild and tender words
to whatever appeared before him, rock and tree and rill. Likely as not to cut somebody s throat,
would be Ruby s estimation. Ada raised the shotgun again so it would break him open if she
but
pulled the trigge 尸．He turned back to her and held out his empty hands again and said, If I
knew where to go I'd go there.
It might have been timbre of voice, angle of profile. Something. Length of bone in his
forearm, shape of knucklebones under the skin of his hands. But suddenly Ada knew him, or
thought she did. She lowered the shotgun to where it would but cut him off at the knees. She
said his name and he said yes." 37
In many ways, Inman and Ada's reunion is anti-climactic. Put simply, Ada is not where
Irnnan expected her to be. Instead of striding heroically into Black Cove, Inman is forced to
climb Cold Mountain looking haggard and dejected. Ada herself is wearing pants, not the
delicate "ankle boots" and "petticoats" Inman had anticipated. The changes in the physical
appearances of both characters signify the internal changes they have undergone. lrnnan
recognizes that a life with Ada is his journey's true destination, rather than his family (of whom
he makes no mention) or even the landscape. lrnnan admits his fear that Ada will "recede
before him forever" leaving him a "lone pilgrim". This anxiety has defined their relationship
from the start, as both have sought to overcome their shared emotional reserve and
inclination toward privacy. The effects of Ada and Irnnan's estrangement are conveyed in the
initial awkwardness of their greeting. However, the sincerity of their feelings toward one
another soon resurfaces as each gains the courage to reach out to the other.
They cuddled closely in the forest. Unfortunately, as they tried to devise plans for their
future, Inman was waylaid by the Home Guard. Ada heard the gunshots in the distance, dry and
thin as sticks breaking. The dream and the old well prediction are so similar; both indicate
futures that are confirmed in the end.
3.1.3 The Parallels in Characters

We can find that there were a lot of similarities between the protagonists in Cold
Mountain and 乃 e Odyssey. This part will analyze the archetypes attached to lrnnan and
Odysseus, Ada and Penelope.
3.1.3.1 The Archetype Attached to Inman and Odysseus
Inman and Odysseus conform to one of the hero archetypes the quest, which referrs to
a hero (savior, deliverer) who undertakes some long journey during which he or she must
perform impossible tasks, battle with monsters, solve unanswerable riddles, and overcome
insurmountable obstacles in order to save the kingdom.
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Inman's character reflects a conflict between moral precepts and the horrific realities of
life. When the novel opens, Inman is wounded and psychologically scarred by memories of war.
The ghosts of dead soldiers haunt his dreams at night and thoughts of Ada fill his days. Despite
his crippled psyche, Inman remains an honorable and heroic man. Throughout the novel,
Inman's conscience guides his actions. Although he is troubled by the deaths he has witnessed
and doesn't wish to add to them, Inman is willing to resort to violence if necessary. Frazier
characterizes his protagonist as a warrior equipped to fight moral and physical battles.
As a figure assaulted by evil forces, Inman justifies aggressive means in the name of
protecting innocent people, himself included. Consequently, Inman's journey is ideological as
well as geographical. Inman reconsiders his spiritual ideas in light of the physical danger and
suffering he encounters while traveling. Inman's travel book, Bartram's Travels, is a spiritual
and topographical guide
him
—
it inspires Inman with idealized visions of home and directs
towards that home. Inman consults the book for spiritual sustenance and for escapist
entertainment. Frazier fills Inman's journey with shades of deeper meaning, suggesting that his
physical travails mirror a more profound spiritual struggle.
Inman recalls and reinterprets past events as part of his process of spiritual awakening. In
particular, he remembers Cherokee folktales and envisions a world located beyond the
terrestrial realm. Inman needs this kind of comfort, for, as he delves deeper into the mountains,
he becomes better acquainted with man's capacity for both good and evil. Following his
encounters with Junior and his near-death experience, Inman's faith in himself falters. However,
his faith in a better world does not. Frazier suggests that Sara's and the goat-woman's bravery
also bolster Inman's resolve. Inman preserves his humanity under the weight of intense
psychological strain because he believes in a distant and better reality.
Inman's name (we never learn his first name) suggests that he is a self-reflective man,
alone in the thrall of forces greater than his own will. Inman cannot direct what happens to him,
so he seeks a measure of control by inwardly questioning his past and speculating about his
future. While it would be too simplistic to state that Inman finds himself in Ada, he clearly
identifies in her the kind of life he wants to live —a life of peace, stability, and affection. Thus
Inman grows from a tortured and disillusioned man into a calmer, more self-aware individual.
Indeed, after a journey fraught with suffering and spiritual turmoil, Inman is temporarily
redeemed by love. Ultimately, however, Frazier suggests that Inman's true redemption —
an escape from the world with which he has become so disillusioned
attained
—can only be
through death.
Apparently, Frazier portrayed Inman according to the frame of Odysseus. The desire for
home is certainly the core of the characteristics shared by Inman together with Odysseus. There
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are wonderful passages in The Odyssey where the monologues of Odysseus that expressed his
deepest desire. Inman also showed exigent and insistent desire to get back home in Cold
Mountain, to get back to his love. In his dream, he said to Ada "/'ve been coming for you on a
hard road. I'm never letting you go. Never." 38
3.1.3.2 TheArchetype Attached to Ada and Penelope
Ada and Penelope belonged to one of the archetypal women--- the Soul Mate, or the
Sophia figure, Holy Mother, the princess or "beautiful lady", and also the incarnation of
inspiration and spiritual fulfillment.
In The Odyssey, Penelope was a female character that the poet portrayed deliberately. She
was portrayed not only with beautiful looks, but with a beautiful soul. She had wisdom, virtue
and loyalty. Her wisdom and loyalty was showed sufficiently when she subtly mediated among
the suitors to put off her remarriage with one of them. When her dear husband set sail for Troy,
the chiefs from all their islands were wooing her against her will and were wasting her estate.
"They want me to marry again at once, and I have to invent stratagems in order to deceive
them. In the first place heaven put it in my mind to set up a great tambour-frame in my room,
and to begin working upon an enormous piece of fine needlework. Then I said to them,
'Sweethearts, Ulysses is indeed dead, still, do not press me to marry again immediately; wait
for I would not have my skill in needlework perish unrecorded- till I have finished making a
pall for the hero Laertes, to be ready against the time when death shall take him. He is very
rich, and the women of the place will talk if he is laid out without a pall.'This was what I said,
and they assented; whereon I used to keep working at my great web all day long, but at night I
would unpick the stitches again by torch light. I fooled them in this way for three years without
their finding it out…”39
Ada in Cold Mountain was also a Penelope-like character. She was not only beautiful and
virtuous, but also smart, decisive, firm and tenacious. During the course of this novel, Ada'
character matures dramatically. Used to burying her head in a book, she initially shies from
romantic involvement. By the novel's close, however, Ada has embraced both joy and pain.
She has adapted to a life of manual labor, and living according to the rhythms of nature. Ada
has learned to find herself in the world by trusting in her intuition and heeding nature's
unspoken signs. Ada's new existence thus requires her to have a deeper engagement with both
the practical and emotional demands of life.
Ada's reunion with Inman testifies to her newfound openness. She overcomes her initial
feeling of estrangement by addressing her fears and hopes for the future. Having laid roots in
the community of Black Cove, Ada admits to Ruby that she fears a solitary future. However,
the stark topography around Cold Mountain offers her sanctuary from feeling marginalized and
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3 Comparative Study between Cold Mountain and The Odyssey in Myth－心 chetypal Approaches
eccentric. This landscape, moreover, provides a homeland she can share with Inman. After
Inman's death, Ruby's family and Ada's own daughter continue to provide Ada with a source
of emotional solace. In truth, Ada is not alone. Frazier demonstrates profound change in his
female protagonist as she grows to find security living close to nature. In particular, the
peaceful certainty of Ada's domestic routine indicates her comfort with the natural world's
cycles and repetitions.
3.1.4 The Parallels in Narrative Structure

In narrative structure, the return of Odysseus and the endless waiting of Penelope are
placed in the background of the mighty and magnificent Trojan War. Cold Mountain also
grandly unfolds Inman's recollection of the bloody battlefield and his various fantastic and
devious adventures on his journey back home layer upon layer. It gives readers a story of an
Odysseus style adventure. Both depict that the war forced the hero and heroine to separate
from each other, the hero to journey home and the heroin to wait with wisdom, fortitude and
patience.
The Odyssey consisted of 24 books, which advance in order step by step. The first part
(the first four books) narrates Telemachus, Odysseus'son, tried to extricate himself from the
obstruction of those shameless suitors who spied on his father's kingdom and his mother's
beauty, and went out to look for his missing father. The second part (the following eight books)
gives a detailed depiction of Odysseus'ten-year legendary drifting and adventures. The third
part (the last twelve books) recounts Odysseus getting back to his home--- Ithaca,
eliminating the suitors together with his son, and reuniting with his wife. The three plots
integrate with each other closely.
Cold Mountain echoes The Odyssey at a distance in the arrangement of structure, but they
are not identical. It also consists of three plots: the war, the adventures of the hero on his way
home and the patient waiting of the heroine. Cold Mountain includes twenty chapters. In the
first seventeen chapters, the journey of Inman and Ada's life in Cold Mountain were developed
alternately. In another words, the impar chapters chronicle the long journey home of a Civil
War soldier, Inman, to Cold Mountain in North Carolina. The story began in a military hospital,
and Inman's neck wound, a long difficult-to-heal horizontal slice received in battle, which was
drawing flies. He wrote from the hospital to the woman at home that he was coming home to
her. Inman deserts, knowing that Home Guards are on the prowl for deserters, and he begins a
long trek westward to Cold Mountain where he grew up. Inman's youth had originally filled
him with respect for Indian lore and the beautiful sceneries of Cold Mountain, but the
nightmares of war have made him disillusioned. Inman worries that four years of horror have
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transformed him into a monster, and that his would-be spouse on idyllic Cold Mountain, Ada
Monroe, cannot love him.
Inman is a moral man, and the brutality and killing he has witnessed on the battlefield
forced him to leave the hospital AWOL and step on the journey secretively, by foot, back to his
love. The trip is perilous. Inman is subject not only to the difficulties of near starvation and a
poorly healing wound, but also the cruelties from people he meets along the way. However,
every so often, he is also succored by compassionate people, such as the goat woman who
provides the cure for his neck wound, but not for the wounds inside.
The even chapters told us the story of Ada. Her father, a preacher, dies of tuberculosis,
leaving her utterly unable to provide for her own basic needs on the farm. Fortunately, a tough,
capable and self-reliant young mountain woman, Ruby, joined Ada on the farm, and helped
transform both the farm and Ada. The plot of the war was the background, which was reflected
through the recollections of Inman and what he saw and heard on his journey, and what Ada
found out from indirect sources.
The three plots intertwine together in the last three chapters. Inman at last reached the
destination of his joumey---Cold Mountain, going through innumerable hardships. When he
met Ada in the forest, owing to his great changes both in appearance and heart, Inman nearly
left right away because Ada couldn't recognize him at first sight. However, their love never
changed. The long time waiting, and their longing, and desire made their love more intense.
Only love that goes beyond everything could cure the wounds inside caused by the war.
Odysseus and Inman's journey home conform to fundamental archetype--- immortality. It
is a narrative form which means escaping from time or returning to paradise, which is the state
of perfect, timeless bliss enjoyed by man and woman before their tragic fall into corruption and
mortality. Cold Mountain was the paradise for Inman and Ada, as Ithaca was for Odysseus and
Penelope.
3.2 The Variations in Cold Mountain versus The Odyssey
3.2.1 The Variations in the Theme of War

There are completely different standpoints on the theme of war in the two works. In early
Greek slave society, agriculture and stockbreeding were quite backward. These leaders of
society, who we called "heroes" had a lot of slaves working for them, but productivity is still
laggard. So invading another country becomes a main method of gaining slaves and wealth.
The Greek, which moved from northern continent--- more backward region to the
Mediterranean, envied the civilization and wealth of the east and wanted to plunder it. Under
these circumstances, wars of aggression became very natural and frequent. In the procession of
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constant outward aggression, sometimes they would encounter stronger enemies and have
rough time. There are many such cases in The Odyssey. Whenever they met such troubles, they
only believe that the gods wanted to destroy them because of their insatiability. If they could
plunder some livestock and slaves, and come back safely, they didn't regard the war itself as a
bad thing. The war in The Odyssey was blest. The heroes were fighting for rights, glory, and
treasure. They were all covered by god-like splendor. The war was pitiless, but full of the hope
and joy for great achievements.
The Civil War in Cold Mountain was presented in absolutely different way. When Charles
Frazier was asked a question about the views of the war and of politics he felt the novel put
across, he said that he tried not to think about the war and politics too much when he was
working on the book. Frazier was interested in why a man like Inman went to that war---why
he volunteered. "It wasn't his fight," was Frazier's first thought on it---Inman didn't own
slaves and very few people did. Only about seven or eight percent of people in the southern
mountains owned slaves. Inman thought that he and people like him were fighting because they
thought they were repelling an invasion of their homeland. But what Frazier began to think
about the politics of that war was that it was a war between two economic systems---the
slave/agricultural system in the South and a growing industrial capitalist system in the North.
And then there were people like Inman who lived in an older economic system, kind of like
subsistence farming. One of the tragedies of the war was that those people got caught in the
crossfire of the war. Many of them died fighting somebody else's battle.
In some sense, Frazier's ideas of the war and politics were changed because of his
research on the Civil War period. He remembered early on in writing the book, going for a
walk in the mountains and coming upon a grave---it was actually two graves, side by side---in
this lonesome hillside, five miles from the nearest road. He found out later that it was an old
man and a boy who had been killed by federal raiders who had come over the mountains from
Tennessee looking for food. Near there is another double grave with a fiddler and a boy in it
who were killed by Southern Home Guard in much the same way. Looking at those two graves,
and seeing these people, who were essentially farmers, caught in that crossfire and killed in this
utterly pointless way. All this shaped some of his feelings toward the war.
Frazier wrote for seven years to provide us a historical long picture scroll, which depicted
the civil war and the great social changes in the south of the United States, and especially
showed us the people influenced by war and their lives changed by war. Under the calm
writing, all the cruelty and hypocrisy of human nature evoked by the war, which were
originally hidden under the surface of life, were entirely exposed.
Different from the theme of war in The Odyssey, Cold Mountain was filled with the air of
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antiwar sentiments based on human nature. Frazier conducted an in-depth reflection and made
a rational criticism. The reflection was delivered to the readers through the mouth of
different types of people. He did not conclude the war simplistically, but included all kinds
of opinions in order that the readers could draw their own conclusions.
For instance, the leaders of the Confederate South---Longstreet and Robert Lee had
their idea towards the war. The two generals spent the afternoon up on the hill coining fine
phrases like a pair of wags. "Longstreet said his men in the sunken road were in such a position
that if you marched every man in the Army of the Potomac across that field, his men would kill
them before they got to the wall. And he said the Federals fell that long afternoon as steady as
rain dripping down from the eaves of a house. Old Lee, not to be outdone, said its a good thing
war is so terrible or else we'd get to liking it too much." 40
As with everything Marse Robert said, the men repeated that flight of wit over and over,
passing it along from man to man, as if God Almighty Himself had spoken. When the report
reached Inman's end of the wall he just shook his head. Even back then, early in the war, his
opinion differed considerably from Lee's, for it appeared to him that they liked fighting plenty,
and the more terrible it is the better. And he suspected that Lee liked it most of all and would, if
given his preference, general them right through the gates of death itself. What troubled Inman
most, though, was that Lee made it clear he looked on war as an instrument for clarifying
G 叫's obscure will.
And for the common people, like the Swangers', things went more simple. "Neither Esco
nor Sally understood the war in any but the vaguest way, knowing for certain only two things:
that they generally disapproved of it, and that Esco had reached an age when he required some
help about the farm. For those and many other reasons, they would be glad to see the war done
and their boys come walking up the road." 41
Another example, Mrs. McKennet, a wealthy widow of middle age who had for a season
or two taken a keen romantic interest in Monroe and then later, after he failed to see her in the
same light, had simply become his friend, held opinions exactly in accord with every
newspaper editorial Ada had read for four years, which is to say Mrs. McKennet found the
fighting glorious and tragic and heroic. "Noble beyond all herpowers of expression." 42
Ada believed conversely, "that is the most preposterous thing she had ever heard.…
contrary to the general view, she found the war to exhibit anything but the fine
characteristics of tragedy and nobility. She found it, even at a great distance, brutal and
benighted on both sides about equally. Degrading to all." 43
And for the outliers, Stobrod, believed that their fighting in the war had not been pure as
they once thought. It had been tainted because they had fought witlessly for the big man's
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ownership of his nigger, and it was the human weakness of hatred driving them on. They were
a company of former fools, but they had seen the light.
Cold Mountain did not present the blood of the war directly. Like a romantic legend of
medieval knight, it only had a sense of poetic grief and gloom. The calm writing contained a
stirring force. The novel exposed the evil side of human nature through the adventures on
Inman's way home and what Ada saw and heard. The federal cavalry made off with everything
crazily in the average persons'houses; The South bandits pursued and killed the outliers
bloodily; Moreover, the greedy farmer, Junior, betrayed Inman for money; the priest, Veasey,
always dreamed of making a fortune in such turbulent days. And the bandit-like Home Guard
wandered around Cold Mountain and committed murder, arson, and every crime imaginable.
Frazier was not a cynical anti-war warrior, so his only purpose was not to accuse the evils
of the war. From a deeper layer, he depicted the despairs and helplessness of common people
under the war, and their indifference towards human lives.
During the days that Inman was healing in hospital, he remembered the battle in
Fredericksburg. "The fighting was in the way of a dream, one where your foes are ranked
against you countless and mighty. And you so weak. And yet they fall and keep falling until they
are crushed. Inman had fired until his right arm was weary from working the ramrod, his jaws
sore from biting the ends off the paper cartridges. His rifle became so hot that the powder
would sometimes flash before he could ram home the ball. At the end of the day thefaces of the
men around him were caked with blown-back powder so that they were various shades of blue,
and they put Inman in mind of a great ape with a bulbous colorful ass he had seen in a
traveling show once.,, 44
"Inman walked through the house and out the back door and saw a man killing a group of
badly wounded Federals by striking them in the head with a hammer. The Federals had been
arranged in an order, with their heads all pointing one way, and the man moved briskly down
the row, making a clear effort to let one strike apiece do. Not angry, just moving from one to
one like a man with a job of work to get done. He whistled, almost under his breath, the tune of
Cora Allen. He might have been shot had one of thefine-minded officer caught him, but he was
tired and wished to be shut of a few more enemies at little risk to himself Inman would always
remember that, as the man came to the end of the row, the first light of dawn came up on his
face.,, 45
Such bloody depiction can be seen in many places. The writer did not try to represent the
cruelty of the war, but wanted to make a metaphor of the disordered world through the war.
When the soldiers of the two sides rolled and wrestled each other in the mud of the battlefield,
when the fresh life vanished unexpectedly, and when the soldiers fell into a fate of "killer", no
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matter how holy the name is, the war would erode the peaceful spirit of people. And the
common people would lose their familiar lifestyle and the guidance of their inner-heart. This is
the invisible and everlasting wound left by the war on human souls.
3.2.2 The Variations in Images

There are various images in two works used to represent abstract ideas or concepts. And
there are some recurring structures, which help to develop and inform the text's major themes.
In The Odyssey, the sea is a typical image. The sea is a great barrier which prevents
Odysseus from going home. Odysseus encounters storms sent by Poseidon who knows that he
cannot stop the journey so he decides to make it harder. The waves batter him and one breaks
his mast. Sirens on sea try to tempt him. The sea is the source of his sufferings.
In Cold Mountain, images are more various, such as, the crow, forked roads and crossings,
seasonal changes and rotations.
Remaining true to its own cunning, the crow is a shifting and ambiguous symbol. Inman
strongly identifies with this bird, looking to it with envy as a creature of independence, freed
from the constraints that the world imposes. Ruby highlights the crow's merits when she points
out its resilience and tremendous capacity for survival. While the crow suggests doom and
destruction, it also demonstrates the dark instincts troubling man's soul.
Forked roads feature prominently in the text. Inman is often required to choose a direction
or to take some course of action directed by the road ahead. Crossings symbolize the
boundaries Inman traverses between the realms of the terrestrial and the spiritual.
Frazier uses seasonal variation as an allegorical device to reflect the development of his
characters. Ada, Inman, and Ruby seem to evolve in connection with nature's changes and
cycles. Inman recognizes that his path is not strictly linear as he heads toward a place where
past and present will meet. He even notes that his journey will be "the axle of my life." The
revolving motion Inman experiences is underscored by the novel's treatment of time. Ada and
Inman are haunted by memorie f themselves, each other, and their past
them
—that bind
together and sustain their hope for the future.

The cycles of time are mirrored by nature's rhythms. The night sky represents a cosmic
map that might foretell future events. Inman frequently observes Orion's path across the
heavens and plots his own course by the location of sun and moon. As winter comes around,
death settles on the landscape with intensity that foreshadows Inman's own death.
3.2.3 Displacement in the Depiction of Inman versus Odysseus

In The Odyssey, Odysseus was the king of Ithaca. He was a man of idea, and always
covered by god-like splendor. When he was young, he won a race so as to marry his wife,
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3Comp 釭 ative Study between Cold Mountain and The Odyssey in Myth-Archetypal Approaches
Penelope. Before the Trojan War, he even pretended to be insane by sowing with salt in order
to extricate himself from the warfare. But his lie was seen through at last, so he had to join the
expedition. In the Trojan War, he made suggestions frequently and performed brilliant exploit.
Odysseus was both intelligent and courageous. He treated his wife and son with a tender heart
and a chivalrous spirit, but assaulted his enemy boldly and powerfully. He never withdrew in
front of hardships and still talked and laughed imperturbably in face of danger. After ten-year
voyage, he went home through numerable hardships. He was also a tricky man. When he
returned to his own house accompanied by Eumaeus, Odysseus disguised himself as a beggar.
He experienced the suitors'rowdy behavior and planned their death. He met Penelope. He
tested her intentions with an invented story of his birth in Crete, where, he said, he once met
Odysseus. Closely questioned, he added that he had recently been in Thesprotia and had
learned something there of Odysseus's recent wanderings.
Different from the depiction of greatness and loftiness of the hero in The Odyssey, Cold
Mountain did not devote itself to preach the heroic feats. Though he showed his bravery and
wisdom on his way getting home, Inman was still an outlier. The parallels in the characters
between The Odyssey and Cold Mountain was transposed--- the hero and the anti-hero.
Unlike Odysseus, Inman was depicted more man-like. He is brave and wise. At the same
time, he is fragile and helpless before the war, easily hurt and full of fear of death. He not only
has the human desire for love and peace, the good nature of human beings, but also the evil
nature of humans. When his life was threatened, he lost sense and became degraded under the
normal moral level. On his journey, Inman entered into the house of a young widow---Sara. He
asked for some food and one-night rest. Sara and her infant depended on each other for
survival after her husband died in the war. Their only property was a hog. When she saw the
federal raiders leading the hog off, Sara held the baby to her and yelled out, "That hogs all I've
got. You take it and you might as well knock both of us in the head and kill us now, for it will all
come out the same." 46 Though he was unwilling to kill again, Inman realizes that he has to
即 l the three Federal soldiers so that Sara and her baby won't starve. The hopelessness of
human beings was fully presented. The endurance had reached the limit at which nothing more
is possible. A human being had changed into inhuman. Although this act troubles Inman, he
recognizes that he has suffered and seen worse acts committed in the name of war. Just as
Inman killed the immoral Junior in "to live like a gamecock," here he brings retribution to the
Federal soldiers. Frazier casts his protagonist in the light of an avenger concerned with
equalizing some of life's inequalities. Inman's acts prove that he has not lost the warrior
instinct that preserved him in battle and that now fires his determination to return home.
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3.2.4 Displacement in the Depiction of Ada versus Penelope

In The Odyssey, Penelope was a loyal wife, and also a beautiful and tricky woman. The
depiction of Penelope reflects women's low social status at that time. In Book 1, Telemachus,
her son, can interrupt her rudely when she talked with him and reproached her "Go, then,
within the house and busy yourself with your daily duties, your loom, your distaff, and the
ordering of your servants; for speech is man's matter, and mine above all others- for it is I who
am master here."47Penelope heard without any contention, but thought her son's words were
with reason. In Book 2, when Antinous asked Telemachus to command his mother remarry, he
answered "It will be hard on me if I have to pay Icarius the large sum which I must give him if I
insist on sending his daughter back to him. Not only will he deal rigorously with me, but
heaven will also punish me; for my mother when she leaves the house will calf on the Erinyes
to avenge her..." 48 So he couldn't command her mother, otherwise, he had to pay Penelope's
father a lot of money and he was afraid of being cursed, not because of cherishing his mother.
Later, Odysseus came home. Although he knew Penelope was loyal to him, he only told his son
his secret and did not tell Penelope that he had come back. The examples show that men looked
down upon women; sometimes, they regarded their wives as unbelievable and even lower than
slaves.
In Cold Mountain, the image of Ada, the lover of Inman, was rich and colorful. She was
not only pretty, smart, and loyal like Penelope, but brave and firm. She did not lose the courage
and the dignity from the beginning to the end, maintaining that kind of love, grace, courage,
and fortitude of the South, which was admired constantly in William Faulkner's novels.
Cold Mountain paid more attention to the depiction of Ada's bitter and hard life in Cold
Mountain. Ada had grown up in Charleston, and at her father's insistence, she had been
educated beyond the point considered wise for females. She had become a knowledgeable
companion for him, a lively and attentive daughter. She was filled with opinions on art and
politics and literature, and ready to argue the merit of her positions. She had a command of
French, Latin, and a hint of Greek. She had a passable hand at fine needlework, a competency
at the piano and the ability to render landscape and still life with accuracy in either pencil or
watercolor. And she was well read.
Later, in order to take good care of her father, she accompanied her father and moved to
Cold Mountain, a place famous for its thin and chilly air and beautiful scenery. They bought a
farm in Black Cove. Nevertheless, her lover hurried to the front and her father died
unexpectedly. Therefore, Ada was driven into the dilemma. The farm presented a desolate
scene on all sides after the war. None of her abilities is exactly to the point when faced with the
hard fact that she now found herself in possession of close to three hundred acres of steep and
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bottom, a house, a barn, outbuildings, but no idea what to do with them. Since then, she had
discovered herself to be frighteningly ill-prepared in the craft of subsistence, living alone on
farm that her father had run rather as an idea than a livelihood. Now the hired people were
gone. What she could cook to eat had become a pressing issue for Ada. She was perpetually
hungry, having eaten little through the summer but milk, fried eggs, salads, and plates of
miniature tomatoes from the untended plants that had grown wild and bushy with suckers.
Even butter had proved beyond her means, for the milk she had tried to churn never firmed up
beyond the consistency of runny dabber. She wanted a bowl of chicken and dumplings and a
peach pie but had not a clue how to arrive at them.
There were few possibilities before her. If she tried to sell out and return to Charleston,
the little money she could hope to realize from the farm in such bad times, when buyers would
be scarce, could hardly support her for long. She would, after a point, have to attach herself to
friends of her father's in some mildly disguised parasitic relationship, tutor or music instructor
or the like. But the thought of returning to Charleston as some desperate predatory spinster was
appalling to her. She could imagine the scenes. Spending much money she had on suitable
wardrobe and then negotiating matrimony with the kind of aging and ineffectual leftovers of a
certain level of Charleston society--- one several layers down from the top--- when all the men
approximate to her age were off to war.
So returning to Charleston was a bitter thought and one that her pride rejected. There was
nothing pulling her back there. And that state of being without kin too, was a bitter thought,
considering that all around her the mountain people were bound together in ties of clan so
extensive and frrm that they could hardly walk a mile along the river road without coming
upon a relative. "But still, outsider though she was, this place, the blue mountains, seemed to
be holding her where she was. From any direction she came at it, the only conclusion that she
left her any hope of self-content was this: what she could see around her was that she could
count on. The mountains and a desire to find if she could make a satisfactory life of common
things her--- together they seemed to offer the promise of a more content and expansive life,
though she could in no way picture even its starkest outlines." 49
Under the guidance of her inner-heart, Ada finally decided to remain living in beautiful
Cold Mountain. With the help of the village girl Ruby, she kept working day and night to put
the farm on the right track. As she traded her piano for sow, corn grits, and cabbages, Ada bid
farewell to the life of elegant ease and dependency. In the process of changing, Ada learned the
rough and hardship of life, and began to rethink the surrounding world, and overthrew her
original lifestyle. Her changes can be found in her letter to her Cousin Lucy in Charleston. "/
suspect, were we to meet on Market Street, you would not know me; nor, upon seeing the
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current want of delicacy in my aspect and costume, would you much care to.
I'm at the moment sitting on my back stoop writing this across my knees, my dress an old
print shirtwaist soaked through with perspiration from splitting oak logs,...The fingers
gripping the pen are dark as stirrup leathers, stained from shucking walnuts out of their
stinking, pulpy husks, and the nail of theforefinger is ragged as a hackerd and wantsfiling…
I cannot begin to recount all such rough work that I have done in the time since Father
died. It has changed me. It is amazing the physical alterations that can transpire in but a few
months of labor. I am brown as a penny from being outdoors all day, and I am growing
somewhat ropy through the wrists and forearms. In the glass I see a somewhat firmer face than
previously, hollower under the cheekbones…”50
Can't the process of Ada's changing and growing be regarded as a way of getting spiritual
home?
When the war came to an end, Cold Mountain returned to its normal peace and beauty.
All the things lost could never come back. As for Ada, Inman became time lasting memory to
her. Cold Mountain was the place she experienced pains and also the place she gained rebirth.
Another Easter Day came, from her calm smile, we can find a sense of firmness. Although
Inman's journey covers more physical distance and has more immediate drama, Ada's is richer
and deeper, in the end, perhaps it is she who travels farther. As far as Ada is concerned, her
journey of life undergoes a series of excruciating ordeals in passing from ignorance and
immaturity to social and spiritual adulthood, that is, in achieving maturity and becoming a full
fledged member of her social group. This is one of the hero archetypes--- initiations, which
most commonly consists of three distinct phases: (1) separation, (2) transformation, and (3)
return. Like the quest, this is a variation of the death-and-rebirth archetype.
3 立 5 Displacement in the Depiction of Ruby versus Euryclea

Eurykleia(Euryklea) was Odysseus'nurse and servant in his house. She hides
Telemachus'journey to Pylos and is the first woman to recognize Odysseus. She helps
Odysseus sort out the good hand-maidens from the bad ones. In The Odyssey, she was such
a loyal nurse that Odysseus and Telemachus had complete trust in her. They even confessed
to her their secrets instead of Penelope. Telemachus called Eurykleia and asked her to have
the goods prepared which were to he taken in the journey to Pylos and she was upset by the
command. She asked him who put such an idea in his head and reminded him that his father
went missing in a strange place. Telemachus told her that a god told him to do this and he made
her swear not to tell his mother. When Odysseus came home disguised as a beggar, the old
nurse recognizes him by the scar: "Oh yes! You are Odysseus! Ah, dear child! I could not see
you until now- not till I knew my masters body with my hands! 510dysseus pulled Eurykleia to
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3 Comparative Study between Cold Mountain and The Odyssey in My_th 心 chetypal Approaches
him and told her that he might have to kill her if she wasn't quiet. She was amazed that he
spoke to her this way and promised to reveal all the disloyal hand-maidens. Though she was
trusted by Odysseus, Eurykleia was a minor character. Her temperament was not developed,
except loyalty and obedience.
We found Ruby was an entirely fresh and new character in Cold Mountain. Ruby is both a
role model and a friend for Ada. As a strong-willed, practical woman with keen insight, Ruby
initially serves as a foil for the dreamy, intellectual Ada. (A foil is a character that reveals the
distinctive traits of another character through contrast.) Ruby's store of knowledge about the
natural world teaches Ada to look outward from herself, and to interact with the surrounding
environment. Ruby personifies many of the novel's themes about living close to nature,
moving at pace with its seasons, and establishing a close relationship with the land. However,
Ruby's role grows more substantial as Ada's character matures.心 Ada develops into a strong
friend and co-worker, and the women's friendship becomes increasingly sisterly and profound.
Just as Ada learns about practical life from Ruby, Ruby in tum learns from Ada, listening to the
classic literature the older woman reads aloud and following her lead when it comes to
expressing emotion (although emotional honesty does not come easily to Ada either).
Resolutely levelheaded and self-sufficient, Ruby begins to let go of past resentment,
particularly towards her father, and reclaims her faith in love.
Ruby's development within the novel, though not as dramatic as lrunan's or Ada's, is far
reaching and profounq. Ruby evolves from a girl into a natural mother figure. The novel charts
her transition from someone who could function successfully outside of society as a hermit
(she is similar in many ways to the goat-woman) to a woman who appreciates having her
whole family living and working beside her. She is a matriarchal figure who keeps her husband
and father in check without being too domineering. Ruby becomes the tie that binds her family
together.
The experience of Ruby's childhood was full of pain and tribulations. She had grown up
very poor, and had never known her mother, and her father had been a notorious local never
如 well and scofflaw called Stobrod Thewes. After learning to walk, she had begun feeding
herself. 心 an infant, Ruby foraged for food in the woods and up and down the river at
charitable farms. Such bitter life, on the other hand, endowed her immense courage and
wisdom. By the age of ten, she knew all features of the mountains for twenty-five miles in any
direction as intimately as a gardener would his bean rows. And that later, when yet barely a
woman, she had whipped men single-handedly.
Ada told Ruby that she envied her knowledge of how the world runs---farming, cookery,
and wild lore. And Ruby's lore included much impracticality beyond the raising of crops. The
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东北林业大学硕上学位论文
names of useless beings--- both animal and vegetable--- and the custom of their lives
apparently occupied much of Ruby's thinking, for she was constantly pointing out the little
creatures that occupy the nooks of the world. Just like a principal text, Ruby helped Ada put the
farm on the right track with her endowment and hardworking, and encourage Ada to become
an independent and strong-mind girl. Moreover, she asked Ada to observe and understand the
workings of affinity in nature.
Maybe we could find the trace of the goddess Athena and Eurycleia in Odyssey in Ruby.
However, Frazier did not want to portray Ruby as a copy of an omnipotent goddess or a simple
loyal servant. The archetype behind her did not, in the slightest degree, affect the author's
creation of Ruby as a bright and capable girl with strong character and free will.
We could learn some things about Ruby from Ada's first impression on her when Ruby
came to Black Cove first time. "She was a dark thing, corded through the neck and arms.
Frail-chested. Her hair was black and coarse as a horse :S- tail. Broad across the bridge of her
nose. Big dark eyes, virtually pupil-less, the whites of them startling in their clarity. She went
shoeless, but her feet were clean. The nails to her toes were pale and silver as fish
scales 产 From the appearance, it's easy to find Ruby is far from the requirement of a farm
worker. What Ada needed was in the way of rough work--- plowing, planting, harvesting,
woodcutting, and the like. But Ruby convincingly depicted herself as capable of any and all
farm tasks, which was proved later on. Just as importantly, as they talked, Ada found she was
enormously cheered by Ruby. Ada's deep impression was that she had a willing heart. And
though Ruby had not spent a day of her life in school and could not read a word nor write even
her name, Ada thought she saw in her a spark as bright and hard as one struck with steel and
flint.
And from the beginning, Ruby showed her strong character and the pursuit of equality.
"Ruby said, I've not ever hired out as hand or servant, and I've not heard good things told
about taking on such a job. But Sally said you needed help, and she was right. What I'm saying
is, we have to come to some terms."53 "Moneys not it, Ruby said. Like I said, l'm not 釭 actly
looking to hire out. I'm saying if I'm to help you here, it is with both us 切 owing that everyone
empties their own night jar."54 This was not meant to be funny. It's something on the order of
equality.
After she settled down, Ruby displayed great talent in management and trading. First the
two women spent their first days together making an inventory of the place, listing the things
that needed doing and their order of urgency. They walked together about the farm, Ruby
looking around a lot, evaluating, talking constantly. Ruby told Ada to take a lot of notes, like:
" To be done immediately: Lay out a garden for cool season crops---
32
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turnips, onions, cabbage, lettuce, greens.

Cabbage seed, do we have any?
Soon: Patch shingles on barn roof; do we have a maul and [roe?
Buy clay crocksfor preserving tomatoes and beans.
Pick herbs and make from them worm boluses for the horse." 55
In the matters of trade and in every other regard, Ruby proved herself a marvel of energy.
Before dawn Ruby would have walked down from the cabin, fed the horse, milked the cow,
and be banging pots and pans in the kitchen, a hot fire going in the stove, yellow com grits
bubbling in a pot, eggs and bacon spitting grease in a black pan. On the few occasions when
Ada had slipped and given her an order as if to a servant, Ruby had just looked at Ada hard and
had then gone on doing what she was doing. The look showed that Ruby could be gone any
time. All during the cooking and the eating, Ruby would talk seamlessly, drawing up hard plans
for the coming day. To Ada, Ruby's monologues seemed composed mainly of verbs--- plow,
plant, hoe, cut, can, feed, kill---all of them tiring. It was Ruby who changed and influenced
Ada a lot. In her previous life Ada had taken little part in the garden Monroe had always paid
someone to grow for them, and her mind, in consequence, had latched itself to the product--
the food on the table--- not the job of getting it there.
Ada was willing to be driven by Ruby because she knew that anyone else she might hire
would grow weary and walk away and let her fail, but Ruby would not let her fail. And the fact
was that Ruby was the person who accompanied Ada all her life as her loyal friend and
intimate partner. Undoubtedly, Charles Frazier created a typical character with independence
and self-empowerment through Ruby, which was in keeping with the aspiration of the readers
and fit in with the needs of the society and the times.
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东北林业大学硕十学位论文
Conclusion
The thesis makes a study between The Odyssey and Cold Mountain comparatively in myth-
archetypal approaches. Archetypal critics find New Criticism too atomistic in ignoring
intertextual elements and in approaching the text as if it existed in a vacuum. After all, we
recognize story patterns and symbolic associations at least from other texts we have read, if not
innately; we know how to form assumptions and expectations from encounters with black hats,
springtime settings, evil stepmothers, and so forth. So surely meaning cannot exist solely on
the page of a work, nor can that work be treated as an independent entity. Archetypal images
and story patterns encourage readers to participate ritualistically in basic beliefs, fears, and
anxieties of their age. These archetypal features not only constitute the intelligibility of the text
but also tap into a level of desires and anxieties of humankind.
In Frye's eyes, it is archetype that connects one individual literary work with others. He
finds that writers of different ages and in different places have employed similar images and
character types in their works to find symbolic expressions. They may connect, either
consciously or unconsciously, their characters with one or more mythic heroes or benevolent
kings. On the other hand, different writers have also invoked again and again identical
narrative patterns such as the quest narrative, the Cinderella narrative in their works. The
recurring images, characters and narrative patterns in literary works do not appear coincidently.
They actually are archetypes---the communicable unit, which connects one work with another
and thereby helps to unify and integrate our literary experience.
Through a systematic and comprehensive analysis the parallels between two works, we
find that Cold Mountain imitates the way of The Odyssey in themes, plots, characters, and
narrative structure with a bold hand. Odysseus'quest in The Odyssey recurs in Cold Mountain
through Inman's quest. In.man's adventures on his way home are similar with Odysseus'ten year
voyage. Ritual imitates the cyclical process of nature, the changes of seasons and the movement
of the universe that happens regularly and repetitively as well as the recurring cycles of
human life. Narrative, like ritual, also falls in cyclical repetition. The repetition is not a copy,
but an inheriting and development. Charles Frazier just took The Odyssey as a referential
literary model, which could endow Cold Mountain a profound intension and broad symbolic
meanings.
Of course, Cold Mountain is enriched by the spirit of modem times, which can be
presented in Frazier's ideas of the war and the characterization of women. Such displacement
makes realistic fiction with a mythical structure more plausible.
34
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Notes
Notes
[1) Wilfred L. Guerin, et al., eds., A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. Beijing:
Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press & Oxford University Press, 2004:165
[2] Ibid., 165
[3) Wilfred L. Guerin, et al., eds., A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. New York:
Harpers & Row, Publisher, 1966:160
[4) Ibid.
[5) Wilfred L. Guerin, et al., eds., A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. Beijing:
Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press & Oxford University Press, 2004:168
[6] James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, abridged ed. Beijing:
China Social Sciences Publishing House Chengcheng Books Ltd, 1999:35
[7] Northrop Frye,Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, second edition. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1973:112
[8) Ibid., 333
[9] Zhang, Zhongzai. "Archetypal Criticism". Selective Reading in the 2 沪 Century 胚 stern
Critical Theory. Eds. Zhang, Zhongzai, Wang Fengzhen and Zhao Guoxin. Beijing:
Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2002:93
[10) Zhu, Gang. "Myth and Archetypal Criticism". Twentieth Century Western Critical
Theories. Ed. Dai Weidong. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press,
2001:128
[11] Zhang, Zhongzai. "Archetypal Criticism". Selective Reading in the 2dh Century 胚 stern
Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2002:93
[12) Carl G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, trans. R. F. C. Hull.
Beijing: China Social Sciences Publishing House Chengcheng Books Ltd, 1999:44
[13) Zhu, Gang. Twentieth Century 胧 stern Critical Theories. Shanghai: Shanghai
Foreign
Language Education Press, 2001:131
[15) Ibid., 100
[16) Ibid., 99
[17) Ibid., 104-105
[18) Ibid., 105
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[19] Ibid., 109

[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid., 111
[23] Ibid., 136
[24] Ibid., 156
[25] Robert D. Danharn. Northrop Frye and Critical Method. NY: The Pennsylvania State
[26] Ibid.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Homer, The Odyssey. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 1997:
Book 23
[30] Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain. New York: A Division of Random House, Inc., 1997: 4
[31] Ibid., 92
[32] Ibid., 24
[33] Ibid., 270
Book 19
[35] Ibid., Book 23
[37] Ibid., 442
[38] Ibid., 144
Book 19
[41] Ibid., 48
[42] Ibid., 198
[43] Ibid., 199
[44] Ibid., 12
[45] Ibid., 14
[46] Ibid., 343
36
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Notes
Book 1
[48] Ibid., Book 2
[49] Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain. New York: A Division of Random House, Inc., 1997:78
[50] Ibid., 356
Book 19, Line 549-552
[53] Ibid.
[54] Ibid., 74
[55] Ibid., 102
_37_
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Bibliography
[1] Atchity Kenneth. Critical Essays on Homer, GK. Hall & Company Press, 1987
[2] Carl G Jung. The Aichetypes and the Collective Unconscious, trans. R. F. C. Hull Beijing:
China Social Sciences Publishing House Chengcheng Books Ltd, 1999
[3} Charles Frazier. Cold Mountain. A Division of Random House, Inc. New York, 1997
[4] Danham, Robert D. Northrop Frye and Critical Method. NY: The Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1978
[5] Frazer, George James. The Golden Bough. London: Macmillan, 1940
[6) Frye, Northrop.Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, second edition. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1973
[7] Harry Blamires. Twentieth Century English Literature[M}. MaCmillan,1982
[8] http://www.freebooknotes.com
[9] Jung, Carl Gustav. "The Concept of the Collective Unconscious". Twentieth Century
肠 stern Critical Theories. Ed. Dai Weidong. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language
Education Press, 2001
[10) Wilfred LGuerin et al. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature [C]. Beijing:
Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2004
[11] Zhang, Zhongzai.“心 chetypal Criticism". Selective Reading in the 2 广 Century 跺 stern
Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2002
[12) Zhu, Gang. "Myth andAichetypal Criticism". Twentieth Century stern Critical
Theories. Ed. Dai Weidong. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2001
[13] 阿伦·布洛克．《西方人文主义传统》，董乐山（译）．三联书店，1997
[14] 包鹏程．《奥德赛》的结构与潜结构[J]．安徽教育学院学报， 2001
[15] 查尔斯·弗雷泽（美）著，周玉军，潘源（译）．《冷山》．南宁：接力出版社，
2004
[16] 董爱兰．《奥德赛》与多重聚焦的现代叙事方式．鸡西大学学报，2007.2
[17]荷马著《奥德赛》（英文版）．外语教学与研究出版社，1997
[18] 荷马著，王惠君，王惠玲（译）．《奥德赛》．奎屯：伊犁人民出版社，柯文出版
社，2001
[19] 胡志毅．《神话与仪式：戏剧的原型阐释》．学林出版社，2001
[20] J. G.弗雷泽著，徐育新，汪培基，张泽石（译）．《金枝》．北京：新世界出版
社，2007
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Bibliography
[21] 李春霞，杨玉萍．《奥德赛》的漂泊母题．河西学院学报，2006.4
[22]刘聪颖．探寻电影《冷山》的文本渊源电影文学，2007 年 7 月下半月
[23]马新国著《西方文论史》．高等教育出版社，2002
[24] 诺思洛普·弗莱［加］，陈惠、袁宪军、吴伟仁（译）．《批评的剖析》．百花文艺出版
社，2002
[25] 潘—禾．《奥德赛》回乡主题的现代启示[J]．学术月刊， 1998
[26] 申丹，韩加明，王丽亚著．《英美小说叙事理论研究》．北京大学出版社，2005.10
[27]特里·伊格尔顿［英］．《当代西方文学理论》．中国社会科学出版社，1988
[28]吴晓群，《古代希腊仪式文化研究》．上海社会科学院，2000
[29]亚里斯多德著，罗念生（译）．《诗学》．人民文学出版社，1982
[30]叶舒宪．《神话一原型批评》．陕西师范大学出版社，1987
[31] 张沁文．“追寻”与“在途中“一—西方小说鉴赏论[J]．陕西师范大学继续教育学
报，2000
[32] 张隆溪．《比较文学译文集》．北京：北京大学出版社，1982
[33] 周春生．《悲剧精神与欧洲思想文化史论》．上海人民出版社，2000
[34] 周小英．浅析《冷山》一探求《冷山》的文本渊源及文本渊源的变异．重庆工学
院学报，2006.10
[35] 徐葆耕．西方文学：心灵的历史[M]．北京：清华大学出版社，2002
[36] 杨华荣，冯宪光．穿越时光的旅程－－－《冷山》文本分析．西南民族大学学报．2005.6
_39_
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The Published Paper

[1]孙海一．解读海明威短篇小说中的“虚无＂．牡丹江师范学院学报，2008 年第 6
期 27-28
40
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
I am greatly indebted to my supervisor, Professor Wang Xinchun, for the unremitting and
worthy guidance she gave me in my graduate study and the precious advice in the process of
completing this thesis. I will keep in mind her impressive personality, great scholarship and
unfailing patience.
My deepest gratitude also goes to my parents. Without their understanding and great
consideration in the past twenty-eight years, I would not have attained so much in my life and
study. Especially, I owed much to them for helping me take care of my little baby during my
graduate study.
My thanks should also go to my husband Wang Bing who gave me his most timely
support in many needed moments.
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人已经发表或撰写过的研究成果，也不包含为获得东北林业大学或其他教育
机构的学位或证书而使用过的材料。与我一同工作的同志对本研究所做的任何贡
献均已在论文中作了明确的说明并表示谢意。
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《冷山》与《奥德赛》比较研究

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《冷山》与《奥德赛》比较研究

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Dissertation for the Degree of Master

Comparative Study on Cold Mountain and The

Candidate: Sun Haiyi

Keywords: comparison; archetype; displacement; transposed parallelism; variation

1.1 Charles Frazier and Cold Mountain

He surrendered himself to a painstaking research process, often declining all human

1.2 Homer and The Odyssey

1.3 Literature Review

2 Mythological and Archetypal Approaches

2.1 The History of the Mythological and Archetypal Criticism

2.1.1 Frazer's Contribution to Mythological Criticism

2 儿 2 Jungian Psychology and Its Archetypal Insight

unconsciousness, asserting that "beneath personal unconscious is a primeval, collective

2.1.3 Northrop Fry's Theory

2.2 Archetypal Images, Motifs or Patterns

4. Garden: Paradise; innocence; unspoiled beauty (especially feminine); fertility.

2.3 The Concept of Displacement and Transposed/ Inverted Parallelism

3 Comparative Study between Cold Mountain and The

Odyssey in Myth-Archetypal Approaches

3.1 The Parallels between Cold Mountain and The Odyssey

3.1.1 The Parallels in Themes

3 儿 2 The ParaJJeJs in Plots

3.1.3 The Parallels in Characters

3.1.4 The Parallels in Narrative Structure

3.2 The Variations in Cold Mountain versus The Odyssey

3.2.1 The Variations in the Theme of War

3.2.2 The Variations in Images

together and sustain their hope for the future.

3.2.3 Displacement in the Depiction of Inman versus Odysseus

3.2.4 Displacement in the Depiction of Ada versus Penelope

3 立 5 Displacement in the Depiction of Ruby versus Euryclea

turnips, onions, cabbage, lettuce, greens.

[19] Ibid., 109

The Published Paper

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