Student Question
In Winter's Bone, where does Ree rely on, engage with, or learn from nature during her journey?
Quick answer:
In Winter's Bone, Ree shows her connection to the natural world through listening to the sounds of nature, finding refuge in a cave when she has nowhere to stay, and soothing her wounds in a spring.
Ree Dolly, the protagonist of Winter’s Bone, is portrayed as being comfortable in nature and as appreciating it more than many of her relatives and neighbors. Ree finds that attending to distinct elements of the natural world can help her forget her problems, many of which are associated with people who are irritating, disappointing, or even hurting her. Not only genuine natural sounds but even recordings of music that incorporates such tranquil sounds can soothe her jangled nerves.
Ree’s quest to find her father requires her to travel around the mountainous Ozark landscape where she and her family live. At significant points, after she has negative experiences with human beings, places in the natural environment provide a refuge or have healing properties. One such occasion is her visit to Thump Milton’s house. After his hostile reaction to her questions, she is left on her own, far from home. She...
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finds a cave and sleeps in it.
As her search continues, she increasingly doubts that she will be able to save her family or even find her father alive. Another visit to Thump’s place, however, results in a severe beating Whereas most of her relatives are unreliable, her friend Gail comes through to support her. With the help of Gail and her car, Ree can go on with her quest. Significantly, when she feels most weary, the running waters of Bucket Spring soothe her injuries and restore her spirit. Later, in the still water of a pond, she finds her father’s body.
How does Ree engage with nature in Winter's Bone, and what might Woodrell suggest about humanity's connection to nature?
People of the Ozarks like Ree are products of their natural environment in a way distinct from most people in other places. This is due to the remoteness and isolation of their mountain woods that has nurtured an intimate bond between the Native people and their natural surroundings. Woodrell will go on to develop this metaphor at the center of the tale, whose very title, Winter's Bone, is conjured by the opening paragraphs' description of deer carcasses.
Woodrell purposely introduces the natural landscape and its culture along at the same time as Ree, because her perspective represents the pure splendor of the setting and season, untainted by the imminent decay highlighted in the image of deer carcasses hanging from the trees in the neighbor's yards. It is of particular significance that this is the first thing the reader is shown about Ree—her special connection to her natural environment. This is a defining aspect of her character. When introduced, she is standing on the doorstep contemplating the weather, smelling "frosty wet in the looming clouds." Ree's relationship with nature is unique, because of her self-awareness in trying to avoid becoming corrupted by the toxic effects of the drugs that sustain the local economy and have ravaged the community, afflicting everyone, the children worst of all.
The previous example is an extension of Woodrell's central metaphor that drives the plot and informs its backstory, introducing the main theme of the "polluting" effects of modernity on the rural idyll. In chapter 30, Woodrell parallels the downstream social consequences of the meth trade with the idea that chemical "stuff has leaked to the heart of the earth and maybe soured even the deepest deep springs."
What role does the environment play in Ree's journey in Winter’s Bone?
The environment is stimulating, soothing, and threatening at different points in Ree’s physical and emotional journey. Woodrell presents a beautiful but harsh physical environment that serves as a counterpart to a family and a society that similarly contain unresolvable contradictions. Ree sometimes feels that her accustomed environment is a refuge, but she increasingly acknowledges how it confines and restricts her personal growth. Her independence as a maturing adolescent often conflicts with her sense of family loyalty and responsibility in her father’s absence, as well as her commitment to locating him.
Both Ree’s physical journey and her emotional development contain many elements of a classic hero’s quest, in which the ability to conquer physical obstacles demonstrates the spiritual and moral courage required of a hero. One place where the dual character of the environment emerges is when Ree is compelled to seek refuge in a cave, rather than any human-built shelter, through which the author represents her necessary separation from society in order to rejoin it as a transformed, wiser person.