Mid-term Check In.

Dear Laura Cline,


  Well, first half of this semester really flew by didn't it? Spring always feels shorter. So far in this class I have found a couple of difficulties but a couple of strengths as well within both my writing and study skills. Some of my difficulties reside mostly within my simple personal life, which mostly consists of the television that sits in the living room where I work. I'm sure everyone has had this problem within their life where they only wished to lay back and watch the day away with the big screen. I myself, being a huge fan of movies and science fiction series, have been watching it a little bit too much and neglecting my schoolwork. However I have devised a plan to help me resolve this issue which has been restricting me from better performance in both this class and others. So far this plan has been working and my homework has been going easier and smoother than before. Hopefully there will be a noticeable change in my future assignments.


Other difficulties are not as great as the first one I mentioned. Just a few misunderstandings that have been resolved. Such as when I mistook a literary analysis paper for a simple analysis paper. A mistake on my part. I have also had trouble developing a thesis on any writings we had to do so far. For some reason I find making a thesis harder than it seems because my personal opinion or ideas on the readings are few in numbers. Is there any techniques you would suggest for thinking up thesis'? If so please let me know, I've been struggling hard with it.


Aside from those difficulties, I have found this class easy to work in with a good set up of the system. Things are easy to find and overall it has been easier to navigate through this class than any other online english course I have had. For the rest of the semester I hope to clean up my grammer and spelling. Finding a way to make better thesis' would also be a nice advancement for future literacy analysis papers as well.


Hope the rest of the year will be pleasant for you.
Live long and Prosper. 




Stone.

Essay3

Emma Stone

English 102

Winter’s Bone and Daniel Woodrell’s life.

My opinion on the novel Winter’s Bone, by Daniel Woodrell, is neither a negative one or positive. I found these pages to be both emotionally and intellectually stimulating. However I do believe that the writer chose to give it more of an emotional appeal to the readers rather than something to think about. Such as the family bonds taking place (which are expected from the location the book was set within), the fighting, the disputes and relationships between each family name mostly appealed to that. The descriptions of scenery was in a simple format but because of that it sets up visuals so that anyone can imagine it clearly without any visual aid. Even in places where such descriptions seemed unnecessary, it would still set a good mood; ”Chopped corn stalks poked above the snow, and useless old tassel and shucks has blown into the wire fencerows and stuck to the barbs.  Coyotes began calling down the moon.”(99 Daniel) Human behavior in story telling often calls for description for any type of emotion feedback, such as a comedian does to set the context of their joke, thus I enjoyed the settings given.

As far as the story and plot goes I found it straight to the point but puzzling. Mainly because the objective was for Ree to simply find her father, a story plot which is used in many detective stories. However Ree was no detective and only had distant but close relatives to rely on. As she asks around each family member she could reach I felt like I was gaining less information as she encountered stubborn people and threatening situations. Emotional feedback was, however, keep intact and active as she faced depressing conversations, such as when Teardrop talked about taking one of her brothers before it was official that all hope was lost. Because my emotional interest was kept the balance between emotion and intellect was kept, thus keeping me interested.

In the end I found the book very good, but like a cliffhanger leaving with many questions but still letting me be satisfied with finishing the last few pages.

The main theme that intrigued me the most was how Woodrell went into detail about each relationship that Ree had with her family. Although somewhere within the book I began to lose track of that family tree I still found it stimulating to read about. The relationships were very interesting from a sociological standpoint. I have also found that Woodrell had lived within an area where the families had a strong bond such as the characters in the book. Which concluded that such complicated relationships exist within this world.

Winter’s Bone is a recent addition to Woodrell’s writings and ended up becoming a film later on. An article on Woodrell states that Winter’s Bone is “..a book that bears the hallmarks of being crafted expertly over an extended period”(Williams) So I would assume that this book was given a long time to actually develop into the piece it is now.  It would be expected that Woodrell has also but some details of his life or experiences he had had over his years. An example of that would be the location of where he lived, amongst strong family bonds, that related to the characters in the novel. I would conclude that Woodrell wrote this novel to express the many experiences he had in his life to the readers and fans he had began to achieve threw his previous popular works.

I have evaluated that this novel is one that is based off of the writer's life and experiences. In an article it is said that the characters lived “...deep in the Missouri Ozarks, where the bond of family is stronger than the bond of the law...” Later it states that “Woodrell, fifty-seven, writes about what he knows. Born in the Ozarks... “(Carbot) Woodrell is born into Ozarks and thus grows up around these strong family bonds that he later placed between his characters within Winter’s Bone. His first hand experience within such conditions would have left him with heavy childhood memories leading him to write them into his book. His family had also lived in that location back until the 1840’s which is another thing that he incorporates into his novel.

Inspiration is another thing that existed within woodrell’s life to help create his novel. “There's an air of the gypsy camp about this place: Collinsville, the inspiration for Winter's Bone....These folks are the model for the Dolly clan in Winter's Bone.”(Williams) Many writers in the past and present use some type of model for their characters, these models tend to be someone they know or people they have observed. For Woodrell these people where a family of gypsy that had a camp and little respect for the law providing their own idea of justice. This is another example of something that Woodrell saw in his life, was affected by and placed within his book.

A simpler form of life to fiction would be simple surrounding areas. Already we see the real town of Ozark being used as a setting for Winter’s bone, but there are also small things like buildings. “We start off by driving around his neighbourhood, where he points out the run-down little houses and the cemetery which have figured in recent books.”(Williams) However small and insignificant these details may seem they played important parts within Woodrell’s writings, helping him set description threw his interesting style for setting a mood.

One great impact in Woodrell’s life that both affected him and his written would be when his father took him and moved away, from where he was originally born, for a job. This gave him the absent mother that is portrayed in the novel where Ree’s mother is absent minded. Ree also wished to get a job in the military just as woodrell did when his father moved them again to a new location to Kansas City. “ ‘I lived there for two years and I hated it. So much so that I left high school and joined the Marines the week I turned 17...’ “ (Willams) This gave a complicated relationship between he and his father. His father had done things that he did not particularly liked making him live in cities he prefered not to, he ran away from that by joining the Marines. This memory in his life is identical to that of Ree’s. She has a complicated relationship with her father, who in turn makes things difficult for her even when she has no feelings of responsibility for him. Yet she is forced to take responsibility even though all she wishes is to get away and join the military as the writer did. This is one of the largest impacts on Woodrell’s life, for after he joined the military he was kicked out for drug use, then later put threw a strip search when he crossed the Mexican border. On that day “...the officer muttered repeatedly. ‘That's not bad.’ ”(Cabot) as he read some of Woodrell’s writings in his journal. This lead on to his career in writing. Thus the most important part of Daniel Woodrell’s life was used to begin and create the character of Ree Dolly.

Over all, the time it took to spend on Winter’s Bone is more appreciated and seen when one looks over Woodrell’s life and how it is worked into the characters, setting and overall writing style. Critical moments within his life is what created and affected his writing. If he had not lived out those early years which closely related to Ree, he would have never even been able to become a writer let alone create Ree. His observations in life and places he lived is what made his stories as many writers have experienced. Such examples are easily seen in how he and Ree had the desire to join up with military. How he and other character’s had been involved with drug use. Also his memories on strong family bonds that existed where he lived in Ozark. Smaller things such as background settings and building structures were also used and however they seemed small the majority of his writing was poetic on the descriptions of places. In short all of Woodrell’s memories and events played an important part to this novel, Winter’s Bone.

Work Cited

Woodrell, Daniel. Winter’s Bone. New York: Back Bay Books, 2006. Print.

Williams, John. Daniel Woodrell: The Ozark Daredevil. The Independent. 16 June, 2006. Web.

Cabot, Tyler. Daniel Woodrell: Writer. Esquire. Being green. 2010. Web.

Article.

The Book Review: Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell was published by Mel Odom on July 16, 2010. Mel Odom is a writer who has written over one hundred novels including the famous Tomb Raider. In his review he points out how he can relate to Ree -- the main character-- because he grew up in Oklahoma and knows about the meth problem there. Odom also informs the readers that Winter's Bone is a depressing book and can cause emotional feed back. This article has been copied to other websites, such as SeattlePi, but the original copy is found on Blog Critics


In response to the article, I would have to say it was written alright for a review. There were a few places that needed some editing but overall I got the main idea. Odom gets to the point quickly and gives good suggestions on how to go about reading other Woodrell books. This article is a simple one that can be used to support my thesis on how the author put a little bit of himself into the book making it more personal and emotional to readers. For example; Ree wished to join the military and Woodrell was once in the Marines. So this emotional feed back from a fellow writer is light proof that Woodrell's writing style related to his own ambitions and made it very real to us readers. 








Odom, Mel. "The Book Review: Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell."Book Critics. Technorati Media. June 2008. Web. 2009.




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Winter's Bone

So far what I have read in Winter's Bone has been giving many different responses and reactions. For the first 26 pages I read out loud to my cat. When I did that I noticed that the narrator used many run on sentences that mostly set up the setting/feel of the moment. To me it was tiring to string out a breath to a sentence. Finding out the accent was also an interesting discovery, and also entertaining to my cat for me to give each character a different voice tone.
The story was something that really had to get my attention, being someone who is a fan of small drama detective books and series, the fact that her father is mysteriously gone and has a sketchy story going made things very interesting. Break out them Deerstalkers and your magnifying glass, its time to figure out what this man has been up too. In the beginning I too also thought Jessup had just been out about doing his drugs and drinking off somewhere like Ree thought. But as this went on and everyone she asked started to act shifty and down right secretive we can see that perhaps something is a miss. Not to mention when they really get into things such as Ree spotting the family car and trying to get to it only to have the person inside turn and drive the other way. How other family members try to make her think that he died in a explosion and the car being found burnt away with no one inside. Its all very suspicious and made me extremely curious. Now I'm at the point of suspecting every character within the book of being part of this unknown scheme. Such as the so called officer with the long hair and the white car. Maybe this man was actually a drug dealer who poses as a cop and tries to follow her dad in hopes of some pay back because he's in dept? Then later they met in the lake and some fighting goes down and they burn the car because they felt like it! Who knows. Guess I have to keep reading.

Other side dramas connected to the father's disappearance also made me a bit emotional. Such as when Teardrop tries to take away Sonny from the rest of the family. I don't really feel fond of children but when it comes down to them being taken away by someone else (family or not) I find it offensive. So that brought up some emotional feed back and 'booing' on my part. Other scenes such as Ree's mother looking off into the sunset were just written so beautiful and simple that I couldn't help but appreciate it. Overall I have been finding this book a entertaining read.


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Be A Detective!