Unexpected Joys in Ree’s Overturned World

Perhaps the most obvious observation about Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone is that Ree Dolly is constantly bombarded by hardship in the form of poverty, unwanted responsibilities, physical violence, and uncertainty about the future of her loved ones. Given these struggles, it is natural that she would long for an escape; however, what she desires is not fundamentally an escape from her physical environment, but from what she feels is an inevitable highway leading to the Dolly destiny: a life of anger, hardness and cruelty. This desire centers around saving her little brothers, and Ree’s “grand hope was that these boys would not be dead to wonder by age twelve, dulled to life, empty of kindness, boiling with mean” (8). She also wants change for herself, but again, this is not fundamentally a need to leave her home--when she listens to peaceful sounds, she does not imagine how she would actually travel to a tropical island, but simply wants an escape from “the constant screeching, squalling hubbub regular life raised inside her spirit” and calmness “down deep where her jittering soul paced on a stone slab in a gray room, agitated and endlessly provoked but yearning to hear something that might bring a moment’s rest” (10). Ree wants herself and her brothers to escape emotional turmoil and the family legacy; like in The Sport of Kings, she wants to see how far from her father she can run. However, her experience looking for Jessup shows her that she has the freedom to make her own choices and helps her accept the positive side of being a Dolly, at least partly soothing her “jittering soul” and reassuring her that there is hope for her and her brothers. For example, Ree continuously defies other members of her family and community, from her father’s warning not to look for him to Merab’s threats, so although the culture of which she is wary still surrounds her, she is careful not to let it control her. Clearing her house of family objects when she thinks she will lose the house is also a way of purging her life of unnecessary ancestral influences. However, she also realizes not all of these family influences are bad: Teardrop, for instance, changes from a feared and uncooperative character to a supportive and beloved family member; even the horrible Thump sisters come through for family in the end. There’s a definite upside to the dysfunctional level of clan loyalty, and when it comes to the responsibilities in her nuclear family that Ree once wanted to leave behind, she realizes at the end (perhaps because of the temporary threat of losing them) that caring for her brothers is part of who she is, and tells them “I’d get lost without the weight of you two on my back” (193). And of course, the first thing she plans to buy after her unexpected windfall is “wheels” (193), extending her freedom and perhaps allowing her to travel to a few of those faraway places. It seems that with the newfound freedom to choose which parts of her family’s destiny to accept and which to reject, Ree finds life more bearable and embraces the responsibility of raising her brothers, so her decision not to join the army is not so much a sacrifice as a result of her life improving.