73 pages • 2 hours read
Daniel WoodrellWinter's Bone
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Winter’s Bone opens with Ree Dolly staring out at the deer carcasses hanging from trees in her neighbors’ yard—neighbors who are also her relatives. Ree, a hardened and mature sixteen year old, watches a winter storm begin to blow in and considers her family’s bare cupboards and lean woodpile. While she reviews her chores for the day, she remembers that her absent father, Jessup, has left without providing for his family. Jessup, an unreliable parent, had left Ree in charge of her two brothers and mentally ill mother earlier that fall; his last words were to advise Ree against looking for him until he had returned home. Harold, her younger brother, interrupts Ree’s ruminations about her father’s departure by enquiring if they should ask their relatives to share the venison hanging in the trees. Ree reprimands Harold, telling him, “Never ask for what ought to be offered” (5). They return to the house to eat grits, their remaining food.
Chapter 2 Summary
Ree feeds her younger brothers, Harold and Sonny, and prepares them for school. Her mother, a descendent of the wealthy Bromont family, sits in her chair, medicated and unaware. As Ree washes the dishes and dresses her brothers for schools, she reflects on their dilapidated house, which had once housed her Bromont grandparents. Her contemplations shift to worrying about her brothers. Sonny, at ten, resembles Blond Milton, Ree’s uncle, and has a “punishing spirit” (8). Harold, at eight, lacks the same hostility and strength, but he follows in Sonny’s footsteps. Although Ree’s “grand hope was that these boys would not be dead to wonder by age twelve, dead to life, empty of kindness, boiling with mean” (8), she is aware that the Dolly clan abides by “blood-soaked commandments” (8) outside of “square law” (8). Destitution and hunger feeds anger and depravity, and Ree wants more for her brothers than hunger and need.
Chapter 3 Summary
As Ree chops wood for the woodpile, she listens to The Sounds of Tranquil Shores to distance herself from her surroundings. She admits that she favors music that mimics different scenery. As she rests, she sees a sheriff’s car approach with her brothers in the back seat. Although she is initially indignant and asserts her brothers’ innocence, the deputy, Baskin, interrupts her and claims he merely gave the boys a ride since he was coming to speak to her mother. However, Baskin finds he must speak to Ree directly when he finds her mother unintelligible. Baskin informs Ree that her father, Jessup, is out on bond after being charged with cooking meth. He signed over the house and the surrounding timber acres for his bond, however, and if he does not appear at his trial the following week Ree and her family will lose everything. Ree, shocked at this news, realizes that she and her family would be “dogs in the fields” (15) without the house. Furthermore, she would never be able to leave the town and her family to join the U.S. Army as she had planned. Ree composes herself and assures Baskin that she will find her father in time for the trial. As Baskin leaves, Ree notes some of her relatives—fellow Dollys—are watching them from down the street.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
Woodrell introduces the reader to Ree Dolly, a complex character who is at once thick-skinned and sensitive, and hard-boiled and considerate. She is harsh yet pleasant, outwardly stable yet internally turbulent. Ree embodies the Ozark’s purity as well as its propensity toward violence, and she becomes a counterpoint to the various Dolly characters that dot the rest of the novel.
In the first three chapters, Woodrell also takes care to introduce the theme of escapism that permeates the novel. Escapism serves as a coping mechanism for the Dolly household, and Ree’s appreciation of New Age music serves to illustrate her need to mentally and emotionally escape from her surroundings. By being able to imagine herself in a new environment, she can better cope with the stresses of her current life. Her escapist tendencies are mirrored in her desire to join the U.S. Army because she wants to travel and promote order. It is worth noting that she wants to join the Army to “help keep things clean” (15), given that she often considers the uncleanness that pervades her community (15).
The reader is also introduced to the Dolly way of life and how this way of life appears fatalistic and confining to Ree. The Dolly families are intimate with violence, blood, and drugs. Most are comfortable living outside “square law.” Rather than living their lives by the code of ethics the “square law” hands down, they live by their own “blood-soaked commandments” that had been handed down by their ancestors before them. The term gains significance in light of Jessup’s disappearance. It becomes increasingly clear that Jessup has broken one of these commandments and paid in kind.
Lastly, the first three chapters are marked by the theme of hunger. The novel’s opening scene revolves around the carcasses hanging in the tree—sustenance that temps the malnourished Dolly family. As much as Woodrell emphasizes the nature of physical hunger and how it perpetuates vices as well as community solidarity, Woodrell suggests that hunger can be emotional and cognitive as well. When Ree worries that her brothers will become storms of need and want, she worries that her brothers’ dreams and desires will forever remain as unsatisfied as their stomachs.
