The nature of motivations that direct an individual’s course of action Throughout life, individuals are faced with decisions and obstacles that must be overcome. These decisions and actions are easily influenced by outside forces and motivations and the outcomes of our actions can have a drastic effect on one's destiny. The act of deciding a course of action is not always simple, but it is made even more difficult when we are faced with a time period and a negative outcome if we chose not to continue on our journey. In the short story “Winter’s Bone,” written by Daniel Woodrell, we are taught that throughout life people make choices between what they want to do and what they need to do. Sometimes those choices lead to unfavourable outcomes, …show more content…
but on the other hand, the things that we risk may be worth giving up in the end. Therefore, Woodrell suggests that taking a risk and choosing what we need to do is a struggle and making a decision based on helping the ones we love is the right course of action. When beginning to read “Winter’s Bone” we initially receive an insight on Ree Dolly’s life. Ree Dolly is first introduced to the reader as a caretaker and motherly figure. She is described as a sixteen year old brunette with green eyes and “a body made for loping after needs.” We initially learn that she takes care of two younger brothers, Harold and Sonny, and her mentally unstable mother. Her father, a meth cook, is rarely around and has a temporary presence in her life. Without a real job, the family has no source of income and Ree takes many of the burdens that her father does not take up. Every morning is a daily struggle as she has little to no money to spend and she must scrounge for everything she gets to help out her family. Although Ree truly loves and cares for her family, she struggles with the ideas of wanting to join the “U.S. Army.” Living in a small town does not provide her with many opportunities. She wishes to join the Army as an attempt to escape the Ozarks but she feels a burden of sacrificing her dreams to stay and help out her family. Ree believes that living in the Ozarks with little to no food and living supplies was bad enough, up until the point she found out that her father was missing. However, while Ree was chopping wood, Baskin showed up with some bad news. She was informed that her father, Jessup, is missing and if he does not show up to court Ree and her family will lose the house. Jessup was charged with crystal meth charges and had his house and land put up for bond. Deputy Baskin told this news to Ree and that she better find him dead or alive if she wants to keep the house. Ree was shocked by this and did not know what to do. She knew she was planning on leaving in a few weeks to go to the Army, but she couldn’t just leave her family who are about to get stripped away from their home. Ree eventually decides to take this colossal challenge on not knowing where her dad could be at all. Ree begins her search for her father by visiting her intimidating Uncle Teardrop, who lives near by. As Ree enters Uncle Teardrop’s house, she begins quickly tell him her situation and she question him on whether or not he knows where her father is. Uncle Teardrop refused to answer any of Ree’s questions as he was not very open to this idea. He tells Ree “That’s a man's personal choice,” as he did not want Ree looking for her father. Ree suggests that she visit neighbouring town of Hawkfall, where the Dolly’s have distant family. Uncle Teardrop immediately became defensive and tells her that is would be dangerous to visit that town. Consequently, as Ree decides to proceed in her journey, she is faced with many risky situations. She must find people she doesn’t know and try and talk to them to see if they know anything about her father's disappearance. The first major encounter she has is with Milton. Milton is an old rude man that lies to Ree about Jessup’s death as an attempt to trick her to stop searching for her father. She is also lead in many different directions throughout the story as people try to either help Ree or stop her from finding out where her father is. Ree knew she had to find her father as soon as possible as she only had a few more weeks or her house would be taken away. As her last attempt of finding the answer to whats she’s been looking for she decides to confront Milton as his house one last time. She was warned to never go there again but knowing her family was at risk she decides to do it anyways. Mrs.Thumpp answers the door and hits Ree, knocking her to the ground. Other women close in and beat and kick her into silence. Ree laid there with the pain traveling up her body in pounding waves. At this moment Ree felt hopeless, she felt like giving up as there were no more solutions or actions she could take in order to find her father. She had this mindset for a while until the three women that had beaten her up showed at her house with an answer to her question. Finally, Ree is given the answer to everything she's been looking for. The three women that had beaten her up, show up at her doorstep and insist Ree to come with them. They place a bag over her head and take her for a long drive into the woods. Once they arrive, one of the women give Ree an axe and suggests that she starts hacking the ice in order to find her father. After a few minutes, Ree was able to reach in a pull out the body. Another woman handed Ree a chainsaw and told her to start cutting his arms off for proof. At this dark moment, Ree felt overwhelmed and sick of what she had to do. She did not want to cut her father's arms off but she felt motivated to complete her task in order to prove that her father is dead. Knowing that her family would be stripped from their house sacred Ree and felt a need to complete her task in order to protect her family. Ree accidently fell in the water while cutting her father’s arms off and she started to lose feeling below her neck. This can be considered as a representation of her losing feelings for her father in general which helped her finish the job. She had to put her siblings and her mother first in order to complete the job and save them and the house. In the short story “Winter’s Bone” Daniel Woodrell demonstrates human’s struggle of decision making when taking outside forces and motivations into consideration.
Through his storytelling he shows us that the choices we make and the risks we take, when considering outside forces, may be the best course of action. Daniel Woodrell validates this by showing us Ree’s situation and how her course of action, which lead to positive outcomes. Throughout the story Ree is presented with a tough situation where she must decide a quick course of action. She must either wait and see if her father show’s up or take matters into her own hands and hunt him down herself. Deciding a course of action is a natural and necessary process of human life that can lead to either success or failure. We cannot avoid deciding a course of action especially when we have outside forces motivating us to do something fast. “Winter’s Bone” is a short novel that leaves us with an important life lesson. Putting our lives at risk for the ones we love allow us to feel good about our course of action knowing we are protecting them. If we decide courses of actions based on what we think is right for our loved ones, then we will make smarter and better choices that will lead to positive
outcomes.
“Winter Evening” by Archibald Lampman, and “Stories of Snow” by P.K Page are two poems describing the human experience of winter. Winter is seen, by some, to be blissful, magical and serene. Winter could also be described as pure and heavenly, with the white snow resembling clouds. However, others have a contrasting viewpoint; they paint winter in harsher light, giving the impression that winter is bitter and ruthless. Others still, have a mixed viewpoint and may recognize both the positives and negatives to the season.
He fig-ured that the normal half hour walk home might take as long as two hours in snow this deep. And then there was the wind and the cold to contend with. The wind was blowing across the river and up over the embankment making the snow it carried colder and wetter than the snow blanketing the ground. He would have to use every skill he’d learned, living in these hills, to complete the journey without getting lost, freezing to death, or at the very least ending up with a severe case of frostbite be-fore he made it back to Ruby.
There are many unpredictable and ungovernable accidents, coincidences, and chances that drive the universe and can ultimately affect the events of a person’s life. One of the main concepts surrounding David Guterson’s novel, Snow Falling on Cedars, is the power of free will vs. fate. The last sentence of the novel: “accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart” explains the lack of control that humans have on the forces surrounding them compared to the control they have over their actions or decisions and the impact that it has. Snow Falling on Cedars looks closely at the effect free will and fate has through the murder trial that occurs post World War II in the story where a Japanese American, Kabuo Miyamoto, is charged with the murder of an American, Carl Heine. As the trial takes place, the story interconnects the characters one of who is Ishmael Chambers, a journalist who may be Kabuo’s only hope but struggles with the decision to do what’s right as he was left burned by Kabuo’s wife and his childhood love, Hatsue. The notion of chance and free will can be seen especially in the character of Ishmael who struggles against the effects of the war and Hatsue leaving him. And as a Japanese American during the war, Hatsue herself displays the power of free will in her self-acceptance and in creating a balance in her life. Apart from the portrayal of free will vs. chance in the development of the characters, certain events in the novel such as the case of Carl Heine’s death and the war itself exhibits similar themes. However, unlike Carl’s death, the war shows that there are instances where circumstance may be the result of human actions. In David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars, the events tha...
Another instance of determination and ambition changing a life occurs when Dunstan is serving in the military. Having just wiped out a machine-gunner’s nest, he began the dangerous journey back to his own side. However, he is soon wounded in the leg by a stray piece of shrapnel. Quickly losing blood, and in copious amounts of pain, he continues the crawl towards his own side. A man with lesser motivation...
When individuals face obstacles in life, there is often two ways to respond to those hardships: some people choose to escape from the reality and live in an illusive world. Others choose to fight against the adversities and find a solution to solve the problems. These two ways may lead the individuals to a whole new perception. Those people who decide to escape may find themselves trapped into a worse or even disastrous situation and eventually lose all of their perceptions and hops to the world, and those who choose to fight against the obstacles may find themselves a good solution to the tragic world and turn their hopelessness into hopes. Margaret Laurence in her short story Horses of the Night discusses the idea of how individual’s responses
Winter’s Bone is a movie based off of a novel that revolves around seventeen-year-old Ree Dolly who looks over her mentally ill mother, her twelve-year-old brother Sonny, and six-year-old sister Ashlee. She basically plays the role of the mother by caring for her family day in and day out, making sure everybody eats, while at the same time, teaching them how to survive by teaching them how to hunt and cook. Their father, Jessup, is nowhere to be found after he was released on bail after being caught for manufacturing methamphetamine. After being told that if their father does not show up for the court date, they will lose their house (because it was put up for collateral as part of his bail), Ree sets out in search of her father on a path where danger is very common and drugs are very readily accessible. She began her journey by contracting her drug-addict uncle Teardrop before venturing off to the local drug lord: Thump Milton. The only information she receives here is that her father either died in a meth lab explosion or he skipped town to evade the police and avoid arrest. After, Jessup fails to appear for his trial, the bondsman informs Ree that she has about a week before they take hold over their house and the land and to avoid such an occurrence, she would need proof that her father is indeed dead and has not just skipped town. The end result is that she ends up getting saved by Teardrop after getting beaten up by a bunch of thugs when she goes to search for her father again. He tells her that her father was killed because he was suspected of informing on other meth manufacturers. One night, her attackers take Ree to where her father’s body is in a pond and she cuts off his arms and brings them in as proof t...
The decision of Adam and Cal Trask to overcome their struggles and Cathy’s decision to succumb to evil prove that the choice of what to do with one’s life is completely up to the individual. John Steinbeck’s use of the biblical story of Cain and Abel builds on the idea that a person is completely responsible for choosing what becomes of them in result of a word, an action and a memory. Undoubtedly everyone has the choice whether or not they wish to triumph over the pain and the sins they are struggling with. After all, look at Ghandi he witnessed children burdened with evil inheritance walk away surmounted because of their strength to rein over evil.
An individual’s meaning or purpose in life cannot truly be realized unless they are faced with a situation in which their course of action directly affects their future. In most cases, humankind is forced to face an extreme circumstance when something comes to an end, whether it be positive or negative, for that ending means that change is inevitable and approaching. Thus, life becomes more meaningful as something ends, for people are forced to realize what is truly important to them as well as the idea that nothing lasts forever. Individuals must choose which of the aspects and goals of their lives are the most significant and should be focused on as they approach a resolution, as can be seen in the Gawain Poet’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Therefore, due to the finality of an ending and the uncertainty of the following events, humankind can reveal what they believe are the
Many people make decisions or perform certain actions throughout their lives striving to produce a specific outcome or control their fate. Sometimes this outcome is not achieved. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, an ambitious soldier commits horrible deeds in order to rise through the ranks and establish his kingship, which turns into a tyranny. Throughout the play, almost all of the choices Macbeth made were to help him reach the specific outcome he wanted for his life. Through the decisions Macbeth makes to try and change his fate, Shakespeare is able to portray the message that free will does not truly exist, rather every choice made in life leads to a predestined end.
While you are walking in a park and you come into a fork in the path, how do you know which one to take? How do make the decision of which one to take? Do you make the decision based on the mistakes you made or that you just want to see where it goes? Many of us wants to make the decision so quick that no time is wasted, but others want to look back and see what they have learned and make a decision based on related events. George Shaw once said that “ a life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” In that quote he meant that it is better to make a mistake other than trying to be perfect all of the time. Through all of the valleys in life you are going to make mistakes but that is not the important part of the aspect. The most important part is how they rise from within themselves to conquer the mistake they had made.
Everyone has deeply desired to have something before, but some people take their desires to far and quickly become blind to how they affect everything and anyone else. Both the novel Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo, and the short story “All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury, use this thought in both of their stories. In Shadow and Bone, the Darkling has forever been forced to serve under King’s that weren’t worthy of his time. In “All Summer in a Day”, the children of Venus long to see the Sun again. In both Shadow and Bone and “All Summer in a Day”, the authors reveal how a desire that one has can quickly change a character for the worst, making them forget about what they do and how their actions are affecting other people.
Clock, winter, and bones, three words that share no common interactions. A clock remains used to tell people the time every day, even through the freezing winter temperatures. These freezing winter temperatures remain so cold that they will chill one’s bones. Throughout the cold winter times, while an individual’s bones are chilling, a clock remains there to help tell the time every single day.
In the novel, Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell, the character Teardrop is a raggedy, violent meth head. He initially poses as an antagonist in the novel due to the fear he brings upon Ree, although as the novel progresses, Teardrop evolves into the sole ally of Ree. In the novel, the character, Teardrop, develops into a character of care and trust, as he grows beyond his drug ridden life.
Many of Shakespeare's later plays broke with customs of genre. The Merchant of Venice has all the elements of a comedy, but deals with very grave matters and ends ambiguously. Pericles foreshadows the novel in its romantic plot and use of narration. Such plays challenged prevalent Renaissance literary theory which demanded fairly strict adherence to classical values of realism and unity. The Winter's Tale is a self-conscious violation of these expectations, and a jibe at the assumptions behind them. Shakespeare uses the play itself to present his argument against what may be termed, "the mimetic theory of art." It was the established opinion of Elizabethan literati that art ought to imitate life (Kiernan 8). Shakespeare not only rejects this "ought,"1[1] but shows the absurdity of what it entails.
Debra Granik, producer of “Winter’s Bone, successfully produces the thriller of a decade with this chilling film. Ree Dolly, the protagonist, adventures out to find her useless father, who is wanted by the law for cooking meth. The film explores many interrelated themes of family, poverty, drugs, and feminism. Reviewers, like A.O. Scott, Phillip French, and David Denby, all evaluate the significance of the strong female role. For instance, French writes, “Winter’s Bone is one of the great feminist works in film.” Even though other critics focus on all the other predominant themes, I believe violence and decay strikes as the most accentuated theme. Granik repeatedly captures the lack of trust even in ones