Winter’s Bone

In “Winter’s Bone” the main character is a sixteen year old, adolescent, caretaking, high school dropout girl with “milk skin and abrupt green eyes” named Ree.
Ree is a very strong character with the responsibility of a whole family with a missing farther and a mentally sick mom. Ree is a Dolly. Family is very important in the society in Missouri where she lives with her mother and two brothers. The setting in Missouri has made Ree who she is. She is stubborn, brave determined and responsible. With a criminal as a farther she is forced to be a grown up and to think and act as a mother at 16. She also breaks a family pattern of crime by living on the right side of the law and helping her siblings through school. When her daddy disappears and the police comes to take the house instead, it is her mission to go against the norms of society to safe her family.
Ree lives in a closed lawless society, most people are related inbreds and everyone knows each other. It is a community where the goal is survival therefore the common man earns his living by cooking crank in his basement and it is very normal to take drugs. In the society there is not anything to fall back on, no safety-net for poor families making it the ideal “every man for himself” society. There are many unwritten rules you have to follow. Because of all the crime it is very important to shut your mouth, mind your own business and to not ask any question. The consequences of not following these unwritten rules can be deadly as it is seen at (p.140) “Jessup went’n turned snitch, and that’s only the biggest ancient no-no of all, ain’t it?” because of his disregard of these rules he is killed and Ree is left alone with a family to feed. It is also a sexist and patriarchal community as seen on p. 25 when an argument between a husband and a wife quickly is settled: “You know all those people down there Teardrop. You could ask.”… “I said shut up once already, with my mouth”. It also shows when she goes around asking question and she herself is questioned: “Don’t you got a man to do this?”
The main conflict is person vs society, a young girl at sixteen is offered no help and only met with either silence or violence when she tries to fight for her family. Nobody offers her any help or guidance and she is severely punished when she asks for it. It is only in the very end that somebody helps her.
Throughout the story, we learn more and more about the society that Ree lives in. The way we get this information is two-fold. Directly through what is written we are told what people say and what people do “Don’t you, nor nobody else, neither, ever go down around Hawkfall askin’ them people shit about stuff they ain’t offering to talk about.” Then in the style of how it is written, we get to experience the mood and the feelings behind what is being said and what is happening. Woodrell does this so delicately by using A LOT of figurative language “Moons of ache glowed in spaces of her meat and when she moved the moons banged together and stunned.” By doing so, he creates a far more detailed picture in the reader’s mind, than if he had just described what was happening. A choice that Woodrell also has taken is that the way something is said plays a big role. It is hard to find a line without a heavy accent or grammatical errors.
“That water's colder'n hell!"
“That's what makes it good. That's what makes it help all your bruises'n bumps'n stuff."
“It's colder'n a goddam witch's tit in there!” This really gives the reader a specific feeling while reading and adds a unique style to the book. So much that you would be able to differentiate a passage from this book from another just by looking at how things are said and written.
As mentioned before the main conflict in the story is obviously person vs society. However, a harsh and non-forgiving society is not the only subject that this story tells about.
It also reflects around the themes of family and love, power and revenge and sexuality and growing up. She is one girl who has the whole of society against her, she is alone but fearless and insistent and that is why she in the end can look into a slightly brighter future. It is indeed a carefully written, thought provoking, deeply disturbing but nonetheless, exiting and intriguing story to explore.