Theme “Maintenance” “He had grown so used to seeing death, walking among the dead, sleeping among them, numbering himself calmly as among the near-dead, that it seemed no longer dark and mysterious. He feared his heart had been touched by the fire so often he might never make a civilian again.” ~180 “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.” ~194 Photo Citation http://news.yale.edu/2012/09/11/yale-historian-david-blight-featured-documentary-death-and-civil-war Can you contextualize these passages? What theme are they exemplifying?

One’s soul can be depleted by life’s hardship, and must be fed and nourished to survive. “Swimmer knew of a few ways to kill the soul of an enemy and many ways to protect your own. His spells portrayed the spirit as a frail thing, constantly under attack and in need of strength, always threatening to die inside you.” ~ 14 http://megafish23-blog.blogspot.com/2012_02_01_archive.html

Theme “maintenance” cont. “Look there, he said. He tipped his head back to take in Cold Mountain, where all was yet wintery and drab as a slate shingle. Inman stood looking up at the mountain and told her a story about it… ~196 “She claimed to be 135 years old and to remember a time before any white man had yet come to this territory… ~197 “And she worried that she had rudely dismissed Inman’s story, had not summoned the wit at the time to see that it had not been about an old woman but about his own fears and desires.” ~ 200. “He thought on homeland, the big timber, the air thin and chill all the year long.” ~ 65 Can you contextualize these passages? What theme do they exemplify?

Multiple possibilities here… 1 – The idea of deliverance is ever present in the novel, be it subtly like the help of protective stranger (the yellow slave), the voice in the dark (the night Ruby is caught in the bush), or more overtly, as in a life-renewing gift like Ruby (for Ada), or the prophet-like stranger from the Shining Rocks (for the village of Cold Mountain). “Hands of God and Adam” Michelangelo. 1509. Sistine Chapel. Italy. 2 – Home functions as a sustaining spring for Inman, the place he draws strength from, that which he measures all other settings against. The Appalachian Trial, Virginia.