Ree Dolly is introduced to readers
as a bold 16-year-old with high hopes to escape to the “U.S. Army, where you
got to travel with a gun and they made everybody help keep things clean” (15).
Her willpower and bravery throughout her journey to find her father are her attributes
that struck me as most compelling, so the army seems like a perfect path for
her to escape the toxicity of the clan-like Dolly family. However, upon finding
her father’s dead body and receiving a sack “fat with crinkled bills,” she
abandons her aspirations to enlist (191). This change was inspired by an
increased sense of loyalty for her family, one that ties her more closely to
her mother and little brothers.
Throughout
the novel, Ree teaches Harold and Sonny skills essential to their livelihood
and the care of their mother, skills that would be necessary if Ree were to
leave. She taught them to wash and condition their mother’s hair with vinegar,
to cook, to shoot, and finally to fight. Although the boys still have much to
learn, Ree realizes the boys’ potential to adopt her responsibilities, responsibilities
that she had shouldered at a young age. In teaching them these things, Ree
evidences every intention of leaving at her “next birthday” (26). However, in
pursuit of her father Ree demonstrates her unfailing loyalty to her family by
persisting to ensure that they would keep their home and land, even enduring
being “kicked into silence” (130). When anything is said about her father, a man
she knows to offer nothing but empty promises, she consistently defends his
name. She ensures others that he is not a snitch and is the best of the “crank
chefs,” refuting the idea that he would blow up a lab. Furthermore, the loyalty
between Teardrop and Ree is strengthened as well. He originally assaults her
when she asks too many questions, but later shows up to her rescue at Thump
Milton’s. He takes responsibility for her actions, and threatens to kill anyone
who ever touches her again. Yes, defending a niece from flagrant beatings and
potentially death seems to be the bare minimum, but Teardrop’s gesture puts
himself at risk. This enhances Ree’s sense of loyalty to the Dolly family outside
of her immediate relatives, providing her with sufficient reason to stay in the
Ozarks.
I agree that loyalty plays a key role in the novel. Ultimately Teardrop’s unfailing loyalty to Ree in saying “[y]ou own me now” (140) when he saves her from the beatings she endures from other relatives of hers leads to Ree’s decision to stay loyal to her family and help raise her brothers, creating a cycle of loyalty to some extent. Not only that, but loyalty is a prominent theme throughout Ree’s journey, as she not only receives this loyalty from Teardrop but lacks loyalty from some of her other relatives, as most of her family has turned against her due to Jessup’s snitching. Ree realizes this in noting that’s the reason why “everybody sort of shuns us a little bit now” (149). In this way, Ree’s journey, both in the help she gets from Teardrop and the help she lacks from the rest of her family as a result of the lack of loyalty of her father, is one that relies entirely on family loyalty. In this way, in the end of the novel, when Ree finds her father’s bones, her actions of loyalty to her family reverse Jessup’s disloyalty in a way, and Ree’s family not only is pieced together again in some respect, but Ree’s outlook on surviving is improved, reducing her need to escape to the army.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comment, but feel it leans more to an obligation towards family over just loyalty. While loyalty is just as applicable, there are many times where this "loyalty" seems forced, such as the interactions between Ree and characters such as Merab Thump and the Miltons. When Ree first visits Thump Milton and faced Merab, she has to beg her way in by claiming that "some of our blood is least the same," and "that's s'posed to mean somethin,'" showing her reliance on their shared DNA (Woodrell 59). "At the mention of shared blood," Merub decides to entertain Ree and let her wait, but ultimately, severely injures Ree the next time she tried to speak with Thump Milton (59). The second interaction shows a lack of loyalty, as true loyalty would not have resulted in that situation. At the end of the novel, Merab shows Ree where her father lies out of familial obligation by claiming "to put a stop to all this upset talk" between family (180). While family members can fight at times, they ultimately have a duty to each other, but it clearly differs from loyalty. Although Jessup snitched on the family, Merab takes pity on Ree and her family by showing her the spot of the body so that Ree can prove to the court that her father was dead. Merab's familial obligations to Ree and her kin overpowers Jessup's wrongdoings.
ReplyDeleteRee had been unfalteringly loyal to her family before she knew her dad was missing, and her devotion to them did not change as she searched for Jessup. Before Baskin informed Ree that he could not find Jessup, Ree saw her brothers in his police car and started yelling, “’[t]hey didn’t do nothin’! They didn’t do a goddamned thing! What the hell’re you tryin’ to pull’” (11), without knowing what they had done or why Baskin was there. What incited Ree to stay may not have been a heightened sense of loyalty, but rather a greater sense of purpose in what she does for her family and how poorly they would fare without her. Going to the military was her escape from full responsibility and where others would put in their fair share of work (15), as being the sole caretaker of the house was a heavy burden on Ree. Jessup being gone made her realize that “[s]he’d never have only her own concerns to tote. She’d never have her own concerns” (15), and the promise of escape from Rathlin Valley if she found Jessup was a powerful motivator at first to find him. Jessup was, however, “a broken-faced, furtive man given to uttering quick pleading promises that made it easier for him to walk out the door and be gone, or come back inside and be forgiven” (4). If Ree ever found her dad, she could not depend on him to take care of the family, and whether he was alive or dead didn’t change the fact that her family would always need her. How direly her mom and brothers needed her saddened her at first, as “Ree felt bogged and forlorn, doomed to a spreading swamp of hateful obligations. There would be no ready fix or answer or help” (25). Later, Ree would feel hopeless as she overlooked an iced-over pond, and Woodrow wrote, “[s]he was strangely still and staring, still and staring on the bridge until she understood that her eyes searched for a body beneath that ice, and she crouched to her knees and cried, cried until tears ran down her chest” (70). As the search for her father grew harder and longer, Ree grew to accept her family’s dependency on her, and the inclined she was to believe her dad was dead. Finally, after being beaten by one of the meth cook’s wife and sisters, she accepts her responsibility out loud: “’I got two little brothers who can’t feed theirselves…yet. My mom is sick, and she always…goin’ to be sick. Pretty soon the laws’re takin’ our house away’n throwin’ us out…to live in the fields…like dogs. Like fuckin’ dogs. The only hope I got to keep our house is…is, I gotta prove…Dad’s dead. Whoever killed him, I don’t need…to know…that. I don’t never need to know that. If Dad did wrong, Dad has paid. But I can’t forever carry both…them boys’n Mom…not…without that house to help’” (134). Ree knew she could never leave her family to go to the military so long as she loved them, and she ultimately gave up her way out to take care of them.
ReplyDeleteRee is one of the most loyal characters ever made. She is willing to abandon her own dreams and “never have her own concerns” (15) because she puts the needs of others before her own. She is self-less and brave, and grew up with a wide-stretched family who, despite their connection to drugs and violence, value loyalty above all. The Dolly’s may show this is an unusual way, as you mentioned Teardrop assaulting Ree, but they understand the meaning of blood. Although Ree is frustrated that no one will tell her the whereabouts of Jessup, she never gives up. She is loyal to her brothers and mom my putting herself in danger in order to save them. Ree has her own dreams of being in the army, but prioritizes her family above her own happiness. Even when she feels like “there would be no ready fix or answer or help” (25), she pushes on and tries to find her father. I think Woodrell portrays a confusing view of loyalty, but at the end, shows that that is how loyalty is. It is not always pretty, and sometimes you want to do what is in your own best interest, but loyalty will prevail in the end. Ree comes off as unbreakable, but she cries and she feels like the whole world is against her. She does not have an easy life and knows that no Dolly’s do, but she does anything in her power to fulfill the guardian role that her brothers lack. She is loyal because she wants to be, not because anyone is forcing her. Ree could escape, but she is so loyal that she sacrifices herself for everyone else.
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