On Inman, Ulysses McGill and Candide

While other complex issues such as love, and the effects of war on the individual's psyche and heart are explored in the film "Cold Mountain," the thread that ties the main character's overall experience in the film together, and the film's most easily visible theme, is that of Inman's journey back home to Carolina from his post in the civil war. After fighting in the civil war and seeing the utter destruction of human life that war is, he chooses instead to leave the army illegally in order to return home to see his true love.
Inman is, unlike the intellectuals and almost con man persona…