Sunday, March 4, 2012

Response to Winter's Bone


Winter’s Bone was a disturbing story in my opinion. Not disturbing because of the content (well partly) but more so because of the reality of the lives that some people are forced to live. Ree is a teenage girl who is forced to care for her 2 younger brothers while her catatonic mother can be of no help, and her meth lab running father is nowhere to be found after putting up their house and land for bail. Although this young girl is forced to put food on the table, keep her poverty stricken family together, and teach her brothers the need to knows of survival, she must also scour the volatile Ozarks searching for her sorry excuse of a father. 

 What really stood out to me in this book is the reality of poverty and drugs, and the inevitability of responsibility put on the kids from this culture. After reading this, I thought to myself, how easy it is to go about your life, taking for granted the abundance of food, the heater in your home or the comfort of safety. This poor girl Ree is a prisoner of her born circumstance, yet she’s fighting hard to stay afloat and do what she can for her family. I admire her character because, even in the most dire of circumstances, she doesn’t give up. And even knowing that her father is the one who landed her in such horrible circumstances, you can still feel her love and respect for him. It’s easy to think of how you’d personally react if put in Ree’s shoes, but not growing up in the environment she had, it’s hard to speculate. I might wonder why she didn’t just pack up her brothers and hit the road hitchhiking to a town far from the dust of her past and start over, but her ties to such a chaotic and volatile place are strong. One might wonder why the women in the book also choose to stay with such volatile men? This was definitely a story that was eye opening about the serious poverty in that area, the drugs that plague it, and the people who are just born into such a hard knock life.

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