Winter's Bone; Essay 3

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.