Winter's Bone: On the Duality of Ree

 In Winter’s Bone, Daniel Woodrell introduces perhaps the most profound character we’ve read about all semester: Ree Dolly. An awesomely strong young woman, Ree transcends much and overcomes more in a novel that packs centuries of Ozark Mountains lore into 200 pages. She exhibits two principal sides of herself throughout the novel, both of which are important to her success as a character.

Woodrell repeatedly shows the reader that Ree can be cold and hard, both emotionally and physically. She is, in so many ways, far from the typical sixteen-year-old girl: wielding shotguns, sleeping naked in caves, retrieving her dead father’s hands for proof of his death (179, 68, 186). Ree takes beatings and threatens to shoot people, all the while acting as the primary caretaker of her two brothers and mother, which is among the largest responsibilities imaginable. That role as the supporter of her family is especially important because it acts as the bridge between the two facets of Ree’s character.

In the rural community in which she was “bred’n buttered,” Ree is required to have a rough exterior and a dutiful attitude (125). However, in Woodrell’s own words, Ree is beneath that exterior revealed to be “brave, resolute, and capable of deep and compassionate feeling” (A Conversation With Daniel Woodrell 3). Like any parent, her duty to her family is rooted in her love for them. The hardships she endures and the sacrifices she makes are all in the interest of keeping her family together in the house they grew up in. Indeed, Ree’s “grand hope” is that Sonny and Harold avoid growing up to be “dead to wonder by age twelve, dulled to life…groomed to live outside square law,” and she suspects that being raised in another household could lead to that outcome (8, 155). Ree similarly cares for her mother, who is nearly bedridden. Although she occasionally wishes for her mother to be a mother again, Ree has reconciled with the fact that it will never happen. In short, then, Ree is the protector of all three of them, and in order to protect them she must be tough enough to endure the required trials. When it comes to the hard and soft sides of herself, Ree cannot have one without the other.

Examples of Ree’s strength and tenderness abound in Winter’s Bone – certainly too many to include them all. One more worthy of mentioning, though, is Ree’s relationship with Gail. It is a wonderfully rich connection that further presents Ree as a young girl who is searching for companionship.

Woodrell brings the Ozark winter to life through Ree, whose quest to find her father reveals her to be an impressive protagonist that one cannot help but root for.