73 pages • 2 hours read
Daniel WoodrellWinter's Bone
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 19-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary
Ree teaches her brothers how to hunt squirrels—how to shoot cleanly, strategize the hunt for a bigger quarry, and clean the carcasses. At first, Harold is rather squeamish about touching the guts, but overcomes his hesitation after seeing Sonny and Ree doing it. Ree admonishes him, telling Harold, “You can’t always leave the ugly stuff to Sonny” (107). Later, he and Sonny begin to play with the entrails and paint each other’s faces with the blood while Ree finishes cleaning the remains. As they work in the woods, Ree looks over the acres of timber that had been passed down from the Bromont side of the family. She knows that selling the land would lead to the ruination of the family and that it must be held onto at any cost.
Chapter 20 Summary
After preparing and eating dinner, Ree relaxes on the couch and enters into a surreal stream of consciousness. Though her thoughts are abstract and image-based, they center on her feelings of being alone and unintelligible to those around her. These images of confusion and isolation evolve into an erotic fantasy of childhood kisses and disrobing a woman.
Uncle Teardrop’s arrival interrupts Ree’s dreamlike state. He asks Ree if she thinks he forgot about her, to which Ree responds that he has the prerogative to forget them. Teardrop chastises Ree for her insolence and looks out on Sonny and Harold playing in the yard. He notes the differences between the two boys before raising the issue of Jessup’s disappearance. He informs Ree that the police discovered Jessup’s burnt car at Gullett Lake earlier that morning. Ree once again asks for confirmation of Jessup’s death, but Teardrop just hands her money and advises her to sell off the Bromont timber since Jessup has missed his court date.
As he prepares to leave, Teardrop snorts some meth and offers some to Ree, which she refuses. He belatedly becomes aware of her mother’s presence in her chair nearby. He listens to her fragmented humming and reminisces about the past, when the floor had always been shaking from the music and the dancing. Teardrop mournfully comments, “…It was always the happy kind of stoned back then” (113) before leaving in his truck”.
Chapter 21 Summary
Ree dresses her mother, Connie, warmly for a walk outside. As they walk together along the trail, Ree remembers her mother before she began to lose her sanity. Her mother had played with Ree and told her stories of the fantastical creatures that roamed the Ozarks. The tales had once added mystery and intrigue to the natural world, even as her mother’s words had soothed her. Ree takes her mother to a spot looking out over old Bromont land where her mother had played as a child. Once settled for a rest, Ree attempts to plead with her mother for help or even acknowledgement. Her mother, however, remains ensconced in her own mind—the “approximate refuge offered by incomprehension” (118). After a second attempt, Ree gives up and studies her mother’s profile in silent defeat. As the sun sets, Ree takes her mother back home.
Chapters 19-21 Analysis
These chapters augment the theme of nature and its interconnectedness with the Dolly families. This is made clear by Ree’s meditation on the importance of the Bromont timber land to her family. Ree understands that selling the timber would lead to the “ruination” of the family. She does not mean purely financial ruin, however, but the kind of ruin that would come from losing something that had held the family together for generations.
This sentiment can be seen again later, when Ree takes her mother on a walk to one of their old haunts. Ree tells us, “The walls and such had been carted away long ago but the square rock foundation still gave a base of ordered shapeliness to the barrage of runt oak and creeper vines that had overgrown the place” (116-117). In particular, it’s important to note that Ree associates the natural rock as a true foundation for “ordered shapeliness” rather than the manmade walls that many would assume ordered the naturally chaotic force of nature. For Ree, nature itself, the timber forests and the rock foundation, serves as the true form of control and structure. In addition, Ree suggests nature’s ability to serve as a playground: “The pines could easily be imagined into a castle or a sailing ship or serve merely as an ideal picnic spot” (117). Much like the television shows that the Dolly families watch, nature serves as a conduit for imagination and possibilities.
Uncle Teardrop’s visit to Ree interrupts her surreal, dream-like musings that mimic Faulkner’s stream of consciousness and which became characteristic of Southern Gothic literature. Though her scattered thoughts express her loneliness and feelings of incomprehensibility, they also verge on a form of sexual awakening as a woman, rather than a girl. Because of Teardrop’s interruption, this sexualized tangent does not come to fruition. The interruption further suggests that Ree’s family inhibit her knowledge of her needs and desires.
Uncle Teardrop’s appearance promotes his role as Ree’s mentor, as he comments on the Dolly family’s past and future. He insightfully comments on the probable futures of Harold and Sonny and later wistfully remembers her mother when she was happy and dancing. In part, Teardrop merely provides further context and understanding for Ree with regards to the Dolly way of life. However, his comments also provide the reader with further insight into the kind of Southern society the book navigates. Teardrop mourns the days when her family was happy and stoned rather than merely happy, for he has never experienced happiness without drug use.
