A Lyrical Meth Lab

Cindy Crain

ENG 102

Laura Cline

24 March 2012

A Lyrical Meth Lab

            Winter’s Bone is a depiction of the harsh, violent lifestyle of the families who run methamphetamine labs in the Ozark Mountains.  The novel focuses on Ree, a sixteen year old girl who is contemplating going into the Army to escape her hellish life when suddenly her dad disappears and she is left with the responsibility of taking care of her mom and brothers.  She must prove her dad is dead, rather than missing, in order to keep their home from being seized by the bail bondsmen. The story contains an abundance of aesthetic, descriptive language which Woodrell specifically utilized to underscore and emphasize the ugliness of this brutal lifestyle that Ree is trapped in.  The poetic expression also serves as a respite throughout the story, and a way for the reader to visualize the beauty and hope that Ree calls upon to continue to exist through the hardships in her life.

            The harshest illustration of Woodrell’s usage of poetic language as a contrasting device is when Ree is being beaten by Mrs. Thump and the other two women: “Ree felt her joints unglue, become loose, and she was draining somehow, draining to the dirt, while black wings flying angles crossed her mind, and there were the mutters of beasts uncaged from women and she was sunk to a moaning place, kicked into silence” (Woodrell 130).   This sentence could easily be put into poetic form and performed aloud at a dramatic reading.  The combination of the descriptive phrasing with the repetition of the word “draining” creates a rhythmical beat that highlights the cruelty of the beating that Ree is receiving. 

            The Seattle Times book review references the writing style as well, stating that, “‘Winter's Bone’ is compact, atmospheric and deeply felt, drenched in the sights, sounds and smells of the author's native Ozarks. Woodrell's novels (this is the eighth) tap a ferocious, ancient manner of storytelling, shrewdly combining a poet's vocabulary with the vivid, old-fashioned vernacular of the backwoods.  They’re forces of nature” (Woog).  Throughout the novel, this lyrical language creates this ferocity; the indescribable is expressed and becomes believable largely due to the depths of the phrasing.   

            The drugging and subsequent molestation of Ree becomes more horrific with the poetic form it takes: “…then he’d hugged her to the ground and she’d felt a tremendous melting of herself, a leaking from one shape into some other form, and she’d been turned about by his hugs to kneel, and her skirt flipped up and Little Arthur knelt to join in her puddling embrace of gods and wonder” (Woodrell 55).  No mention is made of Ree being only sixteen years old and this adult not only giving drugs to a minor, but using the mushrooms as a means to rape her.  The fact that Ree brings it to mind as just another memory in her heart wrenching life indicates that this is probably not an isolated incident, but a normal part of life in her neck of the woods.  It’s as if Woodrell chose the most appalling moments in the novel and put them to song so the words will continue to play like a catchy tune through the reader’s head long after the book is closed. 

            This lyricism has not escaped the notice of readers.  As reviewed in The San Diego Union-Tribune, “‘Winter's Bone’ is poetry and horror. Beauty and vileness.  I don't know when last I read a writer who does so well what Daniel Woodrell does: Combine the lyrical beauty of a region's language with the nightmare quality of cruel, abased lives. You could sing most any line in his story of 16-year-old Ree Dolly, but it would hurt” (Brinson).  The tune underscores the hurt, pointing it out with brilliance and magnifying it to the nth degree.  Just as hearing a song with heartbreaking lyrics will often bring a tear to the eye, so does reading the poetic lines that illustrate and accentuate the sheer dreadfulness of Ree’s life.

Woodrell utilizes onomatopoeia, alliteration and repetition – and other poetic tools – to create the disparity between the lyrical phrasing and the devastation of the moment when the bail bondsman came by to notify Ree that she and her brothers and mother will have to move out of their home: “There was a sound in Ree’s head like a world of zippers zipping shut, and a sudden tilt factor engaged every place she looked.  The creek shifted heights in her eyes and swayed overhead floppy as snapped string, the houses beyond warped skinny as ribs and knotted together in bows, the sky spun upright like a blue plate set on edge to dry.  She had a feeling of tipping over, tipping over somehow to dribble down and away, down and away bleakly to a place beyond reach” (126).    Woodrell also represented several senses as Ree heard the zipping, saw things shift, and felt herself tipping. This vivid expression of her grief and hopelessness explodes on the page with the usage of these tools. 

By opening up the poetic toolbox, Woodrell brings intensity and disquiet to the story, yet amazingly soothes the mind of the reader during the in-between times. The Guardian review reads, “But whereas the plot of Winter's Bone breathlessly forces the reader on, the poetry and drama of each crafted phrase and sentence draws us back, setting up a tension in the reading that belongs to the highest order of narrative” (Davies).  Often the reader must wade through anxious moments to reach the flashes of hope buried in the story.  Woodrell sustains the reader through these moments with the promise of the poetry.  The reader, feeling the tension, may be inclined to set the book aside, yet at the same time pulled onward by the lyricism present in each page. 

            There are times within the story that the vivid language seems to pull the reader through Ree’s hard times, such as when she is waiting for Thump Milton: “The curtain closed so subtly Ree questioned whether it had truly been open or had she wished it open and sold the wish to her eyes.  Rime of frost thickened where breath fell onto her chest.  Sleet crackled down, laid a cold sheen across everything.  The afternoon sky dimmed and lights from the house carried into the yard as gleamings stretched by skiddings across the ice.  Tree limbs fattened with gathered silver and drooped” (Woodrell 60).  The descriptions not only bring reality to the story, but also starkness within the verbosity that makes the reader want to sit with Ree while she waits; in part to read more of the poetry, and to some extent simply to comfort her.  Without the lyricism the wait would be too painful and the many wounds too raw. 

Woodrell uses the hope Ree continues to feel, as well as the beauty she sees in the world around her to amplify the sympathetic nature of the reader.  As a teenager basically raising her young brothers plus taking care of her mother, she took on all of the responsibility, including feeding and keeping them all warm.  Even as she chopped wood in the snow, “As the frosty bits dwindled the wind slowed and big snowflakes began falling as serenely as anything could fall the distance from the sky.  Ree listed to lapping waves of far shores while snowflakes gathered on her.   She sat unmoving and let the snow etch her outline in deepening clean whiteness” (Woodrell 10).  All of humanity has noted the beauty of freshly fallen snow and the hope garnered by the impression of its fresh cleanness.  Each one could have been in Ree’s position, yet – in most cases – are more fortunate.  It is in these small moments that the empathy and compassion are built.   

            When reading the Winter’s Bone it is impossible to miss the sharp contrast between the violence of Ree’s everyday life and the aesthetic, descriptive language that is used to express this devastating reality.  This dissonance is a tool utilized by Woodrell to emphasize the horror much more effectively than if he inserted bloody accounts or graphic wording.  The story is not brutality encased in explicit language, rather it is brutality enveloped in poetry.  It’s the slap of a velvet glove.

           

           

Works Cited

Woodrell, Daniel. Winter’s Bone: A Novel. Little, Brown and Company, 2006. Print.

Woog, Adam. "’winter’s bone’:A tough Ozark teen’s rough journey”.  The Seattle Times. 25         August, 2006. Web. 22 March 2012.

Smith Brinson, Claudia. “A walk on the gritty side”. The San Diego Union Tribune. 10 Sept.        2006. Web. 24 March 2012.

Davies, Stevie. “Ozark odyssey”. The Guardian. 14 July, 2006.  Web. 22 March 2012.