Bree Hubbard
Laura Cline
ENG102
25 March, 2012
Methzarks
Daniel
Woodrell has been an author for many years; the past 25 years he has wrote
eight books (Baker). Even though it wasn’t his first instinct to become an
author, later in life he found what he enjoyed, writing. He went through the
Marines, then hit a rough time and got discharged. Going through that, he had to come back to
normal civilization. He decided he wanted to go back to school. Since he was in the military, the government
would pay for his schooling. That is where it all began. Woodrell met his wife, who is also an author
and found his new profession. His writing at first was amazing and then it
turned cold. His first time writing he
won a competition (Williams);
this gave Woodrell some false pride and didn’t show him what being an author
was actually like. He eventually found
out the harsh truth of being an author after two of his writings were
unsuccessful, he had hit another bad spot.
This went on for a few years and had an impact on him. Later, he found his way back and started
writing novels people enjoyed.
In
a lot of Daniel Woodrell’s novels, he likes to include his experiences and his
surroundings. Sometimes the best stories
are ones that one has experienced firsthand and because he lived in an area
overrun by meth, an interesting subject, a story could be written. Woodrow wrote fictional stories that
portrayed the truth. He is a realist,
and has an in-depth understanding on how to catch a reader in the first
sentence. The language he uses is
sometimes very harsh and can be considered very severe at times. Woodrell knows how to depict scary reality of
crime and drugs into a stimulating fiction that some wonder if it is actually
the complete reality.
The
lawlessness of Winter’s Bone is
exhibited after a town nearby to him, Collinsville (Williams).
Winter’s
Bone is a book about a small town nearby where Mr. Woodrell lived. This
town, they make their own rules and are overturned by the drugs. Living nearby
Collinsville he got a great understanding on how it all works together, what
the people are like, and the characteristics of a small town, drug filled
society he could portray. The story is
about this small rural town that has been overrun by meth and its horrors. The main family in the book is taken care of
by the daughter, Ree. Jessup, Ree’s father, is a meth head and a meth cooker whose
inability to manage his own life, and take care of the family, has put Ree in a
very troubling predicament. Jessup had
put the family’s house and land up for his bond so that he could get out of
jail. He obviously wasn’t able to stay out of trouble, like most drug addicts
are unable to do after no rehabilitation, and is on the run. If Ree’s father doesn’t show up for court
they lose their land and are out on the streets. Ree goes to attempt to find her father who is
off on a bender, and bring him back.
Daniel
Woodrell wrote Winter’s Bone because
of personal experiences. Woodrell moved
around a lot as a child and never felt at home, his mother wasn’t around and he
lived with his father. This relates to
the story because Ree’s family was broken and so was Mr. Woodrell’s. Ree’s
mother was very disconnected from the world “mom’s morning pills turned her
into a cat… But for most of any day she
was quiet and still, wearing a small lingering smile prompted by something
vaguely nice going on inside her head”(Woodrell 6). Woodrell was also disconnected from his
mother; it was just him and his father while he was growing up. Woodrell’s father moved him at a young age to
a place he didn’t know and a place he hated so could get a job. Ree’s father
stole her childhood from her for an addiction; making his kid take care the
rest of the family. This must have been a pretty traumatic experience for
Woodrell, because this emotion is definitely shown in his writing. Another idea that Woodrell’s personal life is
tied into his writing is because Ree was forced to grow up very fast and was
made responsible for the family and the father.
Woodrell was taken from where he grew up and where he was comfortable to
a place that he hated which brought about much hate towards his father. His hatred for that place made him join the
Marines at age 17 (Williams).
Woodrell put this same idea of joining the military into Ree’s life. Ree wanted to run away from the town she was
in, the responsibilities she was forced into, and her father’s addiction. When
in the Marines Woodrell had used drugs so he has some personal knowledge with
that subject. Being in the military
during Vietnam, Woodrell fell to drugs.
Drugs during this war were a very common thing, and were used to forget
about the horrors that were being done and seen. In the book Ree also fell to drugs. She used pills to forget about her problems,
“Two kinds of pills and a bedridden afternoon, evening, on into the night. The sky was dark and whistling, shaking
windows and the horizon beyond, but Ree lay there immune to weather” (Woodrell
162). These parallels are somewhat
distant but can be seen when viewed closely. This makes the novel emotional to
him and to the reader. The fact that
Woodrell was able to connect his life to the lives in the story, it was more
meaningful to the reader. The entire
story was interesting, and kept your attention throughout because of this
aspect.
Some
of Woodrell’s parallels between his life and the novel Winter’s Bone are a bit more obvious than a strained family
life. Woodrell lives in an isolated
area, off the beaten path of Missouri.
Woodrell knows the Ozarks very well because it surrounds him every
day. He can describe the woods, the
towns, and the people very accurately and aggressively. This makes Winter’s Bone seem more like a
non-fiction novel then the fiction novel that it is. With Woodrell’s language he can describe the
area he knows so well so that his novel is more like a picture book then one
without pictures at all. The mental
visual aid in his descriptions are very refined, and allow you to picture the
area, the people and the towns as if you were there yourself. I believe if Woodrell were writing a novel
that was centered in a different geographical area that he has never lived,
touched, and experienced the story would have a much more disconnected
feel. When reading the novel I believed
the story, I understood the story and I was able to picture the story the
entire time. This is because of
Woodrells emotional ties to the area and the life that he is depicting. All of his descriptions aren’t so pretty,
however, “The Langans had a single-wide trailer that was tan and sat on a
concrete pad behind their junk barn. The
barn was made of wood that had been drenched by generations of weather and
rendered gray and rickety. It tilted one
way near the front and another near the back” (Woodrell 31). Reading this, it is almost like he looked
next store at his neighbor’s trailer, and described it to the reader. He very well might have. Due to this type of
description it makes the reader engage as if this story was real.
Winter’s
Bone isn’t the only book Daniel wrote based on him and his surroundings; Give Us a Kiss he talks about Doyle
Redmond, an author who was lost from writing, moving to Hays, Kansas (Williams).
This novel was like the moment in time where Mr. Woodrell was in his dark
phases of being an author and couldn’t produce a novel people were looking for. Focusing on an area that he knows very well,
the idea of drugs which are common in the area, and his life; Woodrell was able
to write a novel and incorporate some experiences that are personal to him, Winter’s Bone. Learning about the author
helps understand a little more where he was coming from.
Works
Cited
Baker, Matt. "Live Fast, Learn Slow." OxFord
American. 10 006 2011: n. page. Web. 26 Mar. 2012.
<http://www.oxfordamerican.org/interviews/2011/jun/10/live-fast-learn-slow/>.
Williams, John. "Daniel Woodrell: The Ozark
daredevil." Independent. 16 006 2006: n. page. Web. 26 Mar. 2012.
<http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/daniel-woodrell-the-ozark-daredevil-404146.html>.
Woodrell, Daniel. Winter's
Bone. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006. Print.
