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 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
Ree decides to visit her childhood friend Gail Lockrum on her way home. Gail has a strained marriage with Floyd Langan, whom she married when she found out she was pregnant. Gail, Floyd, and their son, Ned, share a trailer next to his parents’, who help with the baby. Gail and Floyd’s marital problems revolve around his ongoing affair with Heather Powney, whom he had been dating since junior high, before Gail and Floyd’s brief affair destroyed their relationship. Gail struggles with her sudden and unwanted marriage as well as her new baby; during her visit, Ree massages Gail and plucks burrs from her hair.
Ree tells Gail about her father’s disappearance and its potential consequences and explains her need to visit Jessup’s old girlfriend, April. Ree and Gail hope to borrow Floyd’s car, but he refuses to let Gail drive it. Ree is angered by Floyd’s controlling nature and tells Gail: “You never used to eat no shit” (35). Gail withdraws into herself after this conversation and asks Ree to leave so that she can take a nap. As she leaves, Floyd tells her that she does not understand the difficulties of finding oneself married to a stranger after a drunken night together. As Ree leaves, he further explains, “Nobody here wants to be awful [….] It’s just nobody here knows all the rules yet, and that makes a rocky time” (37).
Chapter 8 Summary
Ree continues her walk home. Though she attempts to listen to the Alpine Dusk album, she finds the sounds match the winter mountain setting too well and changes to The Sounds of Tropical Dawn. She imagines an exotic beach setting in detail as she sits on a cold rock in the Ozarks.
Chapter 9 Summary
Ree washes her mother’s hair, making sure that her brothers are paying attention and learning how to do it. The boys are quickly distracted by Wishbone playing on PBS in the background, however, leaving Ree to reminisce about her mother’s former beauty and glamour. As Ree combs her mother’s hair, she remembers how her mother used to dress up to go dancing when Jessup was in Texas, often ending her night with different—usually abusive—men. While Ree’s mother, Connie, loved and missed the amorous beginnings of those brief affairs, Ree understood that her mother was haunted by the physical abuse that often accompanied such nights. Although Ree offers to put makeup on her mother so she could be “painted up special” (42) like before, she cannot find the makeup. When she tells her mother, however, her mother disregards her and watches the television.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
Woodrell’s introduction of Ree’s best friend Gail and her family develops his illustration of a community comprised of broken people. In many ways, Gail and Floyd exemplify the haphazard yet predetermined nature of living in the Ozarks. Their marriage, expected after an unplanned pregnancy that resulted from an impulsive night together, fixes their future in place. While Ree loves Gail, she finds herself daunted by the prospect of such a future. Although Floyd often comes across as egocentric and unsympathetic throughout the novel, his conversation with Ree reveals his own struggle against hopelessness. Being married to someone he does not know, much less love, has ruined his own dream of marrying another woman. As he explains to Ree, although nobody wants to be hurtful, the often find themselves lashing out because they have not yet established a code of relations to live by. As Ree often comments, such codes order life and interpersonal relations in the Ozark communities.
In these chapters, the reader is also given further insight into Connie’s history. Once a beauty who loved to dance, Connie now depends on her daughter to wash her hair and put on her makeup. Connie’s former beauty and laugher is reiterated throughout the novel as an example of how some people crumble, emotionally and mentally. Ree fears the possibility of becoming her mother, inheriting her craziness, and often finds herself contemplating how Connie fell apart.
Ree holds her mother’s varied and violent romantic past responsible for her present condition. Ree’s own apprehension about relationships can be seen as a result of witnessing her mother’s turbulent history. While her mother initially tried to regulate her relationships carefully, to avoid attachment, and now seeks sanctuary within her own mind, Ree attempts to shield herself from attachments by eschewing close relationships.
The theme of escapism is further developed through her brothers’ love of the PBS show Wishbone, which centers on a dog acting out works of literature. When watching the show, Connie asks Ree: “Wonder where’d he get that armor from?” (44). This question seems especially apropos following Ree’s rumination over her mother’s intense emotional and physical vulnerability. She carries internal and external scars from both her marriage and her transitory affairs.
