A Literary Analysis of Winter's Bone

I have done several posts about the book Winter's Bone and promised that after the due date for my final paper on the book had passed that I would post my literary analysis as written for my English class, so here it is!

A Bone to Pick

Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell is a complex story that delves into the world of small town methamphetamine use and gives the reader a view from inside the situation.  Through the story of Ree Dolly, readers learn about Woodrell’s own life growing up in the Ozarks.  Woodrell paints a picture of the situation through the eyes of someone who is fighting to survive in that world, and who is deeply affected by methamphetamine, but who is not a user.  This tale of survival may be a fictional one, but the themes included in the book relate deeply to Woodrell's experience, and to the very real epidemic of small town meth use.

In an interview printed in the back of the 2007 edition of Winter’s Bone, Woodrell discusses inspiration for the novel.  Not only did he grow up in the small towns of the Ozarks where the book is set, but he had firsthand experience seeing neighbors dealing with the effects of methamphetamine addiction.  He notes that “being a good student didn’t enhance ones standing” (Woodrell 4).  The world he describes both in this discussion of his own experiences, and throughout the book is one where industry is lauded, but where the emphasis has turned from education and productivity to meth.

Methamphetamine affects everyone in a community where it is prevalent, and not just those who are users.  In a New York Times article, “Meth Building Its Hell’s Kitchen in Rural America” columnist Timothy Egan includes a quote from a Washington sheriff, “It touches every part of our lives in this county” (Egan, Para. 4).   More than once in the novel, Ree is offered meth by other characters and continues to turn it down, yet it continues to have a profound effect on her life.  She has been affected by the drug usage and meth cooking of her father because it has effectively removed him from her life for a long time, while he served time in prison, and finally at this point permanently after he turned informant.  In Methland, Nick Reding discusses at length how methamphetamine use in a small town becomes a community problem, and affects everyone.  Not only are the users affected by the physical effects, but it of course takes a toll on their relationships, and those who are involved with them both on a personal and a professional level.  Their spouses and children and parents are secondary victims, and others in the community, including those who represent the law are negatively affected as tertiary victims.

Cold that cannot be shaken is a theme of the novel that relates back to Methamphetamine.  It is a very strong metaphor not only for the difficulties that Ree faces as she looks for her father and people give her the proverbial cold shoulder, but also for the results of meth usage.  Meth raises body temperature and can actually cause hyperthermia (Reding 46).  When the body temperature drops after the drug wears off, it leaves the user feeling physically cold.  This actual cold is echoed in the bitter cold of the weather throughout the novel.  The imagery of Ree trudging through the snow in her skirt, and the wind flapping it wildly against her chapped legs, is such an important demonstration of her situation.  When she waits for hours outside of the house for someone to talk to her, only to be told to leave again, she gets colder and colder.  Anyone who has spent a length of time outside in the cold, knows how it can penetrate, how the cold surrounds and envelops a person.  The resulting cold that is felt inside is said to be a feeling of being cold to the bone.  It is a lingering chill, like the effects of methamphetamine use, not quickly or easily shaken.

The repetitive use of names in Winter’s Bone is a very noteworthy technique.  While characters all have different nicknames that people use and by which the reader knows them, many of them have the same names.  Ree’s father’s name is Jessup, one of the commonly used names in the family, and area.  This has a lot of significance, not only because of the reasons specified in the book, but because it allows it to be applied in a much broader sense.  When Ree is trying to keep her mind busy while waiting for people to speak to her about her needing help, she recites the family names.  She reflects that “to have but a few male names in use was a tactic held over from the olden knacker ways… let any sheriff or similar nabob try to keep official accounts on the Dolly men” (Woodrell 61).  The repetition of names in a broader sense is a way to make the reader feel like this could be anyone.  The town in the story could be any town, the father drawn into methamphetamine cooking, any man.  The tragedy could happen to anyone.

Methland provides perspective on  the strength of the addiction.   Reding writes about talking with a man named Roland Jarvis, who openly acknowledges that he believes his meth addiction has physically harmed his children, and that it destroyed his marriage.  He was also permanently disfigured by the burning of his meth lab while he was high, yet he can’t quit the drug.  The pull of the addiction is so strong that despite all of this, he still manages to find a way, despite horrifying physical challenges, to smoke methamphetamine.  This echoes why Jessup Dolly was willing to leave his family the way he did, and why he was willing to put up the very roof over their heads to get out of jail and back to his life as an addict and crank cook.  The draw is immense, and very well depicted through Jessup’s desperation.  Understanding that he is meant to represent so many other nameless addict victims in so many American small towns really makes his end more poignant.

Part of why methamphetamine is so pervasive in small towns is because of the slow death that these places have faced in recent years.  When an entire community relies on only one or two big businesses to employ most of its inhabitants, and then one of those businesses suddenly closes, or cuts back drastically, the failure of the town seems the only eventuality.  In Winter’s Bone this is reflected in Ree’s struggles.  Although she is only a girl, she is immersed in a world where there aren’t many jobs apparent, and people seem to have turned primarily to meth.  This happens in small towns as meth cooking can be lucrative even when, and perhaps especially, when other work opportunities slump.  Surviving is what people must do, and meth is the way for some.  In small town America, methamphetamine has become big business.  Those who still have jobs feel like they need to be the best workers possible to help them keep their jobs.  They know that if they can’t perform, there are ten other people who would gladly take their job.  This leads to meth usage because of the way it stimulates the body and allows people to work for hours without rest.  Ree faces similar challenges, fighting tirelessly in a community where no one seems to notice.

Other people in the community don’t seem to react much to Ree’s predicament in Winter’s Bone.  For the most part, it seems as if others don’t care what’s going on and that the problems being faced by this young woman are very real.  This is an excellent comment on the situation of small town methamphetamine use in America.  People don’t want to see that it’s happening, so they look right past the problem.  It is easier to not look at all than to have to face the truth and want to look away.

Instead of being a tight knit supportive community, her area has turned inside out, and people keep to themselves, afraid that their neighbors and kin might squeal.  There is such a pervasive problem with these people and their meth cooking and usage in the book that the sheriff can do little about it.  When the sheriff comes to visit Ree’s house in Winter’s Bone she is very hostile towards him.  This is not unexpected because she is a child, and to her, he is one of the men responsible for taking her father away from her on and off through her childhood.  Jessup’s history that is discussed demonstrates what typically happens in small towns where methamphetamine usage is out of control and prison space is limited.  Crank cooks, dealers and users follow a circular pattern flowing constantly in and out of custody.  Since there isn’t enough space to keep them in prison, and there isn’t funding for treatment, they end up continually cycling through the system. 

One of the ways the methamphetamine use is demonstrated in the book is in the most basic way that outsiders can see and understand; the direct physical repercussions.  The extreme effect of meth that readers might be familiar with from the news,  when a lab goes up, is demonstrated when Ree’s relative takes her to a house that was burned out by a meth fire.  He tells her that it is the last place her dad was seen.  The possible death of Ree’s father in this kind of scenario doesn’t seem to surprise her other than that she insists that her father was known for “never… cookin’ bad batches” (Woodrell 75).  This really brings home the feeling of safety that people develop when they are familiar with this type of life.  To Ree, people die in these types of accidents, but not her father.  It has been long enough since the house burned, as evidenced by weeds growing inside, that it is impossible that that particular fire killed Jessup, but her response to the prospect of that end for him is important.

Winter’s Bone goes further, and not only covers the possibility of death in a meth lab fire, but also what can happen if meth cooking goes wrong and the cook survives.  The disfigurement of Ree’s uncle Teardrop is described in detail in the book.  Although it doesn’t seem very central to the plot of the story, Woodrell spends quite a bit of time on this detail.  The purpose of this description is not only to provide the reader a feel for the character from his physical appearance, but to haunt us with the effects that meth can have on people.  Despite the fire that melted his face and neck, Teardrop continues to use methamphetamine.  His character represents the darkest part of methamphetamine, and he is characterized by the disfigurement and continually uses the description, his “melted side” (Woodrell 110).  The description seems a bit extreme until put into context against a description in Methland of how a similar burn happened to a non-fictitious crank cook.(Reding 43)  This type of disfigurement from burns sustained during the burning of a meth lab, are very real.  And as demonstrated in Methland, even they are not enough to curb the addiction. (Reding 14)  Uncle Teardrop is much more complex than just being the embodiment of the evil side of meth.  The character is representative of the struggle that all chronic meth users face.  On the one side he has the physical scars of meth, and on the other side he still looks like himself.  He faces addiction, rage, and all the other evils of his drug usage, yet there is still the side of him that loves his brother and his niece.  His namesake tattoos are described as “done in jailhouse ink (falling) in a row from the corner of the eye on his scarred side” (Woodrell 24).  Uncle Teardrop the meth addict is forever crying. 

There remains contention over the use of methamphetamine is small town America.  Although meth is known as a blue collar drug, the idea that it could be so pervasive in the towns that built America is a difficult reality.  We see them nostalgically, as the foothold of the American dream of hard work being the makings of success.  Winter’s Bone illustrates what is happening in these towns, and demonstrates for the reader not simply how widespread the epidemic is, but how it is affecting whole communities, not just users.  On the surface, Winter’s Bone is the story of Ree Dolly who is struggling to find her father to save her house and provide for her younger brothers and disabled mother.  But when we go deeper, it is really a story of methamphetamine, how strong its pull is, and how it is destroying people and lives in small town America.

Works Cited

Egan, Timothy.” Meth Building Its Hell’s Kitchen in Rural America.” The New York Times,

2002. Web 3 November 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/06/us/meth-building-its-hell-s-kitchen-in-rural-america.html?src=pm.

Reding, Nick. Methland. New York: Bloomsbury, 2009. Print.

Woodrell, Daniel. Winter's Bone. New York: Back Bay Books, 2006. Print.