Winter's Bone

“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”

Throughout the novel, the reality of growing up a Dolly haunts Ree. She recognizes that Dolly children grow up in an environment that leaves them hardened by hunger and need. Moreover, many Dolly children grow up outside of the “square law,” and, therefore, lived lives characterized by violence and drugs. These realities often led children to become dulled and angry, and Ree hopes that her brothers will avoid that fate. 

“Ree needed often to inject herself with pleasant sounds, stab those sounds past the constant screeching, squalling hubbub regular life raised inside her spirit, poke the soothing sounds past that racket and 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”

Ree often listens to albums such as The Sounds of Tranquil Streams, and these are the sounds she describes here. Sounds that help her imagine different places and different ways of life calm Ree, and she finds serenity in removing herself from her environment completely. It’s a form of escapism that helps her distance herself from the harsh realities that weigh her down daily. Interestingly, the image of injecting these sounds into herself suggests that Ree uses music in the same way others use drugs.

“Those stones had probably been piled by direct ancestors and for a long while she tried to conjure their pioneer lives and think if she saw parts of their lives showing in her own. With her eyes closed she could call them near, see those olden Dolly kin who had so many bones that broke, broke and mended, broke and mended wrong, so they limped through life on the bad-mend bones for year upon year until falling dead in a single evening from something that sounded wet in the lungs”

Ree often looks for parallels between her life and the lives of her ancestors, for the Dolly families have a long heritage that continues to dictate relationships and influence futures. Here, Ree’s occasionally nihilistic perspective on life can be seen. Moreover, her fixation on bones that broke and mended wrong illustrates the concept that the rifts between the Dolly families are themselves breaks that mended wrong; the Dollys are still limping through life on “bad-mend bones” in a continuation of old hurts. 

“She looked at his baby face all scrunched up sour by wants he’d been born bawling for but might never be able to name or get for himself”

Here, Ree is looking at Gail’s baby boy, Ned. While Ree sees that Ned has determined the shape of Gail’s future, she also recognizes Ned as a new generation whose existence will be ruled by hunger—both emotional and physical. Moreover, the idea that Ned would never be able to “name” his needs illustrates Ree’s belief that the culture in which they live makes certain hopes, dreams, and futures impossible. 

“Pine trees with low limbs spread over fresh snow made a stronger vault for the spirit than pews and pulpits ever could”

Ree has an almost religious connection to nature, as the reader can see here. Nature embodies purity and cleanness for Ree. In comparison, Ree often sees humans as having a polluting influence. This quote demonstrates the serenity that Ree feels when alone in nature. In many ways, her time alone thinking in nature serves as a form of confession for her that holds as cathartic purpose. 

“Love and hate hold hands always so it made natural sense that they’d get confused by upset married folk in the wee hours once in a while and a nosebleed or bruised breast might result. But it just seemed proof that a great foulness was afoot in the world when a no-strings roll in the hay with a stranger led to chipped teeth or cigarette burns on the wrist”

Ree contemplates her mother’s history with men, knowing that her nights spent with unknown men was a catalyst for her mother’s mental illness. Ree believes these nights drained her mother of her belief in words and men. Moreover, this quote demonstrates the concept that such random violence inflicts greater emotional injury because it serves no purpose in the moral code that regulates the Ozark communities. Such violence has no objective or context, and so it only serves to communicate the malicious nature of the world. 

“While Dad was in prison the rule had been to never see the same stud three nights. One night is forgot like a fart, two like a pang, but after three nights lain together there is a hurt, and to soothe the hurt there will be night four, and five, and nights unnumbered. The heart’s in it then, spinning dreams, and torment is on the way. The heart makes dreams seem like ideas”

Connie Dolly regulated her affairs with this method as a form of emotional armor against pain. It was ultimately ineffective, but she attempted to mitigate the creation of dreams and ideas. This quote illustrates the hopelessness that pervaded Ree’s mother’s life. Moreover, this quote articulates the idea that dreams and ideas are their own form of torment, one that many families in the valleys choose to shield themselves against. 

“He’s a goddamn promiser. He’ll promise anything that sets him loose”

Ree is speaking about Jessup here. To Ree, Jessup was a man of many promises—to provide, to return, to love—which he inevitably failed to keep. His promises were merely a means to escape an uncomfortable situation, deferring the moment when he would have to provide for a variety of needs. In many ways Jessup embodies the freedom that Ree desires, but his inability to fulfill his promises leaves Ree fulfilling promises on his behalf. As a result, she loses much of her freedom. 

“Some names could rise to walk many paths in many directions, but Jessups, Arthurs, Haslams and Miltons were born to walk only the Beaten Dolly path to the shadowed place, live and die in keeping with those blood-line customs fiercest held”

Ree contemplates how many family names tended to demonstrate the inevitability of the Dolly fate. They bestowed a predetermined life of blood and need. For this reason, Ree and Connie had both argued against naming Harold Milton, because they wanted more for Harold than the fate tied to that name. 

“Ree watched Gail hold Ned as closely as anyone could ever be held, feed him supper from a part of her own body, and saw in them a living picture illustrating one kind of future. The looming expected kind of future and not one she wanted. Ned’s baby mouth sucked and sucked on that nipple like he was fixing to drain Gail to the dregs”

For Ree, who hopes to join the U.S. Army for a life of travel and order, Gail’s future as a mother appears unappealing. Gail fell into the expected role of motherhood by accident and her life has been forever altered by an emotional tie she will never be parted from. The dominant role for women in her community is motherhood, of caretaking, and Ree sees such a future as restrictive and depleting. Even the process of breastfeeding, natural and nurturing in essence, becomes distorted in Ree’s mind as ‘draining’, because she that is how she imagines a future as a mother. 

“She raised two quilts and draped them across her shoulders while the stream tumbled chanting around a rocky bend and she considered forever and how shadowed and lonely it would be. In Ree’s heart there was room for more. Any evening spent with Gail was like one of the yearning stories from her sleep was awake”

Although Ree desires a life of travel and often finds herself isolated, she understands how lonely a life of solitude would be. Ree’s best friend, Gail, offers her emotional and physical intimacy. In effect, their time together is reminiscent of the hopes and ideas she dreams of in her sleep. 

“One log alone won’t hold fire”

Ree tells Gail this after Floyd shuts Gail out of the trailer, leaving her to stay the night at Ree’s house. Although Ree’s statement refers to the cold air in the bedroom, as well as the benefits of sharing body heat in the bed, it also has other connotations. Ree’s statement alludes to the emotional and physical advantages of community. Ree’s relationship with Gail offers her internal and bodily strength throughout the novel. Furthermore, their relationship provides intimacy for both of them, individuals who often feel isolated from their families. 

“Mom’s skin was sallow, her face was blank, and her soul was sincerely given over to silence and the approximate refuge offered by incomprehension”

Ree often refers to her mother’s broken mind or to the lost pieces of herself as a way of addressing her mother’s mental illness. Here, the reader is given further insight into Ree’s comprehension of her mother as well as her mother’s regression into herself. As Ree understands it, her mother finds protection within her relative muteness as well as her dulled mind. The drugs that numb her senses offer her sanctuary through “incomprehension” and thoughtlessness. Her mother is often unaware of her surroundings, and so she cannot be aware of her pain or her past either. 

“Either he stole or he told. Those are the things they kill you for”

This is what Gail says when Ree articulates her uncertainty as to whether or not her father did anything to deserve his death. These rules are some of the “blood-line customs” referred to throughout the book—the rules wrought in blood and which found retribution in blood. These rules govern the lives of the Dolly clan and supersede the rule of law. 

“Thump Milton loomed over Ree, a fabled man, his face a monument of Ozark stone, with juts and angles and cold shaded parts the sun never touched”

Thump Milton embodies the nature of the Ozarks. In part, this quote serves to illustrate his significant role as a ruling patriarch who monitors and manages the lives of Dollys in the valleys. However, Woodrell’s language articulates the innate and fundamental tie between the Dolly families and their natural environment. The Ozarks are not simply a place to live, but a way of life. They Dollys and the Ozarks are one and the same. 

“Blood trickled from the side of her mouth to her earlobe and she wondered if Dad was lying on his side, too, or dead in a different position”

Ree wonders this as she lies on the barn after being beaten at Thump Milton’s house. Once again, Ree finds herself fixated on the parallels between her life and the Dollys that came before her. She now knows that the same people who have recently beaten her have killed her father, and so she contemplates her role in this chain of history. 

“Her feet dragged up dust and pigeons flew from the eaves. The crowd was silent as she hauled across the pea gravel to the green truck, but that red-bone barked once more and those birds in the trees still sang their different songs”

Ree had previously noted the different sound the birds in Hawkfall Valley made when she first arrived at Thump Milton’s house and she revisits that thought here. The different sounds indicate the contentious split between the two Dolly clans that goes back to the “bitter reckoning” years before. As Woodrell emphasizes the fundamental connection between the Dolly families and the natural environment of the Ozarks, this quote further suggests that such a rift between the families similarly infiltrates nature itself so that even the birdsong in the various valleys differs. 

“Betsy had never been chatty, but in the years since she’d lost her sweetest daughter to a tree limb that dropped on a calm blue day she could occasionally be heard in the night shouting threats from her yard at those shining stars that most troubled her”

Ree narrates Betsy’s history during her visit to Ree’s bedside after she has been injured. This quote focuses on the human relationship with the natural world, whose violence can be arbitrary. Despite this, Betsy rails at the stars as if fate was written there. Although Ree revels in the sense of purity and order she finds in nature, Betsy seems to serve as a reminder that the natural world is similarly ruled by blood and violence. 

“I ain’t never goin’ to be crazy!”

This sentence becomes a refrain for Ree after Mrs. Thump and her sisters accuse her of being as crazy as her mother. Ree obviously fears the possibility of becoming like her mother and inheriting her mental illness. She sees that her mother eventually crumbled under the weight of her world and, as she begins to crumble in the face of the search of her father, her fear intensifies.

“All morning it seemed fiddlers hidden from sight played slow, deep songs and everybody in the house heard them and absorbed the mood of their music”

Ree hears Beelzebub’s fiddle throughout the novel, and it becomes an aural signifier for hopelessness, need, and want. Here, Ree meditates on the fiddlers after being brutally beaten by Thump Milton’s women—a time where her search for Jessup has come to a calamitous halt that leaves her emotionally and physically drained. Ree also associates Beelzebub’s fiddle with her mother’s mental state, for she believes her mother hums to unseen fiddlers in an expression of her hopelessness and disorientation. It becomes a tune of loss. Later in the novel, Ree “hushed the fiddle with a sharp thought” when she agrees to go with Mrs. Thump to find her father’s corpse (180-181). Ree’s rejection of the fiddle at this point in the novel further suggests that the fiddles serve as a signifier for her despair, but it’s a tune she can silence when needed.

“At school teachers said don’t do that anymore, stuff has leaked to the heart of the earth and maybe soured even the deepest springs, but plenty of old ones crouched and sipped from the ladle yet. The pool of water loosed a scent, a blessed flavorful scent that folks couldn’t often resist, something in the bones and meet made them bend, drink, step out and drop into the flow”

Ree and Gail swim in a brisk spring and Ree recalls that her teachers believed the water to be polluted. Ree, however, makes it clear that many people still drink from the water because something innate inside of them calls them to. Once again, this quote reaffirms the elemental connection between the Dolly families and their environment; nature takes on a nourishing and cleansing role. Furthermore, Ree disregards the concept that nature could be “soured” to even the “deepest springs” by people, a notion that signals her belief that nature cannot truly be soured by the workings of men. 

“She was on a distant tranquil shore where rainbow-colored birds sang and coconuts dropped bountifully to warm sand. The smoke and rattle, his other hand coming free, the return walk to the car a blur”

As Ree holds onto her father’s corpse while Mrs. Thump saws off his hands, she retreats into her mind. Her form of mental withdrawal alludes to the albums she listens to often that provide the sounds of exotic and isolated locales. This form of escapism becomes a mental sanctuary against the abhorrent acts she must perform as well as the sounds, smells, and tastes that cement them in her mind. 

“Looks like you earned this with blood, kid”

Mike Satterfield speaks this line to Ree after she hands him the sack filled with her father’s hands. Satterfield speaks literally, of course, as Ree remains bruised and scarred from Mrs. Thump’s attack. However, Satterfield’s comment also refers to the underlying blood-law that rules over the Dolly families nestled in the Ozark valleys. So, while this line appears to be almost flippant, Satterfield is verbally acknowledging Ree’s observation of the family code—the same family cold that her father had broken by speaking to the police. In this sense, she has fulfilled a form of blood-debt and once again followed through on a promise her father could not keep.